Articles About Ireland

Spain asked the Eurozone for a bailout of up to €100-billion to rescue its banks.  This is just a short-term fix for the troubled Eurozone because it doesn’t address the underlying problems in the monetary union.  The earlier bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal didn’t resolve the problems either.  “The Spanish banking bailout is big […]

Europe’s unemployment has soared to 10.8 percent, the highest rate in more than 14 years as companies from Spain to Italy eliminated jobs to weather the region’s crisis, according to the European Union’s (EU) statistics office.  That’s the highest since June 1997, before the Euro was introduced.  European companies are cutting costs and eliminating jobs […]

Ireland was one of the nations that was hardest hit by the Eurozone crisis, but now it’s being seen as leading stricken nations in their efforts to turn their economies around.  International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Union (EU) officials are impressed by its austerity measures, imposed after the massive 2010 bailout.  For the average […]

European leaders will this week try to deliver new fiscal rules and cut Greece’s onerous debt burden.  All this in the wake of Standard & Poor’s (S&P) Eurozone downgrades. France was not the only Eurozone nation to feel the pain. Austria was cut to AA+ from AAA; Cyprus to BB+ from BBB; Italy to BBB+ […]

Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has asked for international oversight of his efforts to slash the eurozone’s second-largest debt, even as his unraveling coalition threatens efforts to build a wall against Europe’s debt crisis.  Berlusconi’s government asked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to assess its debt-reduction progress, and turned down an offer of financial assistance. […]

Whoops!  Someone has a red face.  France’s credit ratings have not been downgraded by Standard & Poor’s (S&P) and apparently resulted from an accidental transmission of a message that it had downgraded the nation’s credit. S&P’s error roiled global equity, bond, currency and commodity markets when it sent and then corrected the erroneous message. “As […]

Portugal has become the third European nation to accept a financial bailout to the tune of € 78 billion, with € 12 billion going directly to the Iberian nation’s banks.  It is the third of four PIGS nations (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain) to require a bailout.  Caretaker Prime Minister Jose Socrates announced that he had […]

The Federal Reserve is unlikely to follow the European Central Bank’s (ECB) recent decision to raise interest rates and will hold off until there is looming inflation.  The ECB’s move may be the first of several this year as high oil costs drive consumer prices above its target.  That’s not to say that some members […]

America is obsessed with the issue of trade unions again.  Labor unions have gained new prominence as Democratic legislators from Wisconsin and Indiana have left their states for the greener pastures of Illinois to avoid participating in votes to cut back or eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees.  Thousands of protestors have taken up […]

Against its will, Ireland is now in a state of receivership mandated by the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in an effort to resolve the Emerald Isle’s debt crisis.   European central bankers have paid £111 billion into Ireland’s banks to prevent damage to the euro in what is being jokingly referred […]