The Other Hand

Jean-Claude Juncker, ex-head of the EU Commission, once famously said that policymakers know what is the right thing to do, but don't know how to get re-elected if they do it. That is true too much of the time. But is there a unique opportunity for the Irish government, for once to do the right thing and to be rewarded for it at the ballot box?Finance Minister McGrath has promised a tax-cutting budget. Is he missing a trick? Housing has such political salience in Ireland, if he threw the kitchen sink at building more homes instead of tax cuts, maybe that is also a vote-winning strategy? And also an opportunity to give Sinn Fein a good kicking while they are down?Meanwhile, data emerges that shows the Irish tax system becoming even more unbalanced. That's storing up problems for the future.San Francisco hasn't had an earthquake lately but its commercial property sector is crashing. Vacancy rates are probably higher that the 30+% reported as some big companies are effectively squatting in very under-utilised space. Why not just covert all this space into housing? Lots of other cities, including Irish ones, are in the same position.Rishi Sunak's damage limitation exercises backfire. Labour can't believe its luck.Keir Starmer's irish influencers.

Inflation falls in the UK but *only* to 2.3%. Cue weeping and wailing and much hot air. The narcissism of small differences.Does anybody know what really causes inflation? Does the ECB understand the connection (or lack of) between interest rates and inflation? The human aspects of all this are often lost in dry discussions of monetary policy and inflation. But the human dimension is real, big and too often ignored by central banks. Nvidia, AI, data centres and the nuttiness of stock markets.Housing policy contains asymmetrical risks: building too few is much more dangerous than building too many.

Opinion polls on both sides of the Atlantic tell fascinating stories. Sinn Fein has lost momentum. Have they peaked too soon? Rishi Sunak's Tories are now polling at lower levels that the nadir of Liz Truss' government. That really is some going. Trump breaks wind audibly in court, hears stories about his sexual peccadillos and goes up in the polls.It is said that SF are suffering because 'they have let their electorate down because of immigration'. Right wing parties everywhere, including Ireland, are on the rise because of the immigration issue. Yet right wing governments in power in the UK and Italy show how hard - impossible even - 'solving' immigration is. Is it really true that immigrants take jobs? Spoiler alert: no. What are SF's actual policies? Are they like the UK's Labour party, a policy-free zone? Long on promises, short on what they will do?We are almost certainly still filling our cars with Russian fuel.China and Russia deepen ties. China enables the Russian war machine. China has the best batteries.Global stock markets continue to tell us: 'don't worry, be happy!

We might need 80,000 new houses a year - or we might not. It all depends on so many imponderables.One of them being the level of immigration. We now see that everywhere as a problem to be solved. Is it solvable?Biden is trying to keep cheap Chinese electronic vehicles out of the US. Europe is thinking about doing the same. That's all to protect domestic car manufacturers who don't know how to produce cheap EVs. The Chinese do. We are repeating the mistakes of the 1970s when Japanese car manufacturers figured out how to make cars that consumers want. Western car companies, by and large, didn't know why production techniques that dated from the 1930s were no longer fit for purpose.Solution: copy Chinese IP! They've been doing it to us for years. Return the favour!