If they're anything like any other local authority then yes they do.

I was a skeptic of yours some time ago re interest rates Sidewinder. I thoought rates might peak at 4% this year, however, I am now more of a mind to go along with your suggestion that may keep on rising through this and next year to around the 5% you suggested for mid-2008.

Disaster for Ireland if it does!

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Seabhcan on EU Enlargement and the Lisbon Treaty: "There is no shortage of cheap labour - Turkey isn't needed."

No.




The PDs are in power to try an enact as much of our election manifesto as is humanly possable.

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Politics is the language of freedom

So what exactly was on that poster Mc Dowell was nailing to the poll in Ranelagh?

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Seabhcan on EU Enlargement and the Lisbon Treaty: "There is no shortage of cheap labour - Turkey isn't needed."

Are the French and the Italians going to put up with this forever? They're getting slaughtered. A pricey Euro does little for us and hurts the Germans badly. When are the governments going to slap this Bank?

Independence and lunacy are different things.

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When you see the words "Mises" or "Hayek" in someone's post, just ask yourself: do I really want to ban paper money and go back to gold?

You have to pity the kind of people who buy into conspiracy theories. I find the following to be the saddest words on the internet: "Re: connection between Bilderberg puppet lady gaga and viral outbreak in ukraine "

Single Party Government? No Thanks!

not,
Let's Keep Fianna Fail Honest!(even if they were to start)

not,
WE are the Quality Control Department of Fianna Fail!

McDowell made a call on the Single Party Government and it resonated with the voters. FF were very close to pulling it off.


Maybe the next poster should read;

Incompatable Party Government? NO THANKS!.

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Politics is the language of freedom

LOL. Are you listening to the Q&A session?

Trichet just *************************slapped the politicians and quoted - at length - the articles of the Treaty which created the ECB. The ECB's remit is to guarantee price stability, to be completely independent, and is constitutionally bound to ignore outside influences....and the national governments are constitutionally bound not to try and interfere. He also stated explicitly that the ECB does not seek to set the Euro exchange rate, but only to maintain price stability. End of story.

What exactly do you see as "lunacy"? 3.5% is still, by any rational measure, a very low interest rate. If an interest rate of a mere 3.5% is hurting any particular economy, then that economy is dangerously unbalanced or has chronic structural problems, almost by definition.

Germany has just reported record exports in 2006. They're doing fine.

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Je suis un loo-lah

It wasn't me, Kevin, but I concur that large scale lay-offs, leading to mortgage defaults and/or the need to downscale, would indeed have a calamitous effect on exacerbating the crash.
I've felt for some time that the crash will precede the lay-offs, but as they will go hand in hand anyway, it matters little whether the cart precedes the horse or vice versa.
Either way, people will end up without jobs, in debt and with no home of their own.

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price stability implies a stable exchange rate with the planet's reserve currency, in which all commodity deals are transacted: that's the US dollar.

Right now, the Chinese export industry is no match for Deutschland's might. Ten more years of this, and that won't be the case.

Trichet himself has gone on at length about the need to prevent the dollar getting too cheap, too quickly, in Euro terms.

Keeping the interest rate near its current level works against this goal. The Japanese have their interest rate below 1% for this very reason. Their unemployment is comparable to the Eurozone's, so by that measure the interest rate is far over what it should be.

Anyway, enough macroeconomic blather for this thread! Your point's taken, I hope mine is too.

So, houses: are they getting cheaper, wha'?

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When you see the words "Mises" or "Hayek" in someone's post, just ask yourself: do I really want to ban paper money and go back to gold?

You have to pity the kind of people who buy into conspiracy theories. I find the following to be the saddest words on the internet: "Re: connection between Bilderberg puppet lady gaga and viral outbreak in ukraine "

But it's all over for the dollar. Everybody knows it. It's the great big huge elephant in global macroeconomic policy that everybody ignores, in public statements at least.

The US is finished, and the dollar is no longer seen as a credible reserve currency. What the ECB, BoE, BoJ, PBC and everyone else are doing is trying to keep the plates spinning while the dollar slumps. Note that Trichet only said it was undesirable to have the dollar collapse too quickly. That the dollar will collapse is taken as an implicit assumption.

The process of offloading dollars is underway, and is the reason for the continued, unwarranted by fundamentals, strength of STG, CHF, $CAN, $OZ, $NZ.

The problem is, there is at least $0.75 trillion in dollars out there that cannot be soaked up by the smaller currencies. This represents an immense pool of liquidity looking for a home, on top of the liquidity created by 5 years of very cheap money in US,UK,Euro and 10 years of extremely cheap money from the BoJ.

Hence asset bubbles around the world, and the rise of exotic instruments. This vast sloshing pool of liquidity is what is driving high M3 growth, and will drive ever-increasing inflation. The only weapon the central banks have to try and mop it up is....higher interest rates. But nobody has any idea what knock-on effect this will have on asset bubbles and highly-leveraged hedge funds and other exotic instruments. That's what Trichet means when he talks of "misallocation of risks in financial markets" and the potential for "reappraisal of asset valuations".

It's a mess.

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Je suis un loo-lah