The National Platform EU Research & Information Centre ☚

Audio file: Eamon Dunphy (”The Eamon Dunphy Show”: NewsTalk106fm) has Anthony Coughlan on with his panel of guests, to discuss the Irish and European economies, and the trials and tribulations of the Euro☚ (time -19:20; format - M4a/Quicktime/iTunes; date - May 16, 2010);
To access via iTunes, either:
☞ In your browser, click/enter - http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/the-national-platform-eu-research/id372343305 ☜ and [...]

economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/irish-miracle-or-mirage/
Irish Miracle - Or mirage?
Peter Boone and Simon Johnson
Economix
New York Times
Friday 21 May 2010
(Peter Boone is chairman of the charity Effective Intervention and a research associate at the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. He is also a principal in Salute Capital Management Ltd. Simon Johnson, the former chief [...]

www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,695245,00.html
05/18/2010 03:54 PM
Former Central Bank Head Karl Otto Pöhl
Bailout Plan Is All About ‘Rescuing Banks and Rich Greeks’
The 750 billion euro package the European Union passed last week to prop up the common currency has been heavily criticized in Germany. Former Bundesbank head Karl Otto Pöhl told SPIEGEL that Greece may ultimately have to opt [...]

Wolfgang Münchau
Financial Times
www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7e114d26-6115-11df-9bf0-00144feab49a.html
Monday 16 May 2010
The eurozone was never under speculative attack at any time. What happened was that investors, European pension funds among them, lost confidence in the system. And while fiscal profligacy was the root cause of the problems in Greece, it is not the root cause of the problems in Portugal and [...]

From www.german-foreign-policy.com Newsletter, 12 May 2010 .

BERLIN: Following the passage of the 750 billion Euro bailout package, the debate on Germany’s leaving the EU monetary union has become more intense. Business representatives confirm that German industry, which exports heavily to other countries within the Euro zone, has up to now greatly benefited [...]

The financier and businessman Emmett O’Connell, formerly of Aminex and Eglinton Oil and still successfully engaged in the international mining business, has long held the view that abolishing the Irish pound and joining the eurozone was the biggest policy error ever made by the Irish State. The Greek crisis and its drastic implications for the [...]

On Monday May 3rd, the Irish Times carried an article by Nobel Economics Prizewinner Paul Krugman on “The Euro Trap”. Its main contention was that the euro-realists and euro-sceptics who had warned against the dangers of abolishing national currencies to form an EU currency union were being proved right by current events.
The austerity [...]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/7591027/Greek-aid-in-doubt-as-German-professors-prepare-court-challenge.html
Greek aid in doubt as German professors prepare court challenge
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Daily Telegraph
15 Apr 2010
A quartet of German professors is to preparing to challenge the EU-IMF rescue for Greece at Germany’s constitutional court as soon as the mechanism is activated, claiming that it violates the ‘no-bail-out’ clause of the EU Treaties.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/461663a0-5613-11df-b835-00144feab49a.html
Europe’s choice is to integrate [...]

The article below from the Financial Times points to the lack of public debate across the EU on the real implications of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty’s proposal to abolish national currencies and replace them with the euro.
In Ireland’s 1992 referendum on the Maastricht Treaty the main thrust of public debate was [...]

This is going to be the most important week in the 11-year history of the euro-currency, according to Financial Times associate editor Wolfgang Munchau in the article below.
A Greek default on its debts now looks virtually inevitable, the only question being when.
The Irish Government has agreed to contribute €480 million to the joint [...]

Ghosts of debt and jobs will haunt economy
The Irish Times - Tuesday, December 29, 2009
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1229/1224261354227.html
Morgan Kelly
OPINION : By 2015, Iceland will almost certainly be a lot better off than Ireland because it dealt decisively with its banks.
For grand corruption, though, we will have to look to Nama. By allowing the banks to dictate the terms [...]