DAN O’BRIEN: “CUT MINIMUM WAGE, FUCK YEAH!”
May 19th, 2009 by Conor McCabe
the global gloom is overdone. Investor sentiment internationally has over-reacted to America’s woes. Moreover, the US policy response to the slowdown has been unprecedented, both in its speed and its magnitude. Outside the US, the rest of the global economy is enjoying one of its strongest periods of economic expansion ever. As most of this is driven by strong fundamentals, we at the Economist Intelligence Unit are forecasting only a modest slowdown globally in 2008 and continued strong expansion over the medium term.” (Dan O’Brien, Quarterly Daft Report, 12 February 2008)
Laughed my ass off at Dan O’Brien’s latest spuriousity - that cutting the minimum wage in a low-wage economy is the way forward for Ireland.
Oh baby. When it comes to spouting complete and utter bullshit, Dan O’Brien takes some beating.
I mean, it’s not just his prediction for a property website in 2008 that the “global gloom” is overdone, and that we’re looking at strong expansion over the medium term.
And it’s not just this below from 2005 where he calls for Bertie Ahern to be made secretary-general of the UN (Bertie’s good at crisis management, so he’d be good as the head of the UN).
It’s not even this one here, where Dan O’Brien completely misses the glaring problems with McCreevey’s legacy - namely a twin explosion in housing speculation and financial service “exports” as a substitute for actual production - and instead declares with complete certainty that fucking decentralization was McCreevey’s biggest fuckup?
Or this one from 2003, where O’Brien tells us that financial services are the future.
Of course there’s this one from 2006 where O’Brien tells us that:
Naah, I reckon I’d have to go with this little gem from October 2006, where, in an article entitled “NEXT TEN YEARS AUGERS WELL FOR CELTIC TIGER”, O’Brien not only completely and utterly missed the structural problems within the Irish economy, but also the structural problems within the international economy as well.
Now remember, this guy is making dead-cert predictions as to what Ireland has to do to get through this recession - basically, there’s less money flowing in the economy, so we need to take even more money out of circulation in order to, ahem, get more money flowing in the econo…… oh dear… - but if anything all O’Brien has is a dead-cert record at getting things dead-cert wrong.
Dan O’Brien works for the Economist Intelligence Unit. I shit you not. That’s their fucking name.
When I heard of Dan O’Brien’s latest “solution” to Ireland’s economic difficulties, I immediately thought of this clip from the SouthPark boys.
Yep. Right-wing economists and self-penned intelligence units.
Enjoy.
Dan looks the type to have been right at home in the Freedom Institute, back in the day. I’m guessing from how old he looks that he just missed out on joining that august body (i.e. by graduating from college too early!). Still, good to know that Dan McLaughlin has up-and-coming successors, cut from the same cloth.
Didn’t Gurdgiev used to compile those Daft reports? Must check.
In one sense, Conor, we can all just sit back and have a good laugh - Dan the Man going after the low-paid and social welfare recipients; great long-distance sport. However, Dan the Man is about more than just beating up the homeless. One thing I didn’t get to but something you might want to consider in further posts is his outrageous assertion that there is a 15% chance that Ireland might default on its debt. Never mind that he ignores (a) no Eurozone country will (or be allowed) to default, and (b) the NTMA continues to sell bonds into a saturated market with such success that it’s latest issue was oversubscribed by nearly 5 to 1. For a country with a one-in-six chance of going belly up, investors are queing up to buy our debt. Maybe he ignores the NTMA success because they are a public sector agency, proving that Irish public servants can punch well above their weight in the international financial markets.
Whatever, let’s focus on something else. That Dan the Man is giving succour to parasitical speculators in financial markets to the detriment of the Irish economy. Michael Somers has stated (on Bloomberg and other outlets) that Ireland suffered from speculation on these markets, driving down Ireland’s credit rating. That this has ceased, according to Somers, is that the speculators milked the situation for as much as they could, so that now our bond rates are starting to converge with German levels. The speculators have gone on to other small economies to work them over. This speculative activity fed off assertions that Ireland was in danger of defaulting. Now, there might be something to the accusation that elements in the British financial press - who wanted to have a go at the Euro - found Ireland an easy target. But we have our own home-grown collaborators who continue to feed this dangerous nonsense. The result is that the Irish economy has to pay a higher price for its debt.
15%? It would help if Dan the Man could produce his equation or Excel spreadsheet to show he arrived at 15% (why not 17.4%? or 13.3%). If he wants to have a go at invalids, pensioners, lone parents, sales assistants at Spar, or the disabled – that’s all fine. Because as he has proven beyond doubt – they are the primary cause behind our economic decline (I look forward to his analysis of the over-generous orphan’s allowance and its detrimental impact on the structural deficit). However, when he bad-mouths our debt, I have to pay higher tax! Dan the Man is getting too personal.
No problem michael. I promise to be much more serious from now on.
A postscript on this, from exactly a year on. O’Brien’s now on RTÉ’s “Aftershock” telling us (again) to cut social welfare, and that our problem is that we’re too democratic in our political system(!). This, interspersed with cuts to interviews with Tom Garvin and Des O’Malley and set to the soundtrack of Batman Returns… could you make it up?
When the NTMA issues bonds, who is buying them?
Best person for that Gavin is Michael Taft. He’s done a lot of work on who’s buying Irish/NTMA bonds and how much etc.
From what I understand it had been Irish and European banks. But now its going to be the ECB directly to avoid a contagion effect.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0510/breaking8.html
He comes across as so thoroughly humourless that I can’t imagine him not being a misanthrope. It seems strange that someone who seems (to me anyway) to probably hate most of us, is given so much time by the press to tell us what’s in our best interests
Devote your time, energy and/or creativity to somebody’s else’s lifestyle, but skip any requirement for compensation, even at the level of a basic livelihood?
Hell, even nineteenth century slaves were fed and watered….
He has become a trustworthy public figure in the sad soap of Irish public life. Solid rational objective. The irish media bow before his competence and hang on his every word. He appears to have come to us from some higher plane of reason to provide clarity in a time of gross confusion. If this is Irish stew the politicians and the media figures are the mate and spuds, we’re soup, the pot’s bubbling away in the kitchen of real world global finance and Dan is definitely not on the menu.
Thank You,
I am delighted some people have noted just what a complete
fool this man is.
This fool was with the “economist” when it was recommended to
buy bank of ireland shares at 9euros 60 cents.
This fool is also a parasite sucking public money into his wallet.
He is as he appears,
Derek Justin.
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