Global Financial Crisis

Kudos to Luiz Awazu Pereira da Silva and Előd Takáts at the Bank for International Settlements for breaking ranks with the eternal purveyors of optimism and fake good news that are the normal personalities at Central Banks. For two years before the financial crisis went global, central bankers and treasury department ministers and officials pumped out a steady stream of misleading information and soon after it reached its nadir, they have gone back to using selective data to try to convince us all that it's all OK, really and that the deep seated economic woes faced by much of the developed world are really only isolated, sporadic, minor after shocks. Da Silva and Takáts don't agree and actually use the words "complacency" and "self-delusion." Better still, the recognise the genius of the "unknown unknown" speech of Donald Rumsfeld. Where has the international finance community been hiding these two? Kudos.

Economists are lining up to say that the Republic of Ireland's astonishing 26% growth in GDP has no meaning, in the great scheme of things. They are wrong and this is why: Ireland attracts high-value added businesses because of its commitment to low income and corporate taxes that most of the EU, the USA and Australia want it to change.

What US Treasury Secretary Paulson did not mean when he spoke of "an orderly bankruptcy" for the US auto industry was closing it down. He means a variety of insolvency procedures designed to keep the businesses going.