Chips down for EU as Asia seizes microchip advantage — Part 1
Microchip manufacturing via Wall Street JournalMicrochips/ semiconductors are ubiquitous in the modern world and an electric car can have more than 3,000 of them. Thousands of people in Sweden have got...
View ArticleGlobal business R&D: US has 800 firms; EU27 400 and East Asia 1,000 — Part 2
The European Union lacks a powerful technology sector at a time when the United States and China are forging ahead in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and facial recognition. The...
View ArticleRobber Barons & Silicon Sultans: Rockefeller vs Bezos
John D Rockefeller (1839-1937) was America's first billionaire and there are about 2,350 dollar billionaires in the United States in early 2021 — Forbes Real-Time Billionaires— there are many more on...
View ArticleThe Big Lies of Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump
Painting depicting the signature of the armistice in the railway carriage in the Forest of Compiègne, Eastern France, November 8. 1918. Behind the table, from right to left, General Weygand, Marshal...
View ArticleKey Irish housing statistics 1971-2020
After the British Brexit vote in 2016 Irish government ministers, politicians, big professional firms (law and accountancy) and property journalists salivated on the opportunity of attracting thousands...
View ArticleHouse size of Ireland's urban-generated rural dwellers jumps 29%
In 2019 Ireland had one of the lowest urbanisation rates among the 36 mainly rich countries of the OECD think-tank for governments. The Irish rate was 63% of the population compared with the OECD rate...
View ArticleSocial protection + health spending in Europe and Asia
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, during the early years of the financial crisis in the last decade used to often say that Europe has 7% of the world’s population, 25% of its GDP and 50% of its...
View ArticleFT 1000: 3 Irish on 2021 list of Europe’s fastest-growing companies
The Financial Times has published the annual list of Europe’s fastest-growing independent companies and Ireland has improved compared with 2020 when it had no company on the list.However, the top Irish...
View ArticleEuropean Housing Crisis: Ireland is not alone - Part 1
Every day, about 250 football fields of land in Europe are converted to urban use according to the European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) which advises the European Commission and one of...
View ArticleIreland among 7 big tax havens as US seeks global minimum corporate tax of 21%
Share of US Multinational Corporation Income in Seven Big Havens, 2000-2019In a stunning challenge to Ireland's low corporate tax regime which began in 1956, President Joe Biden and the United States...
View ArticleIrish house size, climate change and living space per person - Part 2
John Hinde (1916-1997), an Englishman who developed a postcard business in Ireland from 1956, published the 1960s image of children collecting turf (peat) from a bog in Connemara, Co Galway. This image...
View ArticleIreland's FDI over-dependence and surging population
In the first two decades of the current century, the populations of the Netherlands and Denmark grew by 8 and 9% respectively; Sweden's population grew 14% and Switzerland's expanded 23%. The Irish...
View ArticleA dream of a United Ireland with a population of over 7m people
Ireland and UK from the International Space StationThe centenaries of the momentous political events that occurred in Ireland in the early years after the end of the First World war have raised the...
View ArticleVaccine heroes and Empress Catherine the Great of Russia
On desktops click to enlargeMargaret Heckler (née O'Shaughnessy was US Ambassador to Ireland 1986-1989; Heckler played a crucial role in obtaining a $120m grant for the International Fund for Ireland,...
View ArticleUseful idiots from Bernard Shaw to President Michael D Higgins
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright, at home on his deathbed. A picture of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is on the mantelpiece. Associated PressBelow, John McDonnell MP, then a senior...
View ArticleDeaths of 60 million people in Americas in 1500s and global climate change
Aztec emperor Moctezuma II on the balcony of his palace before his murder by Spanish captors in June 1520. Library of US CongressA Hendrick Avercamp's (1585–1634) painting of a Dutch waterway frozen in...
View ArticleCommunist Party of China @ 100 - High inequality and high poverty
China has moved from being a moderately unequal country in 1990 to being one of the most unequal countries according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). At the same time, while great strides have...
View ArticleIrish standard of living at 13th in EU27 and 19th among rich OECD countries
In 2020 Ireland's standard of living per capita was 13th in the EU27 ranking. Among the 31 advanced (defined by the International Monetary Fund: IMF1) / rich countries of the 38 member Organisation for...
View ArticleDanes' net financial wealth is highest in the EU but...
At the end of June 2021, Denmark's National Bank (central bank) reported that Danish households' net financial wealth was kr (krone) 6,453bn in December 2020. In the EU, the average Dane's financial...
View ArticleThe Irish as Young Europeans: "Hire them before they hire you"
IDA Ireland 1984: Engineering graduates of University College Dublin (UCD). "It's a fact that Ireland produces more computer science graduates per capita than the US; spends more (as a percentage of...
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