International media coverage of Ireland turning positive?

Solair

I'm noticing quite a lot of positive coverage of Ireland in the international business media all of a sudden.

While I know we have some deep problems with the debt load which are unlikely to go away anytime soon, market perception of anything is 95% hype and hysteria and about 5% fact. This is how we got here in the first place

Recent Sky News coverage: http://news.sky.com/home/article/16081068

I'm just wondering have we reached the bottom of the depressing news cycle and perhaps things might now start to improve even if it's mostly from a public relations / international image perspective.

femur61

Read the comments. Not very favourable. Its very news station when the queen was here they kept showing the same picture with the caption "riots in Dublin over queen"

FreudianSlippers

femur61 wrote: »

Read the comments. Not very favourable. Its very news station when the queen was here they kept showing the same picture with the caption "riots in Dublin over queen"

The comments are rubbish. There is a big improvement in job creation at the moment and we are generally not considered part of the PIGS at the moment.

Solair

I would generally ignore the comments on the end of Sky News stories. They are pretty unrepresentative comments. You rarely see anything approaching informed debate after any story. They also seem to ignore the online comments on air.

It's like YouTube comments..!

ChRoMe

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

generally not considered part of the PIGS at the moment.

Thats certainly not the attitude outside of Ireland, from the UK at least.

FreudianSlippers

ChRoMe wrote: »

Thats certainly not the attitude outside of Ireland, from the UK at least.

I take it you missed the big liquidity conference a few weeks ago where, you know, the 5 biggest central banks met and discussed this...

Solair

There has been very positive coverage from Bloomberg and from a few of the major international financial publications too.

I think we're starting to see that the financial media is finally realising that the problem is primarily a banking/property bubble issue and not a deep structure problem.

The notion that you could just stick Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal into a single bag is quite frankly ridiculous. Their economies are not remotely comparable for a whole load of reasons. The only common denominator was that they all had crises triggered by the credit squeeze, other than that things are not really very similar at all.

Ireland's economy is structurally far closer to the UK and US than it is to anywhere else really.

I also think that Spain's more likely to resolve the situation than Greece and Italy will. The Spanish economy has a lot of fundamental strengths like flexibility and serious industrial base and a lot of high-tech innovation as well as having had a fairly sane national debt.

Italy has, for the last couple of decades, run up an astronomical national debt and has been very badly run. Spain has, on the other hand, lashed huge amounts into amazingly good infrastructure, education, R&D etc which will be far more likely to pay off and its national debt is nothing nearly as bad as Italy. It's more comparable to the UK tbh, just operating within the strictures of the Eurozone.

I don't know enough about Portugal to comment.

Yahew

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

The comments are rubbish. There is a big improvement in job creation at the moment and we are generally not considered part of the PIGS at the moment.

The comments are all Irish, as far as I can see.

Solair

Yahew wrote: »

The comments are all Irish, as far as I can see.

Ourselves and the Brits are great at wallowing in misery though. I think it's the grey weather.

A bit of positive news and you've a load of people immediately trying to pour cold water on it.

I'm not suggesting that we should do a Bertie style 'nobody talk down the economy' operation. But, where there is positive news, lets at least try and publicise it.

WalterMitty

The only two things that matter at end of day are our deficit and our unemployment rate. The deficit is around 15% as is unemployment. Untill both of these are well under 10% we will still be in big trouble. FG have come in and recruited some highly paid and highly regarded PR people hence all the latest spin about "green shoots of recovery" that we heard many times in past few years. there was me thinking that the global economy was in a very precarious place and global finacial systems in danger of seizing up and us being one of most globalised economies in the world were likely to suffer as much as anyone but i must be wrong and not watcging the positive international coverage.

Solair

The two things are linked though.
If there's a positive view of Ireland, things get easier on the markets and investment flows.
The markets are totally irrational most of the time. We have to use that irrationality to our benefit. So far, it's been working against us.

FreudianSlippers

Solair wrote: »

The two things are linked though.
If there's a positive view of Ireland, things get easier on the markets and investment flows.
The markets are totally irrational most of the time. We have to use that irrationality to our benefit. So far, it's been working against us.

That's exactly the point. Consumer confidence and availability of liquidity (or more importantly confidence in the availability of liquidity) are what matters here.

Unfortunately, Irish are so doom and gloom that it means this recession will drag out much longer here than the rest of the world.

Tora Bora

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

That's exactly the point. Consumer confidence and availability of liquidity (or more importantly confidence in the availability of liquidity) are what matters here.

Unfortunately, Irish are so doom and gloom that it means this recession will drag out much longer here than the rest of the world.

This discussion forum, is a magnet, for the most manic depressive, negative, down in the mouth, glass always empty, glass was always empty, glass will always be empty, people in the country.
It's completely wasteful of your energy trying to point out even one molecule of hope for the country. Such thoughts are incapable of penetrating, the thick skin of negativity on the skulls of the majority in the house.

PS. We came through eight hundred years of Brit rule, two famines, a mini ice age in the seventeen hundreds, two world wars, nuclear leakages at sellafield, the economic war, but we still survived. This bit of trouble we are having will pass

Have a nice evening.

SafeSurfer

Tora Bora wrote: »

This discussion forum, is a magnet, for the most manic depressive, negative, down in the mouth, glass always empty, glass was always empty, glass will always be empty, people in the country.
It's completely wasteful of your energy trying to point out even one molecule of hope for the country. Such thoughts are incapable of penetrating, the thick skin of negativity on the skulls of the majority in the house.

PS. We came through eight hundred years of Brit rule, two famines, a mini ice age in the seventeen hundreds, two world wars, nuclear leakages at sellafield, the economic war, but we still survived. This bit of trouble we are having will pass

Have a nice evening.

We came through them? Many didn't obviously!

thebman

Tora Bora wrote: »

This discussion forum, is a magnet, for the most manic depressive, negative, down in the mouth, glass always empty, glass was always empty, glass will always be empty, people in the country.
It's completely wasteful of your energy trying to point out even one molecule of hope for the country. Such thoughts are incapable of penetrating, the thick skin of negativity on the skulls of the majority in the house.

PS. We came through eight hundred years of Brit rule, two famines, a mini ice age in the seventeen hundreds, two world wars, nuclear leakages at sellafield, the economic war, but we still survived. This bit of trouble we are having will pass

Have a nice evening.

Isn't that all discussion forums though? If everyone posted agreeing with you, it wouldn't be much of a discussion.

May I suggest that most people that agree with you simply don't post and might just thank your post or even might not bother to do that.

May I suggest you are being too negative

In all honesty I have noticed a more positive trend in the forum since the International media gave us positive reports, bond rate went down and growth figures were released showing we actually grew despite the problems.

Most people will agree these things show a sign that things aren't as bad they were and that if an International double dip doesn't occur and other markets begin to recover that we should recover.

I do believe that focusing on the negative as you call can be a good thing. The problems offer opportunity to finding solutions, the things going well can be left alone for the time being (unless it is an unsustainable well like the boom :P).

greyed

There has definetely been a positive sentiment towards ireland in the media lately, Im a bit of a news junkie and so have noticed. The good news is this is based on very small, but none the less real economic improvement. We can see it reflected in the cost of Irish borrowing... it has declined massively of late, currently hovering a bit.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=GIGB10YR:IND

Of couse, our recovering will depend a lot on that of our trading partners.

WalterMitty

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/worry-over-jobs-as-business-activity-slumps-in-ireland-and-the-eurozone-2894669.html

Damn pesky facts keep getting in the way of the PR led cheeriness.

greyed

WalterMitty wrote: »

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/worry-over-jobs-as-business-activity-slumps-in-ireland-and-the-eurozone-2894669.html

Damn pesky facts keep getting in the way of the PR led cheeriness.

greyed wrote: »

Of couse, our recovering will depend a lot on that of our trading partners.

We have had structural improvement in the economy, which have yeilded some positive results, no one said we're saved so theres no need to get smart about it :rolleyes:

Einhard

WalterMitty wrote: »

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/worry-over-jobs-as-business-activity-slumps-in-ireland-and-the-eurozone-2894669.html

Damn pesky facts keep getting in the way of the PR led cheeriness.

That article relates to the first fall in exports in 11 months. In other words, exports have been growing month on month for 10 months. And yet you focus entirely on the one month when this doesn't happen. I think this is what's called accentuating the negative.

femur61

Tora Bora wrote: »

This discussion forum, is a magnet, for the most manic depressive, negative, down in the mouth, glass always empty, glass was always empty, glass will always be empty, people in the country.

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