Results 1,881-1,900 of 7,975 for speaker:Joe Higgins

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed): Programme for Government Implementation (3 Mar 2015)

Joe Higgins: You did not.

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed): Programme for Government Implementation (3 Mar 2015)

Joe Higgins: They are not fooled.

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed): Programme for Government Implementation (3 Mar 2015)

Joe Higgins: 3. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet sub-committee on economic infrastructure and climate change last met. [3368/15]

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (26 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: On 10 June 2001, Mr. McWilliams wrote on his website: A property boom transfers huge wealth from wage earners to landowners with the banks sitting in the middle facilitating the trade. Wage earners become relatively poor ... Periods of speculative excess also lead, in every country, to extraordinary disparities of wealth. The “new rich” typically have their counterpart in a...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (26 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: In an article dated 11 February 2001, Mr. McWilliams summarised how cheap credit flowing into a country can destroy it with illusions of wealth. He colourfully referred to the Spanish conquest of Latin America and the ransom which the Incas paid for their unfortunate emperor. In one week, he wrote, "the Spaniards plundered more gold [from there] than the entire continent of Europe produced...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (26 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: That is the question.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (26 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: Why would the financial markets plough money into land and speculation rather than, in Mr. McWilliams’s words, into science, technology and innovation, especially when the European Union had between 20 million to 25 million unemployed?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (26 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: I had better fast forward.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (26 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: In his written statement, Mr. McWilliams stated when one speaks against mainstream views, there are three phases, first, the open ridicule phase, second, the violent opposition phase and, third, everyone pretends they were on your side all the time phase. It reminds one that, apparently, 15 years after the Easter Rising, it would have taken Croke Park to accommodate everyone who claimed they...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (26 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: In his written statement Mr. McWilliams stated, "Had the warnings been listened to and acted on, rather than dismissed and ridiculed, it would have been possible to avoid a banking crisis". Mr. McWilliams was a media commentator and had a media platform. What role does he believe sections of the mainstream media played in the generation of the property bubble? Was the media an impartial...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (26 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: What about the media in general?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (26 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: Professor McDonough relates the origins of the property bubble and the crash to the four institutions that he outlined - globalisation; neoliberalism; repression of labour, which he explains is a reduction in the bargaining power of workers; and financialisation. He gives his definitions of those. He also refers to falling profitability from the 1960s onwards as a feature of international...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (26 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: Professor McDonough provided figures which show that the percentage of GDP that was going to workers fell substantially; is this related?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (26 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: Professor McDonough cited the American economist, Gerald Epstein, who has examined the increasing importance of financial markets, financial motives, financial institutions and financial elites in the operation of the economy and its governing institutions at national and international levels. Why were there such significant levels of financialisation and such massive funds sloshing around...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (26 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: The financial markets as Professor McDonough describes them involve international financial institutions, huge banks and hedge funds. Do financial markets operate as a socially progressive factor, a factor that enhances democracy, a kind of economic dictatorship or one, more or none of the above? He described market fundamentalism as a belief that important social decisions about production...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (25 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: In the written statement submitted by Professor Connor prior to this meeting, he said there was an excessive inflow of debt capital into Irish banks during 2003-07 and that the business, regulatory and policy failure to control this flow was the most fundamental cause of the Irish economic crisis of 2008-12. Why was there so much global liquidity at the time?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (25 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: Was it not from Europe that much of the capital came into the Irish system?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (25 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: Why did investors specifically come to Ireland at that time when, for example, there was a major unemployment crisis in Europe? Why did they not invest in infrastructure or the creation of jobs elsewhere instead of piling into the Irish property market?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (25 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: Did they know that the funding was going into property, largely?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Context Phase (25 Feb 2015)

Joe Higgins: Why did they feel it was safe? Was it because their money would be guaranteed?