Deflation, the low paid, and expansion of the tax base

Here are some statistics (taken from the SBP) showing that contrary to assertions that the ‘rich don’t pay enough tax’ that in fact they pay more than anybody else. Half of all tax income is paid by the top 6.5% of workers. So about 1/15th contribute 50%. One third of all tax collected comes from the top 2.5% of workers, thus 1/40th are paying 33%. It means that things such as the new 2% levy are merely punishing those who already contribute the most! I wrote about this before when talking about the Laffer Curve and how Ireland may be driving high earners out of its jurisdiction.

Sources have said that the Irish tax base is too dependent on a small number of people, so what would happen if we were to drive them out? The implications are severe.

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Irish Government bonds, what is happening?

Governments often have to raise money to achieve their objectives over the short and medium term, in Ireland we do this by raising bonds which is basically where a buyer (private or institutional) acts as the ‘bank’ for the state. The creditworthiness of our nation is currently the lowest in the Eurozone, below that of countries like Greece and Portugal. This means that we have to pay more interest to attract a buyer.

Today Moody’s (a rating agency) has put Ireland on watch for a debt rating downgrade (it means our debt will be considered less secure), and that means that we will have to pay even more in order to attract new investors for bonds. How this trickles down to the person on the street is simple, we’ll have to foot the bill eventually because the ultimate guarantor of state borrowing are the people in that country. The tools to achieve this with are higher taxes and less public spending, both equally unpopular.

For now we …

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Generic overview of the market 2009: by sector

I was asked by a colleague in the UK to provide an overview of the Irish mortgage market, he has often advised the Bank of England in the past on the UK buy to let market, however this time it is in relation to a talk he was due to give to an international financial services group on the Irish economy. Below are the contents of my correspondence which is a no holds barred view of the mortgage market in 2009.

Remortgage: This area is finally starting to see some life again, the rate drops are filtering through and many of the people on fixed rates taken out in 2005/2006/2007  are shopping around, as always new business attracts better rates than existing customers so there is once again an argument for switching.

However, the many people who took out trackers are basically out of the market in the long term as every single lender has removed tracker mortgages from the market, in fact, if you know of a lender willing …

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Bill Gross of Pimco talks about the deficit in the USA

Bill Gross, known as ‘Mr. Bond’ runs the largest bond fund in the world, in this video he talks about many of the issues facing the economy under the new Obama presidency. Bill Gross is a fascinating character who started his careers as a professional gambler I always enjoy listening to his views on the market which he does with an intersting mix of macro/micro/common sense views.

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Deflation or Inflation? What to expect in 2010

We have felt for quite some time that the risk of deflation will be met by monetary and fiscal stimulation to the point where it will give rise to several strong years of inflation. This extract is by James Grant of ‘Grants Interest Rate Observer‘. The question of ‘when’ the scales will tip in favour of inflation away from deflation is likely to be at some point in 2010.

This is why we are letting our clients know that we are watching the long term bond yields and when we see a divergence either in short to long or medium term to long we will be encouraging people to consider a longer term fixed rate. When the five year and one year cross that might be a good time, meanwhile, because more rate cuts are expected in 09′ it would not be the time yet for this kind of move.

We don’t have a crystal ball but we are keeping our eye on the bond market so that we can try to gauge …

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What are the best mortgage rates? Mortgage Interest Rates explained.

What are the best Irish mortgage rates? What are interest rates and where do they come from? These are all good questions and in today’s post I hope to answer some of them.

Often I find that people call me and ask ‘what’s the best rate’ and then there is silence on the other end of the phone as they await an answer. The truth is that at any given time there is a ‘best mortgage rate’ out there, but normally there are restrictions surrounding it which inhibit the ability for most borrowers to avail of them.

We have come out of eight rate hikes which began at the end of 2005, and in an upward rate market people often feel that their old loan has become expensive, in fact it’s not necessarily the case that the ‘old loan’ is exceptionally dear, its that the rate market has gone up and therefore the cost of all loans has gone up, when we talk about the greater ‘debt burden’ that’s what we are referring to, because car loans, higher purchase, leases, …

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Things can only get better

Don’t be too unhappy, because although January was the worst stock market since the January of 1990, the S&P was down by 6.1% and the MSCI world index said goodbye to 7.7% of its value, markets in India and China are down (at one stage India actually had to suspend trading on their market), despite all of these things the good news is that bad times don’t last forever.

Market commentators sometimes remind me of psycho ex-girlfriends who just can’t let go, (if you want to see one of the old Internet comic phenomenons type ‘psycho ex-girlfriend into your search engine) they are the type where by the time they realise whats happened its like the whole world is falling and its never going to get any better, they’ll NEVER love anybody again! Keep the faith.

Around the world the reaction was indeed just that, a reaction, it was reactive to results and not pro-active. The fed held an emergency meeting and slashed 75 basis points off rates and then at a regular meeting they cut another 50 basis points. …

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