Property tax paying bondholders?

This was something that broke while I was on annual leave, it’s really infuriating to see that the property tax which was meant to be a fresh start for local authorities funding is (for 2013) not going to be given to them.

While a politician will always find a way to wiggle out of being called a liar, it’s pedantic to the extreme to think that the public would have realised that it was only going to local government from 2014 and not from the outset. If that was common knowledge it wouldn’t have made a headline so recently.

Given that this is bad outcome it does have to be balanced, and saying that the money is ‘going to bondholders’ is populist nonsense. If it is in the general expenditure coffer then it could go anywhere, you could equally spin the story that it’s going towards cancer wards in hospitals, that it is going towards supporting the homeless or anything else.

The tragedy here is that on the …

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Are 100% mortgages the problem? Is LTV a symptom or a cause?

An article in the Independent yesterday pointed toward 100% mortgages being a significant attributer to the bubble, I would wager it was a symptom rather than a cause, the IBA meanwhile has called for all mortgages to be made on a non-recourse basis.

The good thing is that people and organisations are trying to find a way to avoid a repeat of the property bubble, and they are not one off events as the UK can testify.  There are however, significant factors contributing to what happened.

1: lenders didn’t price risk, they didn’t even ‘price at all’: Banks have utterly failed to do the job they were designed to do, namely that of profitable intermediation, we had huge amounts of competition on lending, that drove down criteria requirements and also compressed margins, then along came trackers, these had low margin price promises – Bank of Scotland brought them into Ireland and have since left. I spoke with a Bank exec. yesterday and he …

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Vlog on the Irish Economy – Ronan Lyons & Karl Deeter

I met up with Ronan Lyons (economist with Daft.ie) to talk about the ideas of property tax in Ireland, how it might be a fairer way to tax people than stamp duty, or indeed the abscence of property tax [because it rewards/doesn’t tax holding certain assets]. The discussion spread to other ideas in taxation, and eventually we made some predictions (I can already say they are bound to be wrong!) and then we took to the streets and asked Joe Public about their thoughts on the economy and whether or not they had any hope for the future.

If you want to watch the full conversation you can check out the playlist on youtube.

Ronan writes a very interesting blog, you can check it out at http://www.ronanlyons.com what I personally like best about Ronan (other than his affable good nature) is the unique take he has on many topics on Irish Propert (a subject I am very fond of), by utilising the daft database he is …

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