A sadly typical headline flashed up on the newswires recently - 'In Ivory Coast, Two Presidents Claim Office'. This is a disastrous outcome for the recent elections in the country, but not completely unexpected, considering the political situation in the West African country.
Incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo was never going to simply give up power over his hot and steamy dominion. For years an activist and opposition politician, he took his position in 2000 through a coup, claiming that he had in fact beaten the president, Robert Guei, in an election. Guei himself had taken power through a coup in 1999, in the years of upheaval after the death of long-term leader Houphouët-Boigny. That 'Father of the Nation' ruled with an iron grip, maintaining calm over three decades in a country where religious, tribal and ethnic rivalries can quickly become enflamed.
Many of Ireland's leading lights fancy themselves as classical market liberals in the tradition of Adam Smith, David Hume, and David Ricardo. These would be liberals feel the 'dead hand' of the State should be removed whenever possible-that fundamentally, for countries to prosper, they must practice openness and competition to foster economic growth. Economic growth will then increase the wealth and living standards of the citizens of the nation. By Stephen Kinsella
The term financial exclusion was first coined in 1993 by geographers who were studying the impact bank closures had on those left unable to access basic banking services. During the 1990s there was a significant increase in research focusing on people experiencing difficulties accessing modern financial services. By the turn of the millennium financial exclusion began to be applied in a broader sense to denote people whose access to mainstream financial services was restricted.
Fintan O'Toole is an intelligent and thought provoking commentator. His new book Enough Is Enough offers 50 proposals for political and social reform. Many offer sensible and credible solutions to the failures of our current system and are remarkably similar to Sinn Fein's current policy agenda. Others, while not to the tastes of this writer, are none the less valuable contributions to the ongoing debate about how to build a better Ireland.
Attending a packed pop-economics lecture in Ennis, questions from the crowd threw up an interesting point. What will happen the cash in your pocket if Ireland leaves the euro? Will the people who have been quietly withdrawing their savings end up with a pile of worthless notes under the bed?