1 week Ago
IT’S HARD TO know what lessons we can learn from watching the global economy crash, rebound and then crash again at the whim of one man whose motivations appear to be entirely vindictive. Is it a good thing that our collective economic futures depend upon investors who clap like seals because a mad king decided to partially stay the apocalypse he’d been planning for us all? Who’s to say? Sure, it’s hard to imagine a stupider alternative than this, but maybe there is one. Of course, the price of Trump’s epic climbdown on tariffs is his claim that dozens of countries had called him up to kiss his ass and beg for an economic reprieve.
That’s Trump’s phrase by the way. During a dinner for Republicans on Tuesday, Trump said: “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are.
They are dying to make a deal.” Just in case you were wondering what tends to be going through his mind whenever we send a Taoiseach over there to hand him a bowl of shamrocks. And we are by no means out of the woods yet, economically speaking.
Certainly if we are to use the age-old tradition of assuming that is a harbinger of doom (the first few months of the Covid pandemic, every Leaving Cert ever, etc) then the unseasonal mini-heatwave we are currently enjoying could spell the end times. But on a purely political level, Trump has now proven to the rest of the world that there is no status quo for as long as he’s in the White House, and that trade norms which have stood for decades can no longer be relied upon. He is still firmly locked in a trade war with China, a state of affairs which will have major knock-on effects for the rest of us.
Lastly, he’s yet to truly crack his knuckles on pharmaceutical tariffs which, if implemented, would affect Ireland in an outsized way. So don’t worry, there’s still plenty of reason to fear for your lives and livelihoods. So was there anything going on this week that didn’t have Trump’s greasy handprints on it? Well, it was that planning permission had been granted to convert 15 Usher’s Island – famous as the setting for James Joyce’s celebrated short story The Dead – into six apartments.
For years now the future of the site has been in dispute, with many arguing that it should be preserved as a site of cultural significance. A petition signed by 1,675 people had called on Dublin City Council to refuse planning permission for the development, and An Taisce had argued that the building “is of too great a cultural heritage importance for conversion to multiple apartments”. Too bad.
A company owned by a former Monaghan GAA manager with the nickname Banty is ready to make some money off it..
