Today’s post looks at the jostling for position currently taking place within Europe in anticipation of the U.K.’s and the E.U.’s negotiations over the U.K.’s secession deteriorating into what has been termed as a ‘hard-Brexit’ i.e. an almost total separation from the Union and the benefits that come with it. We have already discussed this jostling in Financial Regulation Matters through the lens of a battle between Paris and Frankfurt , but Dublin is emerging as a very credible alternative to those aspiring financial centres. However, there are consequences that come with being the host of such vast but socially-dangerous institutions, and Ireland’s recent history means that it is important to ask whether Ireland should be making itself as open as possible to these organisations. The debate about the jostling for position between Paris and Frankfurt is well covered in the financial press. Also, another issue that has been raised in the press is that the propagation of jobs fr...

Speaking yesterday after releasing a global-macro outlook for 2017-18 , the Vice President of the Credit Rating Agency Moody’s, Madhavi Bokil, announced that the Agency expects global activity to maintain its upward curve. However, there were a number of caveats that were attached to the announcement and one of them in particular will be the focus of this short post. Citing the shifts in economic policy emanating from the Trump administration in the U.S., which it suggests would affect the global economy via shifts in its views to trade and interest rates, and the risks associated with a deceleration in China’s economic expansion, Bokil is confident that ‘ destabilising economic and policy dislocations will be minimal ’ in the next few years. However, there is another caveat of Moody’s’ which is of interest when understood with a recent development within Europe. Bokil continued by discussing that the political and fragmentation risks in the E.U. and the European area also pose ...