Spot Ireland at position number 7? That was then. The figures refer to 2009, which means that since then, pressures on Iceland, Hungary and Latvia have receded. In addition:- Our 2009 deficit has been revised to 14.3%
- Our CA deficit has worsened (as imports are falling at a lower rate and exports are now performing less robustly)
PS: If you want to see an example of absolutely and even alarmingly distorted logic - read this. One of the best examples of bizarre ramblings that pass for 'analysis' in Ireland. I mean what else can you call a note that:
- Admits that Ireland has record deficits of all EU countries;
- Admits that debt levels are very high;
- Admits that we are close to Greece;
- Admits that Greece is deep trouble, and then
- States that "The Greek recesion [sic] had been milder than the EU average, and recovering, before austerity measures were adopted" and thus
- Makes an implicit claim that the spectacular collapse of Greek economy witnessed by the entire world and threatening contagion to all of the EU has been caused by Greece not running enough deficits!
- And concludes that: "By contrast, other EU countries adopted fiscal stimulus measures [without identifying which states did so, what were the implications of these, etc]. Their debt has stabilised along with economic activity [a mad claim, given that stimulus measures were financed out of debt increases] and they have been rewarded with much lower bond yields than Ireland [absolute groundless claim, as none of the countries that adopted stimulus had the same fundamentals as Ireland going into the recession or during the recession and furthermore, none of the countries, other than PIIGS experienced similar bond yields dynamics to Ireland]"
