Paschal Donohoe's book reviews

He is a proper intellectual to be fair, very impressive, surely an FG leader in waiting?

no doubt an intelligent man, unfortunately his head is full of bullsh1t economic ideas, which have been well debunked at this stage

at least he was willing to challenge the consensus, of which many now have agreed with him, including many involved in troika 'discussions' with greece, including with Varoufakis, the consensus of which is currently radically failing across europe, including here in ireland, so, yea!

Does there have to be some..."motivation" other than he must like reading that sort of stuff in his spare time (I think from the odd one I have read in the past they are dry [to me anyway...] general economics/politics/history books) and writes reviews of them which IT is willing to publish!

I know he's a politician and now a minister and all that but this kind of corrosive cynicism is a bit depressing + get impression (maybe wrong) it is infecting politics more and more here as we ape the US/UK trends.

Entirely separate point, but it must grate on actual journalists that a guy on his salary is picking up an extra few quid for reviewing that could be supporting an impecunious hack. Same goes for other IT contributors like Diarmuid Feiretear, Michael McDowell etc. But I suppose these names might attract a few more clicks than A.N. Other journo...

He's just a tedious man. Thoroughly unlikeable.

Yeah you're right. In my opinion he's a thoroughly unlikeable man.

One man's "intellectual" is another's "pompous tw@". The man loves the sound of is own voice and talks down at everyone in his matter of fact tone. He has literally done nothing of note other than raise tax and implement other unpopular policies citing "the economic crash of 2008" or "climate change" or now covid as the cause.

What I find hilarious now is how much he has used the EU stick to whip us all with over the years and now that they want a universal corporate tax rate he's all up in arms, dragging his heals against the EU. He's a slime of little talent apart from fooling the gullible into thinking he knows what he's talking about.

Have you ever met him?

No, I think not.

He's also not good at hearing stuff he doesn't like. Acted like an old woman on a few occasions. https://extra.ie/2021/03/31/news/irish-news/paschal-donohoe-fine-gael-childrens-shoes

Erm, how is that acting like an old woman?? The radio presenter was being ridiculous, got told off by Pascal and apologised. One thing had nothing to do with the other, and the issue was one of many irritating issues that arose because of restrictions, as did many more serious issues.

once again, rising public debt is generally not too much of a problem, provided a country stays on top of repayments, globally, rising private debt has in fact caused far more serious and far more frequent

economic crashes, i.e. 08, which was primarily caused by so.....

no, of course not, but the facts are, private debt globally, has caused far more frequent, and far more serious crashes, public debt is backed by states, and states can roll over debts effectively indefinitely, this is not generally the case with private debt. our increasing public debts are nothing to be truly concerned about, provided we continue to service these debts, irelands history of doing so, is very good. maintaining this level of increasing public debt is now far safer than running an economy primarily on private debt, i.e. credit, as 08 once again showed us