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Is there a good website that gives exact numbers on the Irish Economy?

Justin1982

Just wondering if there is a good website that gives up to date numbers about the Irish economy?

As in it one that breaks down Irish expenditure (current and historical) into its different areas (military, health, education, local governance, science research, blah blah blah...) and breaks down tax take by source. It should also give details on the national debt and break that down as well and possibly give details on projected future debt, tax take and the plan of action to get this country out of the hole its in?

Kind of sick listening to one bunch of muppets claiming that Ireland is in a financially strong position (generally politicians) and then another bunch of muppets claiming that the country is heading for default (generally pessimistic celebrity economists).

I'd prefer if they all just shut the **** up and just produced a website that gave the public the exact numbers they base their wanker opinions on. A website thats initially just one page of info with links that allow one to dig down deeper into the different areas for more detailed analysis.

The department of finances website is fairly **** and its hard to see the wood from the trees on Dublinfinance.com

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CillianL

For public debt figures the IMF and CIA Factbook websites publish data sheets which are good. Love him or Loathe him Constantin Gurdgievs true economics blog is good, he posts regularly and makes former posts very accessible.

Look up Kyle Bass as well, he shorted the US Housing Market before it collapsed and made a fortune on it, he's a realist rather than a populist and backs up his statements with numbers rather than emotions like Fine Gael and Labour do

noodler

....

You mean like the CSO?

Or Department of Finance?

Justin1982

CSO looks promising but still hard to decipher wood from trees.

Department of Finance isnt particularly good.

I mean like if you wanted to explain the monetary figures involved in Irish economy to an economically uneducated person in an efficient manner where would one go to so they dont have to click on non specific links and sifting through information.
I'm talking something like a personal budget which has net income, expenditure, loans outstanding, assetts that one can sell, investments. I can design one for my personal use. Why cant someone in the public service produce something similar on an excel file that can be downloaded?

How can confidence in the economy be restored if the supposed information which shows its in good shape isnt easily available in one place?

noodler

Justin1982 wrote: »

CSO looks promising but still hard to decipher wood from trees.

Department of Finance isnt particularly good.

I mean like if you wanted to explain the monetary figures involved in Irish economy to an economically uneducated person in an efficient manner where would one go to so they dont have to click on non specific links and sifting through information.
I'm talking something like a personal budget which has net income, expenditure, loans outstanding, assetts that one can sell, investments. I can design one for my personal use. Why cant someone in the public service produce something similar on an excel file that can be downloaded?

How can confidence in the economy be restored if the supposed information which shows its in good shape isnt easily available in one place?

What on earth are you talking about?

The information on Public Expenditure and revenue is all on the department of Finance webpage.

Look for Budgetary and Economic Statistics for a start - large PDF that was only released a few weeks ago.

Don't blame the Public Service for your own inability to use the internet!

EDIT: Personal use?

Right I will play along here and do some of your work for you.
Tell me exactly what you are looking for, bullet point form and I will provide you with a precise link.

EDIT 2: This might be helpful http://www.ntma.ie/download/investor_presentation/InvestorPresentationJuly2012.pdf

Justin1982

Ok to a point you are right. The info is all on the web and one probably doesnt have to dig too far for any of the info.

I can go to the Department of Finance and I can download PDF's that have a large amount of budgetary info of various depts.

But there is not one coherent website that spoon feeds the info to any eegit on the street who wants to know how the country is looking economically.

As I said something as simple as National Debt, Tax Take, Expenditure are on one website, Department of Finance for example. But thats not a real picture of the economy.

You have to go to another Nama website to find information on Nama debt which is really national debt which they are trying to sweep under the carpet and pretend is not part of the national debt.

I probably have to sift through the CSO website for consumer debt (if its even publicly available)

I then want to know about things like assets that the state has up for sale like the ESB, Coillte. I want to know about assets such as the pension reserve fund and how they are locked in long term investments, short term investments.

There is a lot of things that need to be taken into account to give someone a real picture of how the economy really is doing.

And a bit of scenario analysis wouldnt be too much bother either to draw up in the same location. How the economy would perform if growth rate was 0% versus 5% over the next few years. All I ever see from the Department of Finance is "lets presume an average growth rate of 2.5% over ten years". Thats hore****. Thats like saying "lets presume everything is going to be hunky dorey"

A public information website like that could be easily drawn up on Google Docs, maintained accurately, improved upon and made accessible to the generaly public.......Irish Economics for Idiots if you like.

If the government believes that the economy is in a good shape they should be able to present a website like that for the public. If the figures stacked up then it would provide a real boost of confidence to anyone who wondering what the **** is really going on in the Irish economy.

Last time I bothered to read a full Department of Finance budgetary document, it looked like a pile of wishful thinking mingled with some fancy figures that were pure propaganda. I think it was the National Recovery Plan from about 2 years ago.

Justin1982

noodler wrote: »

EDIT 2: This might be helpful http://www.ntma.ie/download/investor_presentation/InvestorPresentationJuly2012.pdf

Hmmmm.....I'm of two minds about this document......Its a half decent attempt at giving an overall picture.

There was still a lot of stuff missing. There is way too much information for an idiot like me and the presentation is poor. Its the same format as the National Recovery Plan from a few years ago. Take a look at page 21, nice spin saying that the Irish are back living within their means (Comedians!). Take a look at page 67, forecast is only going one way and thats up. Thats just ridiculous propaganda with very little basis in reality. So you can understand my frustrations. Its like Father Teds patronizing presentation to the Chinese people in Craggy Island only the NTMA's final point is "The Irish! A great bunch of lads"

I can go to the blog by Constantin Gurdgiev and he'll probably have a presentation or bundle of isolated figures or a report which completely contradicts the NTMA's Investor Presentation and it will be as convincing.

Too much information, too much propaganda, too much facts and figures quoted in isolation

noodler

Jesus, you really seem to have made your mind up before you asked the question.

Here is a document the DoF put up in June.
http://www.finance.gov.ie/viewdoc.asp?DocID=7284&CatID=9&StartDate=1+January+2012

Here is the DoF's monthly economic report for October:
http://www.finance.gov.ie/viewdoc.asp?DocID=7398&CatID=2&StartDate=1+January+2012

Personally, I think you need to start reading a newspaper!

noodler

Btw, have you seen this OP?

http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2012/11/01/ireland-stat/

You're post just days before its launch is ultra-suspicious!

Justin1982

noodler wrote: »

Btw, have you seen this OP?

http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2012/11/01/ireland-stat/

You're post just days before its launch is ultra-suspicious!

Hmmmm.....Somewhat interesting. Will have to wait and see how it looks when finished.

I doubt that the creators of this new info website would have much to do with an ignoramous like me, much less use me to advertise their website

I still think that all the numbers relating to the Irish economy could be crammed into one Excel spreadsheet in a correlated way, given some sort of scenario analysis and posted on the web for the public to see.

Politicians and economists really talk some amount of **** and I sincerely doubt that too many of them really know all the numbers relating to the economy, how they are related and the resultant possible future outcomes for the Irish economy.

For example, we have Irish politicians saying that Ireland wont need a second bailout and then we have the German politicians last week announcing that Ireland would need another bailout.
What I want to see is the maths behind either sides argument because you cant argue with numbers.

I'm sure I could do the research, gather the data, create the excel sheet myself and post it on the web. Problem is I dont really have the interest right now to take on such a project. I am just surprised that it isnt out there already. Would be so much more useful than all these blogs that the celebrity economists have going.

noodler

Well, I would put less faith in some German TDs who know probably know feck all about the economy being quoted in the Irish Times. I am not even sure if those quotes were attributed to anyone in particular.

Whether or not we will need a new bailout is subjective. The current data on the Irish economy won't decide that - the yields on our bonds.

There is no need for any type of 'project' like the one who propose in my opinion.

You are just seem to be coming from a place of little or no knowledge and so are having trouble comprehending the fact there are different source for different statistics.

The CSO published there 2012 Ireland statistical yearbook last week by the way. I usually purchase a hard copy but it is available on the website.

Justin1982

noodler wrote: »

Well, I would put less faith in some German TDs who know probably know feck all about the economy being quoted in the Irish Times. I am not even sure if those quotes were attributed to anyone in particular.

Whether or not we will need a new bailout is subjective. The current data on the Irish economy won't decide that - the yields on our bonds.

There is no need for any type of 'project' like the one who propose in my opinion.

You are just seem to be coming from a place of little or no knowledge and so are having trouble comprehending the fact there are different source for different statistics.

The CSO published there 2012 Ireland statistical yearbook last week by the way. I usually purchase a hard copy but it is available on the website.

The more I go through the different websites and gather the numbers, the more I'm convinced thats its presented in a piss poor manner. Its completely uncorrelated and scattered and I really am starting to hate pdf documents.

I work in hedge funds, so I'm used to gathering and analyzing data, as well as reviewing the statements issued by the accountantcy teams which indicate how the different funds are doing. Their data can be complicated enough but I generally find it easy to read through the Excel spreadsheets in which they are issued as data is related by formulas. I'd regard a Hedge fund as similar to an economy like Irelands and to my mind it would be a lot easier to present the data on Excel spreadsheets with all the data linked by formulas.

I mean like if the accountancy teams I work with presented their data in a format similar to the format that the Irish economy is presented to the public across a number of websites then I think the Hedge fund managers would tell the accountants to **** off and cop on. Its just not an efficient way to publish data. And I find it hard to believe that noone has attempted to tie all the data together using excel and post it somewhere on the web.

Thats just my opinion.

noodler

Well, like I said, I have listed you three documents which compile data from different sources on the economy:

The DoF's monthly bulletin (and annual B&E Statistics)

The CSO's Annual yearbook.

The NTMA's investor presentation.

I find the data in those documents quite convenient - I don't understand what exactly you want. If you listed the data you felt was missing then I could apprach this from a different angle.

Justin1982

Well thanks for your patience.

I'm going to make an attempt to tie some of the figures relating to the economy together into the format I want it on Excel. I should be able to get them all correlated using formulas. The formulas are hidden generally of course but the thing is that if you click on a cell containing a certain number, total tax revenues for example, and then hit F2, it basically shows you the underlying formula (SUM[] for example) and highlights the Cells that make up the Total Tax Revenue.

It just means that you can give general data which is easy to view. But you can drill down easily into any number to see what it depends on.

Might take me some time to generate even a simplistic spreadsheet. Sorry I got a lot going on. But I'll post it here when I get something drawn up for an example.

Might root through some of the celebrity economist university websites maybe. Surely someone has something like what I described.

By the way I'm slagging the DOF, CSO,.... off a bit too much. I understand they are just there to provide the data and Joe Soap does what he wants with it after that.
I'm more criticizing the fact that the government have not developed the data into a format that irrefutably shows that the economy is in a good condition as they claim it is.
You can easily pick holes in any of the single reports printed on DOF website. There isnt one report that ties absolutely everything together perfectly.

noodler

Alright so.

If you need something specific let me know and I might be able to get it for you quicker than if you went looking.

Don't forget that the revenue from the monthly exchequer figures doesn't take into account other streams of Government revenue (PRSI, motor tax and the like).