A couple of weeks ago, this column considered the frailty of China’s property market, and whether a crash in China could undermine Ireland’s dysfunctional property market. Many argue that Irish property will not wobble due to the fundamentals, characterised by demand,...
My earliest memory of the 1970s was the Rumble in The Jungle, just before Halloween in 1974. Ali against Foreman in a country then called Zaire. My Dad rented a colour TV from Eddie Totterdell’s in Dún Laoghaire in order to watch the fight. He gave it back the next...
The dog days of late summer sometimes disguise nasty surprises in financial markets that dominate economic news for subsequent months or even years. In August 2007, Bear Sterns, then a huge Wall Street bank, announced it was having some difficulties in an obscure fund...
It’s difficult to convey the energy and excitement that pulsated through Prague in the blisteringly hot final days of August 1989. The city had become a magnet for East Germans transiting in their Trabants through the then Czechoslovakia heading for the where the...
The dog days of late summer sometimes disguise nasty surprises in financial markets that dominate economic news for subsequent months or even years. In August 2007, Bear Sterns, then a huge Wall Street bank, announced it was having some difficulties in an obscure fund...
A statue of a reclining James Joyce faces the triumphal arch at Pula in Croatia, known as the Arch of Sergii. A 23-year-old Joyce spent his first six months in exile here. When a teaching job at the Berlitz in Trieste failed to materialise, he headed south to Pula...
