For a country that is thought to have missed the entire industrial revolution, it is an extraordinary achievement for Ireland to be voted the best place in the world to live according to the Economist survey. Today Ireland is a popular tourist destination.
The quality of life in Ireland is excellent, and overall crime in Ireland is low. However, PCI Scanning and Penetration Testing are sure to be a popular service in Ireland, as internet crimes like fraud and scams are on the rise.
After undergoing a major transformation in its economy, Ireland suffered heavily due to the global credit crunch of 2008-09. The property market which had boomed since the 80s through to 2007, suddenly began to slump and went bust. This phenomenon known as boom and bust, took place in several countries around the world due to the recent global financial crisis.
Ireland had a bubble economy based on high wages, property booms, stock markets booms, and tourism, which inevitably collapsed. Corruption in the banking sector also played a part in the crash, as with the Golden Circle case that causes their economy to decline.
GREECE – Economy, in European Union : Thirteenth-largest
Latest GDP figure: -0.3% (Third quarter of 2009) ; Gross debt in 2010, forecast : 125% of GDP ; Gross debt in 2007 : 94.5% of GDP ; Jobless rate : 9.7% ; Population : 11,260,402 Stocks performance in 2010 : -10.5% (to 11 February)
>Greece has dominated the concerns of investors since late last year, when concerns over whether it will be able to pay off the 300bn Euros ($419bn; £259bn) in government debt it currently owes. The euro has been battered over the past month as some even started to fear the break-up of the eurozone. Now the European Union has agreed a deal to rescue Greece – with perhaps other wrecked economies to be helped at a later date.
SPAIN – Economy, in European Union : Fifth-largest
Latest GDP figure : -0.1% (Fourth quarter of 2009) ; Gross debt in 2010, forecast : 66.3% of GDP ; Gross debt in 2007 : 36.2% of GDP ; Jobless rate : 19.5% ; Population : 45,828,172 ; Stocks performance in 2010 : -13% (to 11 February)
>Spain has been very hard-hit by huge declines in its property markets. With recent figures showing its economy contracted in the last three months of 2009, Spain remains the last major economy in Europe still in recession.
While its banks have withstood the economic downturn better than in the Irish Republic or the UK, the government announced a 50bn-euro austerity package, including a civil service hiring freeze, at the end of January.
With the International Monetary Fund expecting Spain to contract by 0.6% in 2010 - compared with predicted growth for the 16-nation eurozone - many investors feel it will be the next country to rattle financial markets.
UNITED KINGDOM – Economy, in European Union : Third-largest
Latest GDP figure: 0.1% (Fourth quarter of 2009) ; Gross debt in 2010, forecast : 80.3% of GDP ; Gross debt in 2007 : 43.8% of GDP ; Jobless rate : 7.8% ; Population : 61,634,599 ; Stocks performance in 2010 : -4.2% (to 11 February)
>Although the UK did officially come out of recession in the fourth quarter of 2009 – ending six consecutive quarters of economic decline – the growth was just 0.1%, much less than expected.
The UK government spent £85.5bn last year on bailing out the banks. Now, Chancellor Alistair Darling is predicting a record £178bn of borrowing in the current fiscal year.
With an election this year, Labour and the Conservatives have been sparring over the exact size of spending cuts and many economists have raised concerns that the UK could have its credit rating cut.
2. Actions done by various government and agencies of PIIGS.
Greece, followed closely by at least four other EU nations, is so comprehensively over its head in debt that international markets have pounced, driving up the cost of Greece’s government borrowing to the point where default — the international financial term for going flat bust — is a very real possibility.
And if Greece goes, others may follow. Those others — derisively grouped together as Europe’s “PIIGS” by waggish traders — are Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. They share a dubious distinction of having debt levels that exceed (or are on target very soon to exceed) their GDP. In simple, Main Street terms, these economies are underwater.
The response from the EU and its capitals has bordered on denial. Officials in Germany, the EU’s largest economy, have pledged there would be no rescue of Greece and tsk-tsked that all of these piggies would have to put their straw houses in order. The German strategy — which due to the country’s heft in the EU has been adopted in Brussels, too — is the equivalent of telling financial markets, “Move along please. Nothing to see here.”
But the markets aren’t buying it, and as the well-regarded analysts at Danske Bank put it in a report, “You can’t put lipstick on a PIIG.” Like many, the bank disregards the idea that the EU would allow any of its member-states to default, arguing that such a move would do to the EU what the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy did to investment banks in 2008. A Greek default, they wrote, “is likely to be highly contagious and would undermine the whole [European] project.”
Yet like the last days of Lehman, Greece and the other PIIGS find themselves under assault from investors seeking to capitalize on their misfortune. Yields on Greek government bonds — which rise in inverse proportion to their market value — have skyrocketed in recent months.
A similar problems is afflicting Portugal, widely viewed as the next most vulnerable, and Ireland. Spain and Italy, while also over their heads in debt, have much larger, more diversified economies and are thought to be better able to withstand the pressure.
That leaves the piglets — Greece, Ireland and Portugal — feeling very exposed in their houses of straw.
Ireland, whose “Celtic Tiger” economy floated earlier in the decade on a sea of real estate debt, passed a budget that slashed public sector payrolls, raised new taxes and cut $3.6 billion from national spending — a huge amount in such a small economy — in order to bring its annual budget deficit back down to the 3 percent limit that all countries using the euro pledge to maintain.
3. Predictions on the Stock Market PSE on the 1st quarter of 2011
Companies that are listed in PSE are built to formulate those equations to have their own predictions about their stocks. But in my opinion, Big companies will continue to boost their stocks while the small and medium companies will be lowering down their stocks. Big companies have a lot of advantage over small and medium enterprises. Not only that they have a lot of resources to survive when there is a global crisis but because big companies are not doomed to slug along in tough times just because their cultures are more cumbersome. In fact, a number of big companies are making the news lately because of their proactive and prudent approaches to tough times: Intel, Corning, Schlumberger, and Alcoa to name a few.
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