Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Do as Ireland Does



Last night, the Travel Channel re-aired the No Reservations Ireland episode. Love that music!

Tony mentions that Ireland, "The Celtic Tiger," is enjoying an economic boom that "would have been unimaginable a generation ago." "Liberal" that he is, Tony doesn't say why that happened (that's okay Tony, I'm still a huge fan!) but you and I know what a good part of the reason is. In case you don't, here's a clue. Ireland is third on the Heritage Foundation's index of economic freedom. By their accounting, it has the freest of the 41 economies of Europe.

Go thou and do likewise!

2 comments:

Skip said...

It's not all roses there:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1858400,00.html

Lester Hunt said...

Very interesting! I was especially struck by the references to "cheap credit" and "some 40% of the country's housing was built in the last decade." Sounds like another classic example of a Austrian-style credit-driven boom, resulting in a bust when the credit bubble pops, as it inevitably must. If they pull out of it much faster than we do, it will be doubly obvious that they are doing something right.