Does Malcolm Gladwell Still Think The Irish Boom Was Due To Demographics?
We checked in on Irish 10-year yields earlier, but just since then they’ve blown out some more. This mega-tome in the Irish Times from economist Morgan Kelly may be the cause. He predicts the country will run out of cash by early next year and will have to tap the Euro bailout fund. We wonder, though… back in 2006, Malcolm Gladwell declared that the Irish boom was all courtesy of demographics (dependency ratios, specifically). Because the country’s working-age population didn’t have many kids or retirees to support, things were booming. Now we know the country was riding a banking bubble. We’d love him to revisit that thesis.
