Ireland Back in a Recession Despite Austerity

Ireland is back in recession despite an austerity drive to cut its debts, official figures have confirmed.

Irish GDP shrank 0.6% in the first quarter of 2013, but the recession was confirmed when official data revised the economy’s performance in the final three months of 2012 to a decline of 0.2%. It means that Ireland has endured three successive quarters of contraction and is back in recession for the first time since 2009. GDP has declined despite the presence in Ireland of multinationals such as Apple, Google, IBM and several big pharmaceutical companies.

The output drop reflects an ongoing depression in consumer demand, amid unemployment of nearly 14%. Personal expenditure declined by 3% between the fourth quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2013. The decrease in demand reflects Irish consumers’ fears for their jobs and a reluctance to get into debt following the credit-fuelled spending boom of the Celtic Tiger years.

via The Guardian

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza