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Brendan Keenan Opinion The biggest budget in the history of the State? That's understating matters

If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. But note that "probably". Just sometimes it isn't. Budget 2021 is one of those times.

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Brendan Keenan Opinion Belfast has always been different - but now it must embrace its unique situation post-Brexit

I won a prize in primary school for an essay called My Home Town. The teacher was most impressed by the opening line: "From the beginning, Belfast is different. The boat goes in backwards."

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Brendan Keenan Opinion Emergency economic measures could become mainstream

Not the least of our current difficulties is that, just when we desperately need answers, no accurate answers are available.

Brendan Keenan: 'Past failures a guide to meet challenge of the new decade'

SOMETIME around 2000 I wrote that, 150 years after the Great Famine, Ireland was going to become a normal economy. There followed what may have been the most economically turbulent decade since the Famine itself.

Brendan Keenan: 'EU budget rules not much help in keeping public finances safe'

BREXIT aside, the most important economic question is whether the public finances are in danger. It may be even more important than the B-word because, if we are not in safe territory, a disorderly UK departure would create an even bigger mess for the Irish economy than current forecasts suggest.

Brendan Keenan: 'Times are good for jobs and wages, but caution is needed'

IT was the best of times. The famous words from Charles Dickens's 'A Tale of Two Cities' are part of a fetching Christmas ad on British television, but they come to mind with this month's data on the Irish economy.

Brendan Keenan: Everything has a price - so we must put a cost on carbon cut

Who now remembers the Stern Review? Hardly anyone it seems, which is surprising given that climate change is out front and centre stage.

Brendan Keenan: 'Are German attitudes softening towards a stronger eurozone monetary union?'

Here's a key line, if ever I saw one: "Now that the UK, home to London's capital markets, is on the verge of withdrawing from the EU, we must make real progress." Not so much what was said, but who said it.

Brendan Keenan: 'Europe's slump looks steeper and faster than the raw numbers suggest'

A picture is worth a thousand words, it's said (and at the risk of offending the photographers, I'd rather take a picture than do this), but a chart can tell a lot too.

Brendan Keenan: 'A long Brexit transition may be the best result we can hope for'

That's the easy bit out of the way - probably. If you thought the three years to agree a withdrawal deal for the UK's departure from the EU were awful, just wait to see what's coming next. That's making the more than heroic assumption that, whether before or after an election, the current deal will go through Westminster sufficiently unchanged not to need another EU summit. I make the assumption partly on the grounds of saving my sanity, but also because it is now the probable outcome.

Brendan Keenan: 'There is no science to forecasting recessions - or how bad they will be'

The semi official international forecasters, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the OECD, received a deal of flack for not spotting the great recession coming in 2008. Even Britain's queen Elizabeth said as much to one of their representatives at a formal event. The lesson to draw is not to ignore their prognostications, but to read them carefully. Apart from the fact that they are creations of government, there is no science for forecasting when recessions will arrive - even though they appear to be an inevitable part of economic life.

Brendan Keenan: 'Deal or no deal, Budget is likely to prove much too cautious on Brexit'

Courtesy of the folk at the Newstalk radio station, I recently had the pleasure of reprising the 1982 Budget. Well, one of the 1982 Budgets. There were three that year. Something of the kind may need to happen again, but for quite different reasons from 37 years ago. Back then, the economy was much more like that of 2009, rather than 2019. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, neither of whom could get a majority despite three elections, were locked in a bitter struggle where no quarter was asked or given.

Brendan Keenan: 'Carbon tax too small to help climate but too large for voters'

Another grand gesture on, if you'll pardon the expression, the hottest of hot topics - climate change. One has to hand it to the Taoiseach, at a UN conference where all eyes were on a 16-year-old Swedish phenomenon, for at least making waves with the announcement that Ireland would ban future oil exploration.

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Brendan Keenan: 'Beef industry needs urgent and radical change for it to be more viable in the future'

The latest hominid to be declared extinct, you may have heard, is homo economicus, that ultra-rational creature that always acted in its own self-interest. Perhaps it existed in great-grandfather's buttoned-up day, but not now.

Brendan Keenan: 'Beef industry needs urgent and radical change for it to be more viable in the future'

The latest hominid to be declared extinct, you may have heard, is homo economicus, that ultra-rational creature that always acted in its own self-interest. Perhaps it existed in great-grandfather's buttoned-up day, but not now.

Brendan Keenan: 'Nerves jangle as statecraft fails in bewildering Brexit maze of smoke and mirrors'

The word in the West on my recent travels was, thank goodness, for the strong dollar. It has been a good year for tourism, despite the fact that the traditional business from Britain and Northern Ireland all but disappeared.

Brendan Keenan: 'FDI employers are evolving and our system has got to adapt'

HERE is an obscure but instructive factoid. In the 1950s, when the great maritime powers were building new transatlantic liners for the post-war era, the Dutch launched the 'Rotterdam', a ship which could double as either passenger vessel or cruise ship.

Brendan Keenan: 'Better laws and foreign money needed to overcome worrying homes shortage'

There is a district in Belfast known as the Holy Land. Not because of its religiosity, but because the streets - Jerusalem Street, Damascus Street and so on - are called after places in that region. Once, there were others; Little Crimea, India, and so on. Seemingly, houses were built so quickly for the city's huge expansion in the 19th century that it was too much trouble to think up original names. They eventually gave up altogether, so far as names were concerned. The Shankill area got First Street, Second Street etc, all the way up to Tenth.

Brendan Keenan: 'Central banks' support of record expansions a break with the past'

Once upturns come, can recession be far behind? Once upon a time, a poet might have said something like that, but not anymore, it seems. Currently, the US is celebrating the longest continuous upswing on record. If celebrating is the right word. The trend in growth has been unmistakeably upwards, but there is always a nagging worry when no one seems to know exactly why what is happening is happening.

Brendan Keenan: 'Debt burden a danger if Brexit losses hit Exchequer hard'

The puzzle of the Government's apparent intractability on the Brexit question deepened, if anything, with the publication last week of the Summer Economic Statement - where the differences between an orderly and disorderly UK departure were laid starkly bare.

Brendan Keenan: 'Leaving Brexit to Boris will be a big mistake as we seek to avoid disorderly departure'

A favourite cartoon, from a long time ago, showed the archetypal newspaper seller standing beside a billboard which read: 'Archduke Ferdinand Found Alive: First World War a Mistake'.

Brendan Keenan: 'Foreign money more at risk from any new Irish bubble'

A number of commentators, this one included, have begun to fret about the apparent repetition of the behaviour which led to the Great Recession; in particular the cycle of public spending, but also the rapid rise in property prices.

Brendan Keenan: 'Less beef and more cycling will not be enough to fight global warming'

Remember 'zero tolerance'? More to the point, do you understand what it meant? For the then Justice Minister John O'Donoghue, it meant zero tolerance of crime. He was having none of it.

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Brendan Keenan: 'Public pay demands could destroy volatile economy'

It was said of the last Bourbon kings of France that they learnt nothing and forgot nothing. But at least they might make a few minor changes after an especially nasty rebellion or national bankruptcy. Not so the Irish public sector.

Brendan Keenan: 'Breaking up big tech may be a good idea but it will be hard to do'

If you want to understand the Information Revolution - a revolution which may turn out as profound as the industrial one - best to start with something simple. Something like Airbnb.

Brendan Keenan: 'Broadband expense means it must be part of a wider plan'

It would be hard to find a more succinct definition of politics than that supplied by an anonymous government source on the great broadband conundrum. "It doesn't matter what it costs - the children need to do their homework."

Brendan Keenan: 'Problem with our banking system goes deeper than trying to change its culture'

Barely a trace of the Great Recession of 2008-11 can be found in last week's 'Stability Programme Update' (SPU) from the Government. Looking for one feels like some archaeologist hunting in a lush tropical forest for signs of ancient ruins.

Brendan Keenan: 'Ultra-low interest rates are changing the way we live - and borrow'

It looks more and more as if the biggest change in domestic accommodation in at least a generation is under way. The long trend towards higher rates of home ownership is in reverse.

Brendan Keenan: 'Free trade in retreat as old complaints gain support'

Were he still around, Jonathan Swift would surely be furious that he has been left so much out of the Brexit debate. As well as being easily offended, he was a mighty warrior when it came to matters of trade.

Brendan Keenan: 'Whatever the Brexit, Irish Question will still need an answer'

Journalism, according to a well-known saying, is the first draft of history. My own experience leads me to think that the second draft, in the equally well-known words of Henry Ford, is usually bunk. It took a centenary to get what looked like a polished draft of the events of 1916.