One of the most closely watched and widely debated conflict of our time is the one occurring In Northern Ireland. It has been a hot debate for over a century now, yet the root of the conflict is still unclear. There have been many theories over time, yet none have been able to adequately describe what is really happening on the matter. This conflict is divided by many lines; ethnically between the Irish and the British, and religiously by the Catholics and Protestant denominations.
Although the crisis came to head in 2008, there were people who had realized that trouble was coming for years. The largest warning sign was the amount of credit in the market place. Many of the big companies and banks had very little capital, and the lack of capital was brought on by the housing bubble. Companies were lending too much money to people who could not pay them back. And even before people started to default on their mortgages, people could see that this was a problem. During a meeting with the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in January 2007 the staff of the Federal Reserve admitted “that they were aware of [the] problem in the housing issue three years earlier” (Dodd). And they were not the only ones. As far back as 2001 there were people who saw the danger that sub-prime mortgages were and who were trying to have bills passed to stop the bad lending that was going on, but no one wanted to list...
Describe and critically assess the impact of the movement for political reform in Ireland from Daniel O'Connell to the fall of Parnell.
In 2007-2008 there was Global Financial Crisis which started in the USA because of the ‘housing bubble’ appeared because banks started giving low interest rates subprime mortgages (for people who may have some difficulties with paying their debts: low income groups, unemployed, people with bad credit history an...
It can be argued that the economic hardships of the great recession began when interest rates were lowered by the Federal Reserve. This caused a bubble in the housing market. Housing prices plummeted, home prices plummeted, then thousands of borrowers could no longer afford to pay on their loans (Koba, 2011). The bubble forced banks to give out homes loans with unreasonably high risk rates. The response of the banks caused a decline in the amount of houses purchased and “a crisis involving mortgage loans and the financial securities built on them” (McConnell, 2012 p.479). The effect on the economy was catastrophic and caused a “pandemic” of foreclosures that effected tens of thousands home owners across the U.S. (Scaliger, 2013). The debt burden eventually became unsustainable and the U.S. crisis deepened as the long-term effect on bank loans would affect not only the housing market, but also the job market.
The country is certainly in crisis, but the crisis is not being caused by mortgage foreclosure. Foreclosure is simply a mechanism for people to deal with a debt they can no longer afford. Rather than being a crisis, the potential onslaught of home foreclosures (which has been slowed somewhat by the Obama administration’s “Making Home Affordable” program) is actually market forces hard at work cleaning out the mess in the real estate market caused by too much cheap money loaned to people who were not sound credit risks to buy homes they could not afford. When home prices are completely out of line with wages and people who would normally have a hard time getting a friend to loan them $20 are able to take out interest-only loans to buy over-priced housing, something is very, very wrong. While it may be painful for many people, the real estate market collapsing, including thousands of inevitable foreclosures, is not a crisis, but rather a result of the real crisis – unserviceable debt.
The Success of the British Government in Trying to Deal with the Irish Troubles in the Years Since 1972
The U.S. financial crisis of 2007–2008 is considered one of the worst financial crises since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It almost made large financial institutions collapse and stock markets declined in a dramatic way around the world. The consumer wealth declined in trillions of U.S. dollars and played a significant part in the failure of key businesses and declines in economic activities. All these factors led to the 2007–2008 global recession and played a major role in contributing to the European sovereign-debt crisis.
Over the years, the people of Ireland have suffered many hardships, but none compare to the devastation brought by the Irish potato famine of 1845-1857. A poorly managed nation together with ideally wicked weather conditions brought Ireland to the brink of disaster. It was a combination of social, political and economic factors that pushed it over the edge.
The Irish War of Independence, was a guerilla war fought from 1919-1921 between the Irish Republican Army, and the British security forces in Ireland. It was an escalation of the Irish revolutionary period into armed conflict.
The “New Ireland” emerged in the 1990s’ when the country experienced an economic-cultural boom in which it was transformed from one of Europe's poorer countries into one of its wealthiest.
The recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC) initially began with the collapse of credits and financial markets, which caused by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US in 2007. The sub-prime mortgages were given to high-risk lenders (with bad credit history) who were in danger of defaulting, which eventually caused a global credit crunch, where the banks were unwilling to lend to each other. In October 2008, the collapse of the major financial institutions and the crash of stock markets marked the peak of this global economic slowdown (Euromonitor International, 2008).
The Partitioning of Ireland in 1921 In this essay I am going to explain why Irelandwas partitioned into two parts in 1921. The two partitioned parts are known today as Northern Ireland (Ulster) and The Republic of Ireland (Eire). Ireland was partitioned in 1921 after an agreement was made by the Anglo-Irish Treaty which was finally passed by the House of Commons without it being blocked by the House of Lords. In my essay I will describe of the factors, which contributed to the partition in Ireland in 1921. These factors are: the religious reasons, the political reasons, the conflict over land, the hatred of the English by Catholics, the growth of violence in Irelandand the problems with the British Government.
Firstly, the main reason for the systematic failure, according to the report was the expansion of the property bubble financed by the banks. Between 2002 and 2008 bankers demonstrated high levels of greed combined with disregard for the risks and gross misjudgement which few bankers’ could disagree with. This was evident from the surge in lending between sectors which was very uneven. Residential mortgage lending and lending to the construction and property sector considerably out-paced growth in all the other sectors combined (see Fig1 15). For instance, lending to this sector increased at an annual rate of almost 45%. This effectively created a property bubble and like all bubbles, they burst, and this heavily influenced Irelands’ financial crisis. This tied with the world- wide economic crisis heavily increased the rate of the crisis.
Irish people will never forget the financial crisis of 2008 in Ireland. A lax regime that let bankers be reckless, an over-dependence on the construction industry and little regulation harmed Irelands economy greatly. However, it is important that Ireland learns from its self-inflicted mistakes and re-builds its institutions. The economy has shown signs that it is improving and Ireland completed its EU-IMF bailout in December 2013.