Irish Miracle — or Mirage? - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com

Irish Miracle — or Mirage? - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com: "8.Charles
Philadelphia
May 20th, 2010
9:39 amThere is no doubt that much of Ireland's astonishing growth during the 90s and early years of this decade was the result of smoke and mirrors accounting tricks. It never ceased to irritate me when American neo-conservative economists and pundits (e.g. the Times' own Thomas Friedman) routinely praised Ireland to the heavens because superficially it confirmed their ideological mantra regarding globalized free trade and low corporate tax rates. To those of us actually connected to Ireland, it was always clear that much of the money credited to the 'Tiger' was in fact repatriated to corporate headquarters not only in the US but also in Japan and Germany. That our little country of barely 4 million souls was routinely listed as the number two global exporter of computer software is but one comic example of these accounting sleights of hand."