We don’t know how much serviced land, land ready for housing, there is. The last annual data series end in 2012, with a survey (in a different format) from 2014.. But we do know more recent data on the following 10 things, none of which , I would argue, are more important than solving the housing crisis.
Last week, I was invited and glad to accept the same, talk to Blockchain Ireland, and outline my take on the present state of the cryptocurrencies….a bit of Daniel in the Lion’s Den.
Read more: Talk to Blockchain Ireland on ‘present state of cryptocurrencies ‘With just 30 minutes it was a very quick tour d’horizon and I wasn’t able to touch on issues such as stable coins and CBDCs but for what it’s worth here is the slide deck . Thanks to Lory Keogh and all involved for the opportunity to open the debate on their last day. Comments, critiques, offers of help welcome.
TCD has two formal linkages with Russian universities- one with Moscow State, the other with St Petersburg State. Yesterday I emailed the below to the Provost/President, and to the VP- Chief Academic Officer. I await a reply or indeed an acknowledgement.
Brian Lucey brianmlucey@gmail.com
Sun, 27 Feb, 20:08 (14 hours ago)
to Linda, Provost, Vice
Dear Colleagues,
I imagine that like myself you are horrified at what we see in Ukraine. This is an unprovoked war, and one which has the potential (see the rather disturbed and disturbing posturing tonight on things nuclear) to take us all down. Ireland being militarily neutral and weak can do little directly but I think we can take moral steps.
I would like you to consider making some steps towards TCD showing its moral revulsion at the Russian state’s actions and supporting Ukrainian institutes of higher education. Some things we could do tomorrow include
TCD can do this. It should, in my view, do it.
Next week, August, I celebrate? remember? reflect on? 30y in full-time academia, all that time (bar visiting stints in various places) spent in the Trinity Business School in Trinity College Dublin. I might do a reflection on how I see TBS, TCD and Irish academia (from my narrow lens) as having changed over time. but this here is a set of 30 thoughts, aphorisms, musings, fortune cookie sayings, whatever you wish, on academia, finance version. In no especial order….
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This morning I found myself in a coffee shop.
Including myself, there were two middle-aged ladies behind the counter, a family two adults and a child in another corner, what can best be described as an ‘aul lad’ in the doorway, and three cyclists-mamils outside
We got talking, as you do, and covid came up, as it does. I asked all six adults ‘what do you think is the fatality rate from C19, in other words of every 1000 people who get it how many people do you think will die?’
The estimates got ranged from the very precise ‘275’, through ‘a few hundred’ to ‘god I dunno but most I’d say’
The perception amongst all of these reasonably randomly selected adults was that this was a incredibly deadly disease the catching of which was near death sentence
Except…it’s not.
UK evidence, and remember it’s the UK that we are supposed to be looking at with horror because there is a hurricane of cases overwhelming their health system and it’s going to come to us, suggests it’s 0.14%
So every 1000 cases even with deadly dangerous delta gives 1.4 deaths. Orders of magnitude less than the coffee House sample suggested
Now this is not scientific and should only be taken as an indication for six people at the side of a coffee house thought. I am not aware of published research on what Irish population perceptions of C19 mortality might actually be….but the concern which we should have is that if there is a perception of this as much more dangerous than it is then political pressure will inevitably move to assuage those fears even if they are not real.
So the latest cunning plan for our reopening of society is to have a vaccine cert to access “indoor hospitality”
This, lets call it a plan but in reality if you listen to the Minister for CarCrash Interviews and Health, Stephen Donnelly, its more a vague set of aspirations and fudges, is being discussed online and in the media in the sole context of people going for a hape, or even a rake, of pints.
But it is more than that. Its about your local coffee shop. The parents shopping and going to the food court with their teenagers will find themselves having to drop chicken nuggets and taco fries in to the car park to feed the unvaccinated kids. Apparently its also possibly about cinemas and other forms of indoor activity.
So, we have reached the situation where you can work indoors in a crowded setting without a vaccine but cannot access the services of the setting when you come off the clock; you cannot go as a family to the coffee shop but can go abroad; you cannot use a expensive PCR test to show you can go for a coffee or (shock horror a beer) but can to go to Alicante.
The old joke, and maybe not so funny, is that economic forecasting is there to make astrology seem accurate. To economic forecasting we might consider adding the dire premonitions of ISAG Gerry Killeen, who is a world class expert in malaria (bacterial, insect borne) not covid (viral, aerosol) .
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40255088.html was a prediction on 31-March, a month ago.
“Can we afford to reopen schools where we are right now? I would say no,” Mr Killeen said.“There is no good reason to believe that it won’t put us back into exponential growth. There’s no logical reason; it doesn’t add up.”
Hmmm.. On that day (per the FT tracker we had 11 cases per 100k ; a month later we have 1 case per 100k , 7 day average. There ws exponential growth, downwards.
Then we had this https://extra.ie/2020/06/08/news/irish-news/dr-gerry-killeen-accelerated-reopening “He said Ireland is ‘inevitably’ going to be hit with a second Covid-19 wave, which could bring 1,000 deaths a day unless it is stopped.” That was 8 June 2020. “‘I can guarantee that if you follow the plan as New scheduled, even for the five phases, I can guarantee you a second wave, 100% – not 99%, 100%.”
We did get a second wave. But it was 7m later and, thankfully, we didnt get 1000 deaths a day. Despite it being guaranteed.
I get it. When the media come calling to an academic its flattering. There is a temptation to answer regardless. And the more compelling a soundbite, the more they call. Add to that “if it bleeds it leads” and you have a perfect trap. I know. I have been that soldier.
That said, one howlingly wrong prediction is one thing. Happens. Two? Hmm. Time to think about what one’s interactions are with the media.
Bitcoin is not the new gold. On foot of the FT article today on BTC and by extension cryptocurrency energy consumption (TL:DR its a dirty dirty currency) a common thread of commentary is “what about gold, eh, look how energy intensive that is”. Well….lets do that
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Willing suspension of disbelief is a fine thing when one is reading a magic realist novel or watching a MCU caper. Its harder to take when listening to the breathless “be grand” platitudes of the government around Summer 2021.
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This data accompanies the paper “The Cryptocurrency Uncertainty Index” : Lucey, Brian M. and Vigne, Samuel and Yarovaya, Larisa and Wang, Yizhi, The Cryptocurrency Uncertainty Index (March 16, 2021). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3805891
Usage of this is free but requires that you cite the above paper.
NOTE: Updated data and commentary on this and other indices can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/cryptocurrency-indices/home?authuser=0
Brian M. Lucey 
