Marc Coleman maps out Ireland's road to recovery
(19 Jan 2009)
Where some can only look back in anger, “Back from the Brink” is the only book on the great economic crisis we’ve just experienced to take the reader what really happened to Ireland and the world’s economy. And where others wallow in a despair designed more to grab headlines than illuminate the truth, the book begins by showing how the glass is still two-thirds full. If Ireland took a large step backwards between 2007 and 2009, it took several equally large ones forward in the preceding twenty years. In the 1980s Ireland is in a much stronger position to help the victims of recession than in the 1980s. The book takes the reader on a journey from Wall street and Washington, where the crisis originated, to the myriad of policy mistakes made at home that made things far worse here than they had to be.
Where other books are unable to look forward with credible solutions, “Back from the Brink” clearly maps out the road to recovery: Reducing the cost of doing business, building the smart economy, reforming how we use land, property and urban space and – last but not least – the crucial area of political reform. The book also deals with the challenges of rebuilding the financial sector and the ethical basis of the economy. Ireland’s dreams for the future are far from over: With the Republic’s population set to rise to 5 million by 2020, Ireland’s recent fall is an unmissable opportunity to build a new all-island economy for 7 million people in the coming decade.
Reviews of "Back from the Brink".....
First class analysis and full of original thinking on the way forward. A ‘must read’.
EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy
“Against the odds, Coleman stayed faithful to Ireland’s future when other commentators gave up on it. Right on time, he has now written an outstanding book that restores Ireland’s self-belief.”
Jody Corcoran Sunday Independent
“Probing and pungent..Marc Coleman applies a capacious mind to pondering the condition of Ireland today. He not only etches sharply what has gone wrong, but even more importantly looks beyond the immediate crisis to signpost a route to national recovery”
J. J. Lee, Glucksman Professor of Irish Studies, New York University
“Marc Coleman's Back from the Brink (Transworld Ireland) is a savvy essay on how Ireland got into such a set of fiscal and financial messes in the last seven years. What is particularly refreshing is its essential optimism, the idea that the Irish have been doing foolish things and can quite easily stop doing so and mend their ways”
Professor Tom Garvin, Head of Politics Dep’t, UCD
"Marc Coleman's latest book is an excellent outlier in the sea of commentaries focusing on trivialities. Coleman gets the big picture of Ireland's real economy: outstandingly accurately…Let's hope this analytical outlier will be an influential one."
Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev, Economist Trinity College Dublin
“Marc Coleman's book is a welcome and long overdue antidote to the relentless gloom with which have been bombarded for the past year. He shows that we are not powerless and that our fate lies very much in our own hands.”
Dan White, Evening Herald and Sunday Independent
Marc Coleman is one of our leading economic commentators and a consistently thoughtful, insightful and challenging....always well worth our attention.
Professor Don Thornhill, Chairman of the National Competitiveness Council