At the same time, the European Union is weakening the certainty of its own 2035 target, shifting from a full phase-out to a 90% reduction, allowing a continued share of fossil fuel vehicles.
If the EU is serious about energy security, it must reverse that dilution and bring the date forward.
Now, as conflict escalates following Israeli and US strikes on Iran, the same vulnerability is surfacing again because nothing structural was changed.
Is Europe facing an energy crisis, or paying the price for choosing to remain dependent on fossil fuels?
After the invasion of Ukraine, governments didn't fix energy security. They replaced one set of fossil fuel suppliers with another, which isn't energy security but supplier rotation.
This analysis is correct in the short term, but the priority should be investing in alternatives rather than debating oil prices. It feels similar to how the media are focusing on the invasion of Iran instead of the Epstein files.
Spain and Portugal are the fastest growing economies in Europe because they have cheap renewable energy. How long before they expand capacity to export electricity to the rest of Europe?
I've been waiting for this.
Japan has run debt >200% of GDP for decades, with no default and persistent fiscal capacity.
MMT predicted this outcome: a currency issuer with floating FX and domestic-currency debt faces real resource and inflation constraints, not solvency constraints. Japan behaves exactly that way.
(3/3) A weaker yen does not create yen insolvency. Japan’s liabilities are yen-denominated. FX movements affect relative prices and import costs, not the state’s ability to pay yen obligations.
But look at me, showing you the egg on your face.
(2/3) Rising JGB yields reflect BOJ policy choices and rate-path expectations. The central bank sets the price of reserves and can cap yields if it chooses. Higher yields does not equate to markets denying Japan funding.
(1/3) MMT does not claim “low inflation -> low bond yields.” It claims a currency-issuing state cannot become insolvent in its own currency. You are conflating fiscal capacity with bond market pricing. Those are different categories.
Thanks for this. I needed some good news.
Reply with stats, not selfies.
Tall, middle-aged man seeking collaborator for light applied econometrics.
Interests include revenue stability, distributional outcomes, sectoral behaviour (vacancy, market power), and policy falsification. No drama - R or Python. Must be comfortable with regressions and bad-ass ideas. No romance.
I genuinely wonder if Trump realises that a US president has no legal power to postpone or cancel federal elections, even under martial law or in a civil war.
Talk about planting the cede.
Cover image announcing a newly published working paper titled “Architectural Patterns for Economic Systems: A Design Framework for Legitimate, Failure-Resistant Political Economy”.
Many recurring economic failures look less like incentive problems and more like system design failures.
I tried analysing political economy the way a software engineer analyses architecture.
Architectural Patterns for Economic Systems v1.0
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
Ireland doesn’t have empty buildings because it lacks laws. It has them because leaving property unused is cheap, safe, and rewarded by system design.
This short article is about why vacancy taxes and enforcement fail, and what would actually fix it.
open.substack.com/pub/damianpe...
Economists need to be trained on trauma informed systems theory if our species is to have a chance of surviving.
The US has over 1,000 billionaires, so you'd better plan three course meals for the year.
The graphic seems to have omitted the 'don't know' results, but it is a sign of the times that 46% can't immediately tell right from wrong.
Ireland is facing climate fines, but that is not really the story. This is about a political choice to delay investment in transport and energy, and why that delay is now being priced.
Read the post: open.substack.com/pub/damianpe...
Here’s the article that prompted my response: the Government’s decision to close the door on expanded sick leave.
www.irishexaminer.com/news/politic...
My post digs into what it means when authority is presented as necessity.
Closing the door on sick leave doesn’t remove the cost of illness. It decides who carries it: workers, the public, and a private insurance system that profits from exclusion.
That’s not inevitability. It’s a choice.
open.substack.com/pub/damianpe...
Bad old Catholic Ireland is right.
The current housing crisis has everything to do with the real estate sector controlling the government and nothing to do with imaginary friends.
This is a necessary correction. Framing technology as a national policy lever ignores that both tech trajectories and profits are organised through global value chains. Once accumulation depends on cross border labour arbitrage, domestic “pro worker” tech policy is structurally constrained.
Progressive movements are morally clear and highly organised, yet their demands are repeatedly diluted or delayed.
It's not a question of values or effort, but of economic assumptions that enter strategy before demands are set, weakening movements from the inside.
open.substack.com/pub/damianpe...
I wrote about memory, recognition, and why the far right’s version of Irish identity collapses on contact with history.
open.substack.com/pub/damianpe...
These developments suggest my paper on Recognising Non-Market Public Value may require revision.
Health shocks are now credibly associated with the release of premium vegetable assets, creating a moral hazard and accelerating delinquency across the nutrition schedule.
Vegetables in this household now function less as food and more as contested infrastructure, vulnerable to opportunistic extraction during governance failure.
The threatened deployment of ginger soup confirms a deeper incentive distortion...