STEPHEN RAINEY suggests shrugging-off problems and getting on with living

Apple’s ‘value’ exceeding that of Microsoft is an illusion, says JASON WALSH

70 per cent of the North’s economy is state subsidised – it’s time to stop playing with the toy economy, says STEPHEN RAINEY

The North is about to pay a very high price for its isolation from both the British and Irish polities

Slashing government spending doesn’t sound like Keynesian economics but it is when it’s done to prop-up failing businesses, says JASON WALSH

Greece will suffer due to the EU intervention, it’s French and German banks that are getting bailed-out, says JASON WALSH

STEPHEN RAINEY says the euro crisis means we should – finally – treat the EU as the political entity it is

Recessions are better for the right, says DOUG HENWOOD

The trouble in Greece underlines two important lessons: austerity packages don’t have to accepted and that frustrated violent actions achieve nothing, says JASON WALSH

DOMHNALL Ó COBHTAIGH asks, why has a hedge fund has been allowed to trump democracy in Greece?

Tomorrow sees Britain and the North go to the polls but whoever wins there will be winter of austerity, says JASON WALSH

David Cameron’s slash-and-burn policies could see the Unionist/Tory marriage collapse before it’s consummated, says STEPHEN RAINEY but there’s another problem lurking in the long grass

Conservative pseudo-liberals are already celebrating the ‘end’ of flight due to the eruption in Iceland but sedentary lifestyles are nothing to celebrate, says JASON WALSH

COLETTE BROWNE is not impressed with the ‘fighting Irish’

DOMHNALL Ó COBHTHAIGH explains how Anglo, AIB and Bank of Ireland forced him to leave Sinn Féin and how Anglo in particular typifies the follies of Irish economics

Suggestions on what to do with the parasitic new Anglo Irish (Bank) class from forth contributors GERARD CASEY, STEPHEN KINSELLA and JASON WALSH

Quinn’s diversification and attempt at vertical integration was its ultimate insurance against tough times – it’s a pity the authorities in the border counties didn’t think similarly, says JASON WALSH

Good science must be apolitical but our response to it should be democratic,
says SWIREK STASS

The Quinn Group’s difficulties reflect failure of Irish economic policy – and the government’s response, says DOMHNALL Ó COBHTHAIG

‘What do we want? Not much. When do we want it? Er…’

Nationalisation is not public ownership, says JASON WALSH

A disastrous ‘bad bank’ and worse policy, the National Assets Management Agency has one thing going for it: at least people are talking

Google is a business and that’s why it acts the way it does – so why single it out for critique?

From Google, through the banks, to the arts, everyone is arguing for their own private communist society to protect them from the ravages of the market, says JASON WALSH

Republican writer LIAM O’RUAIRC says the jig is up for Sinn Féin but argues that republicanism is, like modernity itself, unfinished business

The ‘promise’ of jobs at Dublin airport is an empty one

Never mind grade inflation, expecting education to solve the country’s economic problems is a joke, says JASON WALSH

Is Britain headed for a hung parliament, asks JASON WALSH – and does it matter?

Whatever about the ‘necessity’ of austerity packages, anti-Greek sentiment is inflated by prejudice and unmasks EU bully-boy tactics

As the Greek economy continues to tank many are wondering if joining the Euro was the right idea. JASON WALSH says it doesn’t matter which currency you have, what matters is how much of it you have in your pocket

PAULINE HADAWAY asks if the cost of the Northern Assembly is distracting from creating a real and vibrant democracy?

China-bashing has a long and ugly history, says forth editor JASON WALSH, writing in Global Comment

The Irish Film Board is badly run, supports lousy movies and costs the taxpayer money. Of course we need it, says NIALL KITSON

Political consultant ROBERT CASSIDY considers Brian Lenihan’s contradictory insider-outsider status in politics and notes his response to the TV3 debacle fits a pattern of both Lenihan’s behaviour and pubic perception of him as a man

The UK fashion design industry is worth £1.6bn annually, but is a huge waste of resources. Is it time to stop supporting it, asks PHIL THANE

Public life is still dominated by the idea that the Irish are unique – uniquely stupid – but there is nothing unique about Ireland. Isn’t it about time we admitted that, asks JASON WALSH

Ireland’s political collapse and fear of affluence occurred long before the recession, says JASON WALSH, in the first of a series of forth essays.

Despite BA’s High Court injunction to block a 12-day Christmas strike, it was a fitting end to the Year of Surreal Industrial Relations that it took airline cabin crew to stand up for workers, says TIM BLACK

Ireland’s miserable GDP growth of 0.3 per cent masks continuing long term decline

Having spent three decades predicting the collapse of capitalism real soon now the left has been blindsided by the global recession. Here’s why:

Both boosters and critics of capitalism should so a little more (free) market research. JASON WALSH crunches the numbers.

An inquiry into the recession is not just a waste of time and money, it will depoliticise politics, says JASON WALSH

Today’s recession is not the result of ‘risky investment’, in fact it follows a thirty-year decline in real productive activity. The business class needs to stop whining and get back to work, says JASON WALSH

‘We wuz right’, says forth editor Jason Walsh – the 2010 budget is a document empty of content

In light of the cod conflict between the private and public sectors in Ireland, forth reprints this article by James Heartfield which shows that business and the state are intertwined

Whatever is announced tomorrow one things for sure: Ireland’s intellectually bankrupt political class has no solutions to offer. Here’s why:

The only thing that is truly unsustainable is a belief in sustainability says ROB LYONS

The phoney reconstruction of class politics won’t fix anything, says JASON WALSH

forth editor Jason Walsh writes about the government’s plans to beat-up the working class in the name of the environment

Phil Thane says it’s about time we took a materialist look at the world around us – and thought about the people who design and make the material world around us

A collapse of political legitimacy is the price of the tricolourful recession-busting ‘buy Irish’ campaign, says Stephen Rainey

Life is not just a litany of human suffering. forth punctures a few misanthropic modern myths

Jason Walsh reviews a book that argues capitalism’s green critics are giving solace to a business class that no longer believes in itself

As the long shadow of potential budget cuts chills the arts, Northern creative bods needn’t kowtow to economists or anyone else. The arts can offer leadership and vision to politicians and others – not the other way round, says Caragh O’Donnell

Two hollow themes from Irish political dialogue have collided – the ‘patriotism’ of shopping in the South and the anti-public servant mood. The result? An even more pointless ‘debate’ about nothing

A new political party has launched in Ireland but is there anything to its policies other than not being Fianna Fáil?

Today’s ‘day of action’ by unions had the feeling of a set-piece battle, but not because union members aren’t committed

Are some people enjoying the fact that Ireland is in recession a little too much?

The assault on the underserving rich will end up as an attack on the living standards of the rest of us, says Jason Walsh

There are no solutions to the economic crisis because no-one will think politically

Marking the recent visit of Arthur Scargill to Ireland, former Yorkshire miner Edward Devoy compares the era of the miners’ strike to today

Who are you calling poor? Endless pontificating about ‘The Poor’, whether in the third world or closer to home, gives intellectual cover to real economic division, says Jason Walsh

Political consultant Jonathan Fallon responds to forth‘s attacks on Irish political parties, saying the politics of negativity is not enough

Calls for immigrants to ‘go home’ are a result of a failure to argue for open borders

As Dublin says no to water charges, misdirected anger at the Greens propping-up the government helps to obscure the party’s conservative agenda

With unions taking to the streets demanding no cuts to public sector pay forth asks what, exactly, is the role of the state in Ireland’s economy?

No to official culture, says Jason Walsh

When business leaders, politicians and opinion columnists drone on about ‘tough decisions needing to be made’ they mean screwing the rest of us

Of course the border distorts the economy – this imaginary line has distorted everything else in Irish life since the 1920s. Forget shopping and look at the real economic story, says Jason Walsh

The phoney war of words between the bosses and workers doesn’t convince Jason Walsh

We all did, says Jason Walsh, who nods off every time either of them starts speaking

Attacks on AIB for seeking to raise staff salaries unmask the austerity drive at the heart of Irish life, says Jason Walsh

Are bank economists are bad for the economy, asks Stephen Kinsella reporting from the Dublin Economic Workshop

In the first of a series of essays entitled ‘What is to be done?’, free software activist and computer programmer Richard Stallman gives his thoughts on the state of the world and what should done about it.

Is the return of the strike a sign of renewed industrial militancy or just a pale shadow of bygone days?

By Jason Walsh

They chicken out at the last minute. Mark Ames recounts the doomed bus tour of AIG executives’ posh homes in Connecticut.

The Irish public is being offered Hobson’s choice.

By Jason Walsh

By focusing on consumption, both sides in the debate over illegal file-sharing ignore the value of creative labour.

By Jason Walsh

S.O.S: the Celtic Tiger has tanked