We had blogger David Malone over last October to give a talk in Dublin and are the videos of the talk in full (including Q&A), I give a short presentation at the start of video one (10 minutes) and then David expands on the the nature of the crisis affected Ireland, with a particular focus on dodgy dealings within the IFSC (a particular specialty of David’s). He’s also a sincerely lovely man, that doesn’t really have anything to do with economics, but it is a fact. Also thanks to the fine people of Praxis (John, Edia, and Glenn) who helped make this happen and were good enough to ensure the event was recorded. Anyway the talk, watch, enjoy, learn…
Praxis and Pedagogy, in conjunction with the Irish Debt Info Graphic
Project, presents,
David Malone
David is an independent filmmaker with a background in science; he has
made documentaries on philosophy, and religion for BBC and Channel 4.
In 2008 Malone began commenting on the financial pages of the Guardian
newspaper about the ensuing financial crises under the pseudonym Golem
XIV and from that grew his blog GolemXIV.co.uk. David sources much of
his information through the online forum’s financial sector workers
use and as such has a unique unsanitised take on the current
situation.
David will be joined by a diverse panel including members from the
IDIP (Irish Debt Infro Graphic Project http://www.idip.ie/), to
analyse the current economic situation, focussing on the question,
What is worth knowing? This discussion is being organised as part of
the IDIP research programme which is developing an online graphic
history of the Debt Crisis in Ireland.
Note: This summation is my own interpretation of the findings of the Irish Debt Audit, and is independent of that body.
The findings of the audit on Irish debt were published on Thursday the 15th of September, the full report is available here
The following is a summation of the report, the document itself is less than thirty pages in length and is not too difficult to comprehend.
Note: Originally I set up IDIP as an organisation which would visualise the findings of this report, as such I will be looking towards using the contents of this report as the main source for our next delivery, I would invite any readers of this to comment below as to their thoughts on the most efficient way the contents of this could be published.
Aims of Debt audit:
Comprehensive picture of Irish debt
Public education
Provide a foundation for future work
Chapter 1, Introduction:
Explains what a bond is (something like this could be very effectively explained through info-graphic eg. “Steven wants to buy a bond from Paul, Paul is worried Steven won’t be able to pay it back because he gets cancer sells it to Dave for less”).
Shows what Ireland has been up to in selling bonds and how the price has changed recently.
What do we owe?
Irish debt through bonds and IMF/EU bailout
Bank borrowing
Chapter 2, Government Bonds:
Bonds are issued by the NTMA (the National Treasury Management Agency)
Since December 2000 our bonds have been settled by Euroclear (instead of the central bank).
Long term debt has spiked since 2007 from 50% GDP to 90%
Sort term debt has decreased.
There are currently 13 Irish bonds trading, which collectively add up to €89 billion
Trading in Irish debt spiked in Q3 of 2010, but has been declining since.
82% of Gov. bonds are held by non-nationals.
Chapter 3, NAMA:
Instructed to take over bad bank assets (ie. properties), manage and protect them.
Gave €30 billion to banks in exchange for assets, these assets are managed by a number of temporary companies set up by NAMA these companies are SPVs (Special purpose Vehicles) and are owned 49% by the state and 51% by private companies.
Chapter 4, Bank Guarantees:
There are two separate bank guarantees.
The CIF scheme (Credit Institutions Financial Support), setup in September 2008 and expired in September 2010. This scheme covered retail and interbank deposits, senior unsecured, covered bonds, expired in September 2010. When this happened debt which was guaranteed under this scheme was transferred into the ELG scheme (see below).
The ELG scheme (Eligible Liabilities Guarantee) initially covered seven institutions: AIB, Angle, Bank of Ireland, EBS, Irish Life and permanent, Postbank Ireland and Irish Nationwide. As of July this year these companies have been merged into four, The Irish Bank Resolution Company (Irish Nationwide, Anglo), AIB (which has merged with EBS), Bank of Ireland, and Irish life and Permanent (Postbank Ireland ceased trading as of December 2010).
The deposit guarantee scheme covers deposits up to the amount of €100,000, this also covers funds outside of the guaranteed institutions, such as the credit unions.
As of March 2011 the total guaranteed under the ELG scheme is €111 billion, of which €89 billion are guaranteed deposits, the rest are guaranteed debt securities (bonds and other financial instruments).
As of August 2011 there are 71 separate certificates detailed on the NTMA site, these are the maturing banks bonds, which are being paid off.
In addition to this there is the ELA (Emergency Liquidity Assistance) scheme. This is money which is loaned out from the central bank of Ireland at a penalty rate of 3%. This generally used to cover up deposit flight from the banks. Funds lent from the ELA are then used by the banks as collateral to lend additional funds from the state, a circular relationship.
Chapter 5, Information on ownership
It is very difficult to know who owns the Irish bonds -both government and bank bonds- as they are traded regularly on the secondary market and as such change hands frequently. It is thought that the ECB owns a large chunk of Irish debt.
Chapter 6, Total Debt
Currently government debt is €91.8 billion
Total bank liabilities are €411 billion of which the government is responsible for €279.3 billion
Leaving a potential total debt of €371.1 billion, though this is a conservative figure.
Chapter 7, Other Market Activity
Borrowing aside other market activity can influence the situation of Ireland’s debt.
Credit Default Swaps. A credit default swap is an insurance policy taken out on someone’s debt., not necessarily that of the buyer. These don’t impact on Ireland’s situation persé but the rates at which they are traded are an indicator of how Ireland is viewed as a default risk.
Short selling, short selling has more effect on Irish debt, there have been attempts to ban short selling through out Europe (though in the past Ireland has blocked these).
Chapter 8, Summary and Conclusions
Henry Kissinger used the term “constructive ambiguity” ie. the use of unclear language in negotiating a sensitive issue. However essentially the lack of transparency act as an affront to democracy it cuts out people from the true machinations of power in the modern world.
For the foreseeable future the Irish people will bear the brunt of the debt that has arisen from the banking crisis.
Here is a chart showing how the debt cycle currently operates.
Personal thoughts
The report outlines how the debt in Ireland operates, it is very factual and dry but that is how it should be. Still there are many issues it doesn’t address or cover, such as the why and who we are in effect paying this money too, exactly what is the mechanism of the payout.
In addition the audit does not cover governments accounts, how much money do have on the books, the shortfall in income and expenditure, how is the bailout package being drawn down and how much the servicing of the debt will cost us?
Understanding the fundamentals of why this is happening is challenging, it is fair to say most people have used this lack of understanding as a reason to shut it away, but to do that is to give up on having any say on the destiny of this country, it is one thing to have the wool pulled over your eyes, it is quite another to do it yorself, we cannot expect better from our politicians if we do not expect it from ourselves. Though it is difficult to comprehend abstract threats and affronts of this nature, one can understand a bear charging in your direction easily enough, but to try and disentangle the meaning of bond maturity, NAMA, the ELG, the ELA, short-selling, and anonymous bond holders who needs and wishes it seems our government (and those of Europe and beyond) are happy to put ahead of it’s citizens… this is not something our brains were evolved to comprehend, but we are a different breed to those who came before us, we are literate, educated, less bound to the institutions of religion and state, we have tools such as the Internet at our fingertips, we are not nothings, we matter, you and I, we want to live, we should not let our reality be dictated by those who serve only themselves, we never agreed to be the subjects of this system, and yet here we are.
The first step in asserting our control over this madness is to understand.
I think an interesting part of the sand installation could be a flow of sand- similar to an egg timer- a cascade of sand falls on top of a heap representing monetary change- i.e. interest accruing.
Considering the original €85bn bailout @ €5.8%,
€85bn x 5.8% = €4.93bn / year or €156 / second.
According to my calculations (assuming 0.5mm sand) this is 3.75 g of sand per second – ~a teaspoon
I haven’t managed to find a way to calculate the size of tube that will spill a teaspoon of sand per second.
Hello,
I spoke on Wednesday at Moxie about the grains of sand used to illustrate the absurd figures deriving from the crisis.
To have the actual figures of 42billion (original bank bail out), 71billion (estimated current bank bail out), 210billion (estimated debt for 2014) etc. etc properly realised I thought a real, physical way to show this would be with some plentiful (cheap) possibly waste product. As the figures are so absurd grains of sand seem to me to be the only practical way of doing this. The inference to the building boom, to time and to the Cayman islands are also useful with sand.
This is how I arrived at some of the figures we talked about:
I started here: http://www.6footsix.com/my_weblog/how-many-grains-of-sand-i.html
Taking a grain of sand to represent one euro
based on 2 grains of and per millimetre
2 cubed is 8. so there are 8 grains per mm
a cubic meter 1000mm x 1000 x 1000 = 1,000,000,000
1,000,000,000 x 8 = 8,000,000,000
I’ve assumed here that a cubic meter of sand = 1 tonne
I think the layout and structure of this infographic could be a good basis for what we’re trying to do. It works well because it combines five or six different straightforward data visualisation methods like donut charts, graphs and bar charts to form a larger picture of the subject matter. I think this it makes it easier to navigate and understand. Also, I think we could divide the information chronologically into past (how we got here), present (thes situation as it stands) and future (where we’re going). Any thoughts on these suggestions?
Bearing in mind that the agree focus was on the scale of debt and the credit flow. I thought I’d get the ball rolling on this by first looking at an example of use of scale, this is an example of an info-graphic using various different measures quite effectively, and I suspect a similar one could be drawn up on Ireland.
Info-graphic of American scale of debt
Here’s another one using container ships. So what do people think would work best to show scale? The choices are time (as in seconds, or perhaps how long an average Irish worker would have to work in order to pay off the part of the debt), size (of the notes themselves, their weight, acreage etc., or what the figures could buy in terms of doctors etc. does anyone want to try something rough in time for the next meeting?
This is a rough one I did out trying to figure out how credit flow worked during the era of the punt, something like this might work as an animation (though it is pig ugly, and barely makes any sense), if all the various cogs were in motion you could show something like how developers got rich from the boom and now bondholders who’ve bought their bonds at reduced rates are going to make a killing. It might also work as a JS HTML 5 thing where you change the year and the thing changes a shows the relevant differences over the years…
rough info-graphic of Ireland under the punt (click to enlarge)
Finally this one is probably closest to what we all agreed onie. one depicting credit flow, if we agree on working on something like this, then the duties of putting it together could be split up between designers, one person working on iconography another on layout, another on illustrating the flow, another on fact checking and so on…
rough credit flow info-graphic (click to enlarge)
I’m not holding these up as pinacles of design (or spelling) and if anyone has any better ideas even if they’re executed in a similarly rough manner then by all mean stick it in, but I think feedback on these would be useful if only to identify what’s right or wrong about them.
In this post I follow on from the previous post How has the Irish debt crisis been visualised up to this point and look at a typical example of how this crisis has been explained in the media. The example I use is particularly pertinent because it sets out to educate. The people in this video aren’t looking for your vote, they’re hoping to convince you of the nature and gravity of Ireland’s situation.
The People’s economy website was setup to inform people of the economic issues facing Ireland, in time for the general election. It showed something of the mood of the time, where there was a massive out pouring of public anger against the IMF/ECB bailout, and the incumbent government. There was even talk of a new political party being set up, though in the end it amounted to little or no action.
Post election the site hasn’t (from what I can see) been updated. The site’s showcase content was a series of videos, which explained aspects of what was/is going on in the economy. The aim here is analyse one of the sites videos to illustrate the inefficiencies in how this crisis has been explained thus far through the media, even when it is done well.
This is not a criticism of the people who are speaking, or those who took the considerable time and trouble to assemble this (noble) project, but to criticise the medium. My thesis is, that in spite of how many hours we have all listened, watched and read about the crisis, we civilians still know and understand exceedingly little about the machinations which are determining the future of our country; partly because the mediums through which this information is expressed are excellent at communicating character and propaganda, but deficient in communicating information and fact.
This is the video I will be looking at, it is entitled “Debt the EU, and what’s next.”
(0:00-00:12)
Establishing shots of the celebrity economists who feature in this video.
The faces we see here are ones that have often been seen in the media, they are shown animated in conversation and thought. There is a powerful reaction when you see celebrities, you recognise them, when you see a face which is familiar to you it triggers an emotional response in your brain. There are cases where people have been brain damaged in such a way as this system of visual emotional feedback causes them to think relatives are in fact imposters, when they see their mother, they feel nothing, so the brain comes to the conclusion that, “this is not my mother, she looks like my mother, but she isn’t, as when I see her I feel nothing,” this is called capgras syndrome. Encountering celebrities is like capgras syndrome in reverse, “that is my friend David McWilliams, but he isn’t, when he sees me, he feels nothing.”
(0:13-0:35) Kevin O’Rourke
Professor Kevin O’Rourke, “There is no painless way of doing this”
“There’s no painless way of doing this. It’s a no-brainer to say we shouldn’t pay back anymore of the unguaranteed debt but scandalously that has almost all been paid back by this stage and by the time the new government is in power even more will be paid back, it’s being paid back every week without the people being told about this, that would have been the easy way of dealing with our problems.”
If this same information was being illustrated using an info-graphic you would not only be getting the information Kevin O’Rourke lays out here, but also the fact, figures and sources, you would also be rescanning the data over and over again at your own time, as your eyes move across the image, instead of taking it in linearly.
(00:36-00:55)
“Once you have paid back all of the unguaranteed bank debt, then you’re into guaranteed bank debts, you’re into the liquidity that’s being provided by the ECB and so on, at a certain point we’re going to have to say, “look sorry, we just can’t pay this all back, this is not sustainable, on the other hand how would you like a nice big share of the banking system?”
There’s a lot of assumed knowledge here. In fairness the site does feature a FAQ section, but only 10 questions are answered, none of which quite covers the stuff dealt with here. Someone who was following the arguments and writing around the economy in the media would probably be up to scratch on everything mentioned here (in particular, “how would you like a nice big of the banking system?” which refers to a proposal I first read put forward by David McWilliams, that we pass a referendum to turn the bank creditors into shareholders), but to be up to scratch on the economic debate in the media, would take something in the region of at least an hour’s reading/listening/watching each day, just to stay on top of the various arguments, reports and policy suggestions.
(oo:56-1:08)
“I think, if we signal as a people, that we’re will to hand Mr. Trichet a veto on how this republic wants to deal with the creditors, on how this republic wants to deal with the rotten banking system, then he will exercise that veto, so it’s very important as voters we send a signal that none of this is the case.”
Here he is suggesting that if the Irish people vote in a Fianna Fáil government again then that is in effect, handing over power to Jean Claude Trichet (the president of the ECB), but even when this video was made there was no chance of that happening. Even if that is what he is indicating, I don’t understand how re-electing a Fianna Fáil government amounts to handing him a veto, I don’t know enough about the structure of the EU or ECB to be able to comment on whether or not Jean Claude Trichet has a veto or not, but I suspect whichever party that was voted in last time around, this would not have changed. Granted though he did pre-fix the above with, “I think…”
(1:09-1:44)
“We know that this is the case, we know that opinion polls show that a huge majority of Irish people don’t see any reason why we should pick up the gambling debts of foreign speculators, but we need to make a selection to make that point in a very tangible way, that all politicians in Europe can understand, because at the end of the day, Europe’s politicians, for all their flaws, are all convinced democrats, they understand that if something is politically impossible it won’t happen. We need to convince them that our paying back all of these bad bank debts is something that is politically and economically impossible, and therefore it won’t happen.”
Nothing wrong with this, focused and convincing rhetoric, of the kind which the talking head medium is ideally suited to, and info-graphics would not be. It could be pointed out that the Irish people did exactly as Mr. Rourke suggested and Europe’s politicians effectively told us to “go hang,” but I am not looking to analyse whether or not the economists here are right or wrong.
1:47 Enter Gurdgiev
Constantin Gurdgiev: “Ireland is a soverign nation, it is a soverign nation within the associations of the European nations which retain their soveignty in their own affairs”
A note on Gurdgiev:
Often described as being the economist who is most on the ball, by people who are, in fairness in no way what-so-ever qualified to ascertain this (Eamon Dunphy for example says this whenever he is on his radio show). Now I am, no more qualified to say who is Ireland’s greatest cardio-vascular surgeon, particle physicist, or ballet dancer, than I am to say who is Ireland’s foremost expert in areas macro economic, but as to why he is perceived by people who are inexpert in matters financial (apart from the fact that he is highly regarded by his peers (there is a lot public backslapping between the Irish based economists on twitter, but twitter is full of that stuff and from all kinds of professions), which any glance at his CV would tell you, IBM and Trinity college aren’t in the business of hiring second-rate personnel), I think it is useful to take a moment and consider why, if only because a healthy scepticism about experts in our culture may have prevented situations like the leader of a government’s coalition partner being sold a disastrous policy decision, based on it being “the David McWilliams option.”
Gurdgiev is arguably the most handsome of the celebrity economists, physical attractiveness is a big factor in how we judge people, male or female, whatever our preference, for example less attractive people tend to get longer prison sentences.
The accent, most of us grew up during the cold war, due to the propaganda war between East and West, and the tight control which were placed on the movement of Soviet citizens, when one heard a male Russian accent in the media it would usually belong to one of either politicians, intellectuals, chess masters or (fictional) devious super villains, ie. people who spoke with authority and intelligence and therefore we are conditioned to hear intelligent men who speak with Russian accents as perhaps being more intelligent and authoritative than they actually are.
He speaks with confidence, charisma and wit, people are terrible at judging competence, and (as every successful salesman knows) what we really respond to is confidence and charisma.
These three factors combined affects people and causes radio and TV hosts to proclaim him the man who is most on the ball about the economy, which in turn encourages viewers, listeners and the general public to think this also, it is a herd mentality, we are highly affected by the judgment and actions of others.
Anyway like I said I’m no better equipped to judge who is Ireland’s best macro economist than I am equipped to judge who Ireland’s best quantum physicist is, but then neither is Eamon Dunphy (much as I love the man) anyway back to the analysis…
(1:47-1:56)
“Ireland is a sovereign nation, it is a sovereign nation within the associations of the European nations which retain their sovereignty in their own affairs”
Repetition is a device of rhetorical flair, and a perfectly valid device to that end, but it is a poor means of communicating information. The word “sovereign” means a territory of land and people who have self-rule, therefore the term “sovereign nation” is a tautology.
(1:57-2:24)
“We can construct our own future we have full control over our own future and not to exercise it on the pretense that it will disappoint or anger some of our partners somewhere in Europe, is from my point of view, negating the whole issue of the sovereignty of this country. If our partners want a stronger Europe, they want a stronger Ireland and a prosperous Ireland, and I know they do, the only way to achieve it is to hit the restart button on our debt and put this economy back onto the rails of growth.”
Again, as rhetoric there is nothing wrong with this, but there is very little in the way of economic knowledge being communicated here, these words could just as easily have come from the mouth of a politician as an economist (albeit a macro-economist).
2:25 David McWilliams
David McWilliams: "Either we bring it forward now and default on the bank debt or we default on sovereign debt in the future..."
(2:25-2:42)
“The option is very simple either we bring it forward now and default on the bank debt or we default on sovereign debt in the future which is a much, much worse thing to do, much, much worse thing to do; because that puts us in the same condition of somewhere like Argentina where it takes a long time to unravel.”
Now if Mr. McWilliams was writing this in an article he would obviously be backing this up with facts and figures, I along with many people read his pieces regularly, but as a piece of information we have to take his word for granted that he is correct in this. Recently on sites such as http://datajournalism.stanford.edu/ (which I also link to in the brief) videos are being uploaded with full annotation. It’s a very interesting trend, though it makes watching a video online into a very long experience, should you decide to follow up on all the links provided.
(2:43-3:04)
“Once we default on the bank debt, all it is is a corporate default, it’s not a big deal, and we move on. So our choice is either we define the crisis now, we define reality and we do something about it right now, or we play the long game and hope that the cavalry will come over the hill and bail us out, that’s not going to happen.”
Sometimes I wonder who exactly is being spoken to in these exchanges, is it the Irish people, or is it the politicians they know are listening. Is a corporate default really “not a big deal?” I have no idea. Do we need to do something now instead of letting the situation get worse, because no one’s going to save us? At the time this was recorded we’d had the IMF/ECB bailout and had a general election called over a very short period of time, both of which could be used as examples of doing “something about it right now,” I can’t say whether or not either of these two have helped (did we need the IMF/ECB money? Will the Fine Gael/Labour government deal with this mess better than Fianna Fáil did?), both in their own way did define the crisis, but I doubt that’s the kind of action Mr. McWilliams was suggesting here.
Economists these days seem to be the only public intellectuals going in Irish society, and to my mind, they seem all too willing to engage in blustering rhetoric. I’m not blaming them persé -it’s the nature of the medium through which the information is being delivered- but also it is that the collective mindscape of Ireland seems to be calling out for this kind of rhetoric. We want them to be angry, we want them to say, “this is wrong!” because that’s what we feel. When it was going well, we wanted them to be happy, we wanted them to be confident and mindlessly optimistic, just like us, but it’s this desire for emotional pathos in the people who speak to us, that caused us to ignore the growing crisis in the first place. When people empathise with what well feel, we cheer them and it is all too easy for our public intellectuals to get carried away with the cheering and play to the crowds.
Of course in fairness to Mr. McWilliams he was calling this crisis -and mocked for doing so- a long time before it truly hit. What I’m saying here is the media is a theatre, and what matters in the theatre of media is not who’s right, but who wins the argument and usually, (to the mind of the listener/viewer/watcher), it is the one who agrees with us the most, after all when was the last time you and I were wrong about anything?
(3:05-3:44)
Back to Mr. O’Rourke for the grim reality of our situation.
“The bargaining power that we have now is that is that the ECB is on the hook to the tune of many many tens of billions of Euros towards us. That means they’re not just our creditor they’re our partner this is a real turning point in our countries history, if we don’t sort out this problem now we’re going to find ourselves in three years or in five years insolvent either defaulting or negotiating rollover programes in a context where we’ll have burnt through all our cash reserves, we’ll be a serial offender, we’ll have absolutely no bargaining power what so ever anymore and at that stage I very much fear for the ability of even the most skilled negotiation to salvage something for this country.”
This is very bleak stuff, it’s something a lot of people in this country understand to be true, and it’s something we have to assume the people running this country also know, yet I have seen them sitting in TV studios, unable to counter the fact that come 2013 we’re not going to be able to go to the markets, and still putting the case that we can grow our way out of this situation, even though it seem perfectly obvious to any and everyone that this is simple not the case. Of course it is only obvious to eegits like me because people such as the O’Rourkes, the Gurdgievs, and the McWilliams are in the media stating this to be the case, over and over again, but our faith in these figures comes from what exactly? Up until recently the general consensus was that Patrick Honohan the governor of the central bank and member of the board of the ECB was one of the good guys, now ever since the publication of Morgan Kelly’s recent piece on how the IMF/ECB deal came about, he’s a traitor.
My point is not that these figures are good or bad (though I lean towards the former), but that the level of education we have gotten through the media has been inefficient and confusing, and that we are as poorly equipped to judge who is right and wrong about this now, as we we were before the crisis truly emerged.
To conclude allow me to use the example of the following video, which explains in just over 10 minutes and with great efficiency, the US banking crisis of 2008. Having read Michael Lewis’ marvelous “the Big Short” (Michael Lewis perhaps being best known in Ireland for writing that vanity fair piece), I can honestly say that this 10 minutes of video by Johnathon Jarvis left me with a clearer picture of what happened in the US more effectively than Mr. Lewis did in a few hundred pages.
Note: IDIP is envisioned as being an independant apolitical group, this isn’t a vehicle for my (Seanán Kerr’s) thoughts, I’m merely adding these posts now to help flesh this site out a little in these early days. What comes out of IDIP will be dictated by the consensus of the people who choose to involve themselves not me.
The aim of IDIP is to take the information which is already out there regarding the scale of Irish deb, convert it and present it using the techniques of info-graphics. In order for such a venture to be warranted there first should be a need for this. It may seem strange to think that such a need exists, when you consider how much attention the crisis receives almost daily in the media, but what is the content of that coverage?
Firstly I want to look briefly at how the crisis has been visualised, in a later post I will be analysing a sample of the content from the people’s economy website, which was launched a month or so before the election of 2011 and who’s explicit (and noble) purpose was to educate the public on the economic issues at stake in the forthcoming election.
This is what I get on page 1 when I run a Google images search for the term “Ireland debt.”
Move on to page 2, 3 and 4 and we get more images of politicians and freeze frames images of talking heads from television news, this communicates something about the personalities involved but very little in the way of information. This is what you get when you break the first page result images down into type…
Clearly graphs make up most of it, what is also worth noting is how the instance of graphs drops off dramatically after the first page results.
The rest, namely satirical cartoons, placards and photography, can all generally be bunched together, in that they generally make rhetorical points without really communicating much in the way of information.
This is a collage of pages 2-5 of a google images search for the term “Ireland debt.”
As you can see graphs make up a lesser portion of the actual images associated with Ireland and her debt, but they are also the ones which feature highest in the search rankings for the term “Ireland debt,” would it be reasonable then to take from this that there must be some endemic quality to graphs in how they are searched for and referenced with regards the economic situation in Ireland? And would it also be therefore reasonable to assume that, seeing as graphs are one of the most basic forms of info-graphics, there must be a thirst out there for better more illustrative information graphics about Ireland’s debt?
Graphs are an affective and powerful illustrator of data, but they are limited in how much information they can communicate, especially when it comes to “big picture” analysis; cause, effect and patterns. They often require additional, sometimes lengthy explanation and analysis, and use terminology most people would struggle to define. You will rarely, if ever see a graph presented in isolation.
We are all quite familiar with how this crisis has been visualised in the media, and there is not much point analysing newspaper content or TV reports for images of depressed politicians and empty housing estates, so instead let’s broaden the scope and look at other ways the crisis has been illustrated.
First off the classic “w*nking f*cking bankers,” aside from the marvelous delivery and swearing (I love the way he tilts his head when he delivers the eponymous line), the speaker here summarises the situation quite effectively, especially for a foreign audience unfamiliar with the ins and outs. Still he’s a little light on figures, here Austrailian comedy duo Clarke and Dawe simply spout off the figures involved and let the evident absurdity of the situation speak for itself.
European debt wed (from the new york times)
An interesting comparison would be between the above video and this info-graphic (one of the few I’ve been able to track down on the Irish economic crisis) from the New York Times, as they both work from similar data sets but choose to illustrate them very differently.
I’ve also been pointed in the direction of Paul May’s work, who’s visualisations of factors particular to the current economic crisis can be viewed here granted there’s some gratuitous bar graphing going on here, but if you go through the images I thought his illustration of the difference in scale between unemployment now and unemployment in 1980 was particularly effective.
Finally I want to use the example of David Monaghan’s photographs of people on the verge of emigrating
This photo series struck a chord with a lot of people, nationally and internationally, with many people describing it as poignant, sad and powerful. I can’t say it effected me in quite the same way, still to each their own.
All in all, given the volume of coverage and analysis this crisis has received through the media, very little of it has been visualised in a way which steps away from the rhetoric and explains the facts. The nature of how the media reports things in the modern age is also a factor in this this, information is processed quickly and dealt with now. Not so long ago we had the publication of the Moriarty tribunal, which was discussed at length in the media by people who hadn’t had the time to read it. The Oireachtas, which censured Mr. Lowry following the report’s findings, did so under the understanding that no one other than Mr. Lowry would vote against it, even though few if any members of the house had read the document which so discredited him. If it was a serious enough of an issue that it warranted Mr. Lowry’s censure by the dáil, then surely it was serious enough to allow interested deputies the time to read the thing which so damned him in the first place?
Figures in the media are in such a hurry to make you to agree with their point, they refuse to give you the option of making up your own mind from the data that’s out there, this is something I hope IDIP can go some way towards amending.
In the next post I will be analysing a sample of the kind of content we get in the media when the crisis is explained to us, in particular how thinly spread the type of input we are exposed to is. If you have any better examples of how the crisis has been illustrated or any thoughts on this post in general, please feel free to comment below.
