Bloody academics - they're at it again!

Those bloody academics are at it again. This time 46, mainly unknowns juniors, have put their names to another Lucey anti-NAMA diatribe in the Irish Times.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0826/1224253267074.html

On RTE’s Morning Ireland, Alan Ahearne neatly filleted Lucey & Co on the key issue – their willingness to pluck figures from the air without any hard information on the actual assets under consideration e.g.
- the level of equity originally provided by the promoter
- the current income generated by the development
- the ability of the promoter to service the borrowings from other income sources
- the location/value/potential of the individual assets

The number of gobshites willing to put their names to this media circus, run for the benefit of Messrs Lucey, Whelan and Gurdgiev, is frankly irrelevant.
The fact that the 46 are willing to put their names to this poorly researched, illogically argued valuation suggests that their opinions can and should be discarded.

I liked Ahearne’s line about this being a serious business and not just something for (idle) academics to mess about with.

Ahearne’s line from earlier this year that there are two types of economist – those who know they don’t know and those who don’t know they don’t know – is proving to be as true today as the day he said it, and the latter continue to outnumber the former.