Economic Outlook 2017: The start of a new age of anxiety

On the advent of ‘Global Trumpism’, Stephen Kinsella, Ireland’s economic commentator of the year, reflects on its potential to destabilise the Irish economy

In 1948, the poet WH Auden wrote The Age of Anxiety. Auden was talking about a world after the second world war in which the old certainties he was raised with had been blown away. By 1948, Britain had ceased to be a world power, the US was ascendant, and much of Europe was still in ashes. Auden was also talking about himself. Then aged 37, he was worried his best years were ...