The income from these resources helped him bring about economic improvements, reduce the nation's debt, build schools, improve transportation, and foster domestic business.
The global silver appetite partly reflects world economic improvements.
"Broader economic improvements in poor countries has been bringing living improvements to people.
It does not capture the value to consumers of economic improvements that are given away free.
But the Taoiseach acknowledged that despite recent economic improvements, many are yet to feel the benefits.
This is not to deny that America has seen real economic improvements.
It was a review of the Government's greatest hits, a recitation of the economic improvements of the past four years.
But if tangible economic improvements fail to materialise, public discontent may give hardliners an opportunity to hit back.
However, some economists debate the true impact of the Marshall Plan and whether economic improvements would have occurred without it.
The government contends that political freedoms can thrive only in the wake of economic improvements, which are inching upward but are not widely felt.
The Soviet Union was at a different stage of development, he says, and only democratic change had any chance of producing real economic improvements to ordinary people's lives.
