Greece mk.II: The IMF enter Ireland...

IMO, the financial sector ruined the benefits of the other three aspects that you cited. There's always been a basic corruption in the Irish bank sustem, closely related to the government & the wealthy. Years ago, there were revelations about Ansbacher & DIRT accounts; methods of hiding income & assets from taxation. Powerful government figures used the major Irish banks as their piggy banks. Inquiries came & went. Few were punished. There were undoubtedly a lot of bribes in the zoning & building sectors. It seemed that almost everyone was making money, so few complained about the obvious problems in the system.

Are pensions & welfare "rights" at all, much less "basic rights"? Must government guarantee everyone a stable job? Also, in Ireland, almost everyone benefitted from bank loans, whether to purchase homes, speculate in real estate, or use equity for cars & vacations. Now, almost everyone has to share in the pain.

Are you serious? The EU has helped make the entire continent prosperous. It needs to be restructured, not destroyed.

The EU is nothing like the US, but I have no idea how bad the situation really is for our banks. I heard some commentators saying that most bigger German banks had stakes in the Irish banks, and put political pressure on the German government and the EU to help Ireland. If the Irish banks would have gone belly up the German banks would only have had losses though, they are apparently stable enough to handle something like that.

The Iberian Peninsula is next...

I have no doubt you are right - not many German banks would fail if Irish ones fell. But they sure would take a big smack - maybe 10% loss in value?

So here you have a rich continental bank owner/director. You have invested 10% in a high-performing Irish bank. Now that 10% is essentially worthless. Do you...

1) Shrug your shoulders, say you win some, you lose some, it was a tough day at the dogtrack, and forget about the millions of dollars you just lost, and sell off some of your wine cellar to pay for your yacht-docking fees in the Mediterranean?

Or

2) Tell the Irish government that if they let the banks fail, the Irish government better be ready to pay 20% interest on future loans/bonds from your bank. Or we can loan you some money now, as long as you promise to screw the taxpayers so you can pay us back. By doing this, you don't lose 10%, you actually gain 5%. New yacht time!

Why should the rich have to be inconvenienced by silly things like bad bets? That's just for the little guy.

...aaaaand the four-year plan Fianna Fail have come up with appears to be a vague crock of shit: http://www.budget.gov.ie/Leaflet.pdf

25,000 public sector jobs (the same public sector jobs the gov't claimed they could not afford to let go) havwe been slashed - but only £1.2bn/yr is estimated to be reduced in spending in the sector. In other words - only the bottom-enders are facing the axe

Also, minimum wage down by €1/hr, while VAT is set to go up over the next few years. Brilliant idea lads, just marvellous. With the issue of people driving up the N1 to the North to do their shopping being very serious for the last few years*, this is SURE to stimulate the economy!

Added to that, pensions and welfare appear to not be getting cut either. Great jobs in incentivising people to go out and find/create jobs! Somebody working 26 hours a week will be coming out with about €2 less than somebody on welfare. No, I am serious.

*Walmart own UK/N. Ire supermarket chain ASDA, and as of a year ago, the ASDA in the small border town of Newry (population 27,000) was the most profitable of any single store in the entire Walmart corporation.

The cheeky arseholes in a press conference had the nerve to mention that the number of people on welfare had gone down in the last year. The reason it has gone down is because 120,000 have emigrated in the last 12 months! In a nation of 4.5mn!

They increased VAT by a half of one % two years ago and subsequently reversed this as it didn't work and did drive us up North and now they are going to increase it by 1%

There is no ASDA in Newry, it's Sainsburys. Nearest ASDA is Downpatrick and I can see myself making several trips!

I understand the position of the German banks. But basically they invested into businesses that were running on false presumptions and non-working business models, while making a lot of money in the meantime (managers and shareholders putting it into their own pocket). Not that the whole thing goes belly-up the Irish taxpayers (and to a (by far) lesser degree other European tax payers) have to pay for it, while the managers and shareholders are not really punished at all? Deutsche Bank and all the others should have checked the business models of the Irish banks more thoroughly before putting their money into them. Basically it's the banks doing risky business but, instead of bearing the risk, putting it onto the tax payers. Makes totally sense for the financial industry. Not much sense to me as a taxpayer, however.

Sainsbury's even, then. I remember it got a fair bit of mention on Newstalk & such at the time - which was probably actually two years back then when they raised the VAT & that assbag Harney claimed people were being "unpatriotic" for not allowing themselves to be ripped off once the Celtic Tiger (Hidden Dragon) had been passed.

For those outside of Ireland, the price disparities even after allowing for different currencies (€ vs £) is staggering, even for the exact same products in the exact same retail chains (Tesco being a good example).

The budget in two-odd weeks is going to be... interesting. Will Cowen give TDs a pay raise to adjust for the boost in VAT? It honestly wouldn't really surprise me much, to be honest.

You were thinking of the Asda in Enniskillen!!

At the mo there is no value in going up to be fair. € =.80p. I was up two weeks ago and only really bought stuff you can't get down here.

If our demise does weaken € vs £ I'll do all my shopping there!! Fcuk you and your patriotism FF.

I read a week or so ago that neither the Irish government, nor the bank regulators nor the banks themselves had any idea how deep their problems were until NAMA started to look at the banks' books in earnest.

It was an utter failure on part of the Irish regulator and bankers combined with the harebrained guarantee of the banks' debt that drove Ireland into this situation.

Frankly as a German I don't see why we should give a single cent to solve the problem. If it were government debt alone so that the Irish could get a couple of years to make some needed reforms, fine by me. But thats not the case (in stark contrast to Greece). There are not many reforms necessary, the Irish economy is competitive, the Irish state (not necessarily the government) is able to act. Without the debt of the banks the Irish government should be able to borrow at reasonable rates. The whole bailout money is only used to fatten some banks. There is no way Ireland can pay back the debt, the GDP is 160billion and the EU will give them 90billion € on top of all the current debt?

The only solution is a haircut for the banks' debtors. If that spreads to German, British or French banks and threatens them with bankruptcy so be it. The states can then decide if they want to rescue their banks with their own tax money (and hopefully wiping out all those damn shareholders who let their banks invest in Ireland).


I really am speechless anytime I hear or read some idiot claiming that nobody is allowed to take or even talk about an haircut because the markets will lose confidence. Seriously, are they living in kindergarten or what? What ********ed up kind of policy is it which puts "confidence" at its center? Its the same dreck when US pundits clamour about the US president destroying confidence because he does this or doesn't do that. And what confidence can be lost? It is long gone.

As far as I can see uncertainty derails markets (if any psycho babble does). As soon as there is certainty (one way or the other) everything calms down.

I can't stop laughing at this, it's pretty much Cowen in a nutshell:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhYb6ZM-vds"]YouTube - Cowen HIGNFY[/ame]

In other news, it snowed here last night - only a little but it might get a lot heavier over the weekend. Now that might seem irrelevant, except that I am flying to Germany from Tuesday to Thursday, have already booked the hotel and with how unequipped a nation we are as a nation for snow, a lot of flights migth have to be cancelled/delayed from Dublin airport. Which means that at some point next week these Germans might be getting a phonecall from Ireland asking for money (in this case, a possible refund). Wouldn't be the first time.

Of course they are. Pensions and welfare are just delayed salary.

Unless it was free money, which I doubt, nobody 'benefitted' from anything. It's like saying that people in the US 'benefitted' from sub-prime mortgages...

Nobody will be immune.

It's simply not a matter of individual countries behaving wrong.

I think the secondary meaning of this news has not been covered at all.

Does this mean the IRA and splinters are well and truly dead in Ireland and NI? I mean, the IRA had to invest their money somewhere, and you'd think they'd setup middlemen and invest locally. If they stand to lose some of their investment, I'd imagine there would be bombs at the major irish banks or kneecapped members of bank boards.

And I'm sure somebody told them that this was another instance of stealing money from the everyday irish to pay off rich English bankers. Which would presumably result in the same.

So I guess the IRA and splinter groups have been effectively castrated. That's good news, right?

I think you'll find there wouldn't be too much outrage if the 'Ra did decide to take justice into their own hands and kneecap a few bankers!!