Sustainable Ireland

John Brutons article gets shredded by comments on the Irish Times

2011-05-10T03:09:00.000-07:00

OPINION: If Ireland did what Morgan Kelly advocates, the European Central Bank itself might go bust and the euro could collapse

MORGAN KELLY has sparked a lively debate about Irish economic policy with his Irish Times article of last Saturday – much like his previous interventions. He has a lot of credibility because he foresaw the bursting of the Irish housing bubble. To his credit, he does not confine himself to a critique with his latest contribution, but offers his own suggestions.

He is advocating a two-pronged strategy:

(1)That Ireland walk away from the EU-IMF deal (a notion that is, of course, attracting a lot of favourable media comment) and;

(2)that, in order to be able to pay its way in the absence of funds from the EU-IMF, Ireland should immediately eliminate its budget deficit (a drastic notion that, equally predictably, is being ignored in the same media comment).

While I favour speeding up the adjustment, doing it all in one year would be impossibly disruptive.

He claims that a strategy along these lines is needed because otherwise, he thinks, our debts are unsustainable. He bases this on pessimistic growth assumptions, which may or may not transpire. And he argues that a slow, messy bankruptcy would destroy an Irish economy that depends so much on international trust. Better, he argues, to do the whole job immediately.

There are a number of elements missing in Professor Kelly’s analysis.

First, he does not consider the impact of what he is suggesting on other countries, and how they might react.

The effect of a comparatively well-off country like Ireland (a founder member of the euro which had benefited more than most from EU agricultural, regional and cohesion funds) failing to pay money it owed to an EU institution would undermine the mutual confidence on which the EU is based.

If Ireland were to walk away from the EU-IMF deal, that would leave the European Central Bank itself with a huge shortfall. In fact the ECB might be insolvent. It might have to go to the member states to look for more capital. Emulating Ireland’s example, they might refuse, and then the euro would collapse. If they even hesitated about recapitalising the ECB, the resultant uncertainty could have a devastating effect on the world economy; an economy on which Ireland is more dependent for sales than most.

If the euro collapsed because of a failure of other EU states to recapitalise the ECB, or because of a breakdown in trust between its members, Ireland would have to launch a currency of its own in the same year that it would also have to cut wages by perhaps 40 per cent and increase tax revenues to meet Prof Kelly’s other requirement of balancing its budget in one year.

In walking away from the EU-IMF deal, Ireland would be reneging on freely contracted debts to an EU institution and to other EU members, so we would also presumably be excluded from the benefits of EU membership. For Ireland, the Common Agricultural Policy would disappear overnight, as might its access to EU markets for other products, at least until the debts it owed had been collected by other means.

Prof Kelly, who is an economic historian, should look up what happened when we last walked away from international financial obligations. We refused to pay land annuities to the UK in the 1930s, and found some of our critical exports excluded from the UK market, with devastating effects in what came to be remembered as the Economic War.

That is not to say that the EU should not be challenged. The EU-IMF programme may indeed be too optimistic. There is a lack of joined-up thinking on economic policy in the EU. The EU institutions may be too nervous about burden-sharing by private bondholders. There is a selfish nationalism in some of the stands being taken by our EU partners. But then there is a selfish nationalism in some of our own attitudes too. We all have domestic political constituencies and media to appease.

Ireland may not be as influential as it would like to be in the EU. But at least we are still in the EU, and we have some influence there still. We can use that influence to move the EU towards a more credible long-term strategy, one that allows countries such as Ireland time to restore their finances, and allows surplus countries such as Germany time to rebalance their economies towards consumption.

The coming into effect of the European Stability Mechanism in 2013 offers the prospect of all countries still in difficulty having more time and space to resolve their problems in a way that balances public and private interests better than was possible in the emergency conditions of 2008.

In calmer economic times, things are possible that are impossible in the midst of crisis and potential panic.

But trying to achieve all that overnight, by holding a gun to everyone else’s head as well as to our own, as the professor urges, seems to me to be needlessly reckless. Prof Kelly argues that we need to do something like this to keep our international credibility. But, like the advocates of default, I am afraid that the course he favours would destroy our international credibility instantly. It would involve immediate shock therapy for our economy, which could do much more harm than good. It would undermine trust.

All banking, all money, is based on mutual trust and confidence. Why else do we accept a scrap of paper, with no inherent value itself, as worth €100 or €500 or whatever other number is written on it?

Why else do we hand over our saving to banks on the promise that the money will be there when we need it?

It is all about trust. Without trust, the entire modern economy, built up over three centuries, would disappear overnight.

Breaking trust with our European and international neighbours would undermine the future of our own economy, and the economies of those to whom we sell. That is why I do not think Prof Kelly’s article, for all its erudition, offers good advice at all.

John Bruton is a former taoiseach and former EU ambassador to Washington. He is chairman of IFSC Ireland, a private sector body that seeks to promote Ireland’s international financial services sector

* Comments Feed
* |
* Email
* Facebook
* Twitter
* LinkedIn
* Reddit
* |
* More

36 Comments »
Echo 36 Items
Admin

Log Out

Follow

Moderation

General Settings

Admin Notices

–
[This user is an administrator] Oireachtas Retort
He is chairman of IFSC Ireland, a private sector body that seeks to promote Ireland’s international financial services sector.

Indeed
Today, 01:57:04
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Bryan O'Donoghue
" If Ireland did what Morgan Kelly advocates, the European Central Bank itself might go bust"

Who cares ? Ireland has been doing exactly as required by the ECB - specifically ensuring no eurozone bank goes bust and in doing so is rated as 42% likely to default on "government" debt inside of five years according to S&P rating agency.

The government is already stonewalling on CCCTB. What does 'constructive engagement' mean ? How out of touch with the REQUIREMENTS of Irish citizens in this regard are you people ?

Who cares about the ECB. It's not acting in the interests of the citizens of this state, appears to be acting against those interests are regular intervals and there's a word for that - enemy.

The ECB is Ireland's enemy. Lets not mince words.

How much worse will it actually get for this country irredeemably wedded to the Euro and the diktats of the technocrats in the ECB ? Ireland is right behind Greece in the ratings agencies estimation of default. Read the FT and WSJ for the last three years. Nobody is fooled. The public perhaps under-informed but, the people who's job it is to lend money to sovereign states clearly AREN'T fooled.

After three years of hapless dithering - Greece in on the cusp, the ostensibly useless political class is in denial. Morgan Kelly has mapped out a path - that avoids a sovereign default in this country.

Instead of sticking to the obviously flawed 'plan' of the ECB/Berlin - we as a sovereign nation should act now and impose a settlement rather than the do-nothing approach which has in effect led this country as lambs to the slaughter.

The 'great project' of European federalism is clearly well helped along hobbling sodenkinder like Ireland. Silence our dissent, bring the country to economic ruin, mandate the fiscal/political union by fait.

By the time Paddy realises what's happened it'll be way too late.

With the way the EU is going it won't take long for radical nationalist movements to start a 'campaign' in Brussels, Berlin and Frankfurt.

We can dress oppression from the EU up as 'help' but - hospital beds closing so that European bondholders can be paid off is oppression and eventually the inaction of the political class will unleash all sorts of non-political unpleasantness.
Today, 01:58:58
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] David O'Donnell
'The coming into effect of the European Stability Mechanism in 2013 offers the prospect of all countries still in difficulty having more time and space to resolve their problems in a way that balances public and private interests better than was possible in the emergency conditions of 2008.'

Why not now John? Now that we have 'saved the Euro', you want the Irish citizen-serfs to 'save the world'!

It is time to save ourselves - the banks' detritus is too heavy for the state, and its citizenry.
Today, 02:15:27
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Manofiona
In daring to challenge Prof Kelly's views, Mr Bruton will no doubt be widely criticised in the media. Of the 170 comments on Prof Kelly's article, I counted only 3, including my own, which disagreed with his proposals. The Irish people are being incited into believing that it is possible, and indeed desirable, to take unilateral steps whose only sure result would be to destabilise the Euro and therefore the whole process of European integration. Such consequences would be disastrous for Ireland and for every person in Ireland.

The terms of the so-called bail-out are tough: they had to be in order to be credible. If Ireland cannot meet them (and the evidence is by no means conclusive on this point), those terms will in all probability be changed. No one in the Eurozone wants a member state to fail. However, as is the case with all agreements, any change must meet the reasonable interests of all parties to it.

It is in the interest of all member states of the Eurozone for there to be an alignment over time of the economies of all the member states with the prevailing model in the zone, one which is very different from the model promoted by politicians who claimed that Ireland was closer to Boston than to Berlin. Any Irish government which wishes to establish credibility with its Eurozone partners must show that it is actively working to promote such alignment.

Instead of bamboozling the Irish people with prospects of unilateral actions which no sane Irish government could contemplate taking, those economists and commentators with pretentions to public influence would do well to look at the real challenges facing Ireland over the coming years as a member of a Eurozone which, as Martin Wolf noted in the Financial Times last week, will have to press on with ever closer economic and political integration in order for the Euro to be assured of a long-term future.
Today, 02:34:57
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Robert Browne
How about this for a way out. Reduce interest rates which were increased for Germany and France immediately and which our governor of the ICB Mr. Honohan voted for, telling us by so doing, that he was "playing for Ireland". Then the ECB can be mandated and empowered to proceed with the issuance of a common European sovereign bonds.

If our colleagues proceed with the slaughter of Piigs the foul stench will soon corrupt the entire body politic and destroy the entire European project. Ireland has become a venially corrupt country. We have been on a journey without maps and have not had a vision of where we wanted to go as a people for over 40 years now and that includes your time in office. The dystopia Ahern created was special. I am talking about people not GDP, GNP or some other esoteric ESRI statistical porn. Not one single coherent comprehensive plan has been put forward regarding where Irish society wants to be in 2020 or 2030. I am talking about philosophers, historians, artists, economists, politicians etc sitting down to come up with the road map we were never given. All the journeymen, politicians have done is piled up a mountain of debt as they cede more and more power to foreigners every single week. Meanwhile, all they can do is fill in the blank spots, left for them by the EU/IMF in the MOU (memorandum of understanding) Which one of our best journalists, Damien Kiberd accurately described as a surrender document. My one caveat about my "solution" is that I first want to see an end to the myriad Ponzi schemes, quango's, double pensions and political cronyism. I find it hard to be lectured by someone who preferring to leave office on the principle of putting VAT on children's shoes.

I want to see an end to the enormous moral and egregious abuses of power by unions and others that are continuing on a daily basis then I will move on. We always have the choice of making the hard decisions that Kelly prescribes and of bailing ourselves out by paying ourselves pro rata to what we take in, in taxes. We can take back control of our semi-states, adjust public sector pay and pensions, dole to the same levels as they are in the UK. After all, is it not us that is supposed to be insolvent? However, the likely hood of Irish people taking courageous decisions regarding their collective fate is slim to nil as long as the above mentioned continue with the balm of high public sector salaries and dole all paid for by endless borrowing from the ECB until the collapse comes.
Today, 02:42:07
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] conor77
No John, it's about a lot more than that, it's about what is right and what is wrong. It's about standing up for ourselves. That is how people will respect us, not on our knees begging for "trust" as you suggest...
Today, 02:45:55
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Roger Rafferty
If Ireland could have collapsed the Euro, as Mr Bruton says earlier on, what a glorious bargaining chip we had during the bail-out negotiations. Why then wasn't it played? A drastic measure indeed - but drastic measures were needed when the nation's sovereignty – now gone - was at stake. But I have absolutely no doubt that those batting for Ireland batted for the ECB as Morgan Kelly says, so the only drastic measures in play were those the ECB wanted. It’s treacherous stuff, but no surprise when you really see the allegiances of Ireland’s political elite, and top civil servants. The relationships between them and Europe are to the detriment of the ordinary Irish people. The allegiance or rather subservience of Irish politicians and critically their civil service advisers is to the EU project – a feature in part of years of gravy-training too. There needs to be serious decisions taken soon about Ireland's future relationship with the EU - and alternatives explored too. None of the political establishment in Ireland has any vision on this - Enda Kenny's speech yesterday, incredibly despite the kicking we've received from Europe, was to bemoan the fact that Ireland is no longer viewed by all as good European partners. This is shocking – as is the absence of comment about it in the papers. This kind of politics is finished, as it’s outdated guff, and doesn’t reflect our new – subservient – relationship with Europe (aided by our approval of the Lisbon Treaty, with a huge campaign effort helped by big business, bogus promises and an anti-democratic media consensus.) Mr Bruton and other EU insiders can bleat all they want about how it’s in Ireland’s interests to be closer to Europe – but the facts now tells ordinary people otherwise. Those days are over. A failure by those elected by the Irish people to grasp these new realities spells doom for them too like Fianna Fail. My money’s on the doom – and on Morgan Kelly’s analysis any day. We won’t have to wait long to see who’s right.
Today, 02:51:20
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Chris
To dispute everything said in this article we need one word, Iceland
Today, 04:26:08
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] CELTIC MELTDOWN
.
I find something very distasteful in lectures like this from a man who when he was Irish finance minister proposed the introduction of VAT on children's shoes.

He seems to be much more concerned with the welfare of EU bankers than with the welfare of the Irish people.
But then again, I suppose what else would one expect from the chairman of the Irish Financial Services Center, the location of all the chicanery which has brought Ireland's economy to it's knees.

.
Today, 04:27:54
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Chris
'The ECB might be insolvent' Really I am very disapionted in Mr. Bruton. He is scaremongering. Do we ever hear anyone talking about the US Federal Reserve being insolvent? What about quantitiative easing? Does the ECB not have access to printing presses to print new Euros to cover their losses? Please Mr. Bruton do not patronise the Irish people. They have had enough of that.
If we were to walk away from the EU-IMF deal we would be out of the Common Agricultural Policy. Again scarmongering. First of all Ireland now contibutes more to the EU than it receives. Secondly, there is no treaty or policy etc that says that not paying back debt of a bank based in your country would lead to being cut off from the CAP. Come in Mr. Bruton you can do better than this.
Mr. Bruton if you are reading this I believe that a student with a masters degree in International Economics and a good knowledge of EU integration could easily defeat you in a debate on this topic. Which is probably why you will never engage in one.

OPINION: If Ireland did what Morgan Kelly advocates, the European Central Bank itself might go bust and the euro could collapse

MORGAN KELLY has sparked a lively debate about Irish economic policy with his Irish Times article of last Saturday – much like his previous interventions. He has a lot of credibility because he foresaw the bursting of the Irish housing bubble. To his credit, he does not confine himself to a critique with his latest contribution, but offers his own suggestions.

He is advocating a two-pronged strategy:

(1)That Ireland walk away from the EU-IMF deal (a notion that is, of course, attracting a lot of favourable media comment) and;

(2)that, in order to be able to pay its way in the absence of funds from the EU-IMF, Ireland should immediately eliminate its budget deficit (a drastic notion that, equally predictably, is being ignored in the same media comment).

While I favour speeding up the adjustment, doing it all in one year would be impossibly disruptive.

He claims that a strategy along these lines is needed because otherwise, he thinks, our debts are unsustainable. He bases this on pessimistic growth assumptions, which may or may not transpire. And he argues that a slow, messy bankruptcy would destroy an Irish economy that depends so much on international trust. Better, he argues, to do the whole job immediately.

There are a number of elements missing in Professor Kelly’s analysis.

First, he does not consider the impact of what he is suggesting on other countries, and how they might react.

The effect of a comparatively well-off country like Ireland (a founder member of the euro which had benefited more than most from EU agricultural, regional and cohesion funds) failing to pay money it owed to an EU institution would undermine the mutual confidence on which the EU is based.

If Ireland were to walk away from the EU-IMF deal, that would leave the European Central Bank itself with a huge shortfall. In fact the ECB might be insolvent. It might have to go to the member states to look for more capital. Emulating Ireland’s example, they might refuse, and then the euro would collapse. If they even hesitated about recapitalising the ECB, the resultant uncertainty could have a devastating effect on the world economy; an economy on which Ireland is more dependent for sales than most.

If the euro collapsed because of a failure of other EU states to recapitalise the ECB, or because of a breakdown in trust between its members, Ireland would have to launch a currency of its own in the same year that it would also have to cut wages by perhaps 40 per cent and increase tax revenues to meet Prof Kelly’s other requirement of balancing its budget in one year.

In walking away from the EU-IMF deal, Ireland would be reneging on freely contracted debts to an EU institution and to other EU members, so we would also presumably be excluded from the benefits of EU membership. For Ireland, the Common Agricultural Policy would disappear overnight, as might its access to EU markets for other products, at least until the debts it owed had been collected by other means.

Prof Kelly, who is an economic historian, should look up what happened when we last walked away from international financial obligations. We refused to pay land annuities to the UK in the 1930s, and found some of our critical exports excluded from the UK market, with devastating effects in what came to be remembered as the Economic War.

That is not to say that the EU should not be challenged. The EU-IMF programme may indeed be too optimistic. There is a lack of joined-up thinking on economic policy in the EU. The EU institutions may be too nervous about burden-sharing by private bondholders. There is a selfish nationalism in some of the stands being taken by our EU partners. But then there is a selfish nationalism in some of our own attitudes too. We all have domestic political constituencies and media to appease.

Ireland may not be as influential as it would like to be in the EU. But at least we are still in the EU, and we have some influence there still. We can use that influence to move the EU towards a more credible long-term strategy, one that allows countries such as Ireland time to restore their finances, and allows surplus countries such as Germany time to rebalance their economies towards consumption.

The coming into effect of the European Stability Mechanism in 2013 offers the prospect of all countries still in difficulty having more time and space to resolve their problems in a way that balances public and private interests better than was possible in the emergency conditions of 2008.

In calmer economic times, things are possible that are impossible in the midst of crisis and potential panic.

But trying to achieve all that overnight, by holding a gun to everyone else’s head as well as to our own, as the professor urges, seems to me to be needlessly reckless. Prof Kelly argues that we need to do something like this to keep our international credibility. But, like the advocates of default, I am afraid that the course he favours would destroy our international credibility instantly. It would involve immediate shock therapy for our economy, which could do much more harm than good. It would undermine trust.

All banking, all money, is based on mutual trust and confidence. Why else do we accept a scrap of paper, with no inherent value itself, as worth €100 or €500 or whatever other number is written on it?

Why else do we hand over our saving to banks on the promise that the money will be there when we need it?

It is all about trust. Without trust, the entire modern economy, built up over three centuries, would disappear overnight.

Breaking trust with our European and international neighbours would undermine the future of our own economy, and the economies of those to whom we sell. That is why I do not think Prof Kelly’s article, for all its erudition, offers good advice at all.

John Bruton is a former taoiseach and former EU ambassador to Washington. He is chairman of IFSC Ireland, a private sector body that seeks to promote Ireland’s international financial services sector

* Comments Feed
* |
* Email
* Facebook
* Twitter
* LinkedIn
* Reddit
* |
* More

36 Comments »
Echo 36 Items
Admin

Log Out

Follow

Moderation

General Settings

Admin Notices

–
[This user is an administrator] Oireachtas Retort
He is chairman of IFSC Ireland, a private sector body that seeks to promote Ireland’s international financial services sector.

Indeed
Today, 01:57:04
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Bryan O'Donoghue
" If Ireland did what Morgan Kelly advocates, the European Central Bank itself might go bust"

Who cares ? Ireland has been doing exactly as required by the ECB - specifically ensuring no eurozone bank goes bust and in doing so is rated as 42% likely to default on "government" debt inside of five years according to S&P rating agency.

The government is already stonewalling on CCCTB. What does 'constructive engagement' mean ? How out of touch with the REQUIREMENTS of Irish citizens in this regard are you people ?

Who cares about the ECB. It's not acting in the interests of the citizens of this state, appears to be acting against those interests are regular intervals and there's a word for that - enemy.

The ECB is Ireland's enemy. Lets not mince words.

How much worse will it actually get for this country irredeemably wedded to the Euro and the diktats of the technocrats in the ECB ? Ireland is right behind Greece in the ratings agencies estimation of default. Read the FT and WSJ for the last three years. Nobody is fooled. The public perhaps under-informed but, the people who's job it is to lend money to sovereign states clearly AREN'T fooled.

After three years of hapless dithering - Greece in on the cusp, the ostensibly useless political class is in denial. Morgan Kelly has mapped out a path - that avoids a sovereign default in this country.

Instead of sticking to the obviously flawed 'plan' of the ECB/Berlin - we as a sovereign nation should act now and impose a settlement rather than the do-nothing approach which has in effect led this country as lambs to the slaughter.

The 'great project' of European federalism is clearly well helped along hobbling sodenkinder like Ireland. Silence our dissent, bring the country to economic ruin, mandate the fiscal/political union by fait.

By the time Paddy realises what's happened it'll be way too late.

With the way the EU is going it won't take long for radical nationalist movements to start a 'campaign' in Brussels, Berlin and Frankfurt.

We can dress oppression from the EU up as 'help' but - hospital beds closing so that European bondholders can be paid off is oppression and eventually the inaction of the political class will unleash all sorts of non-political unpleasantness.
Today, 01:58:58
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] David O'Donnell
'The coming into effect of the European Stability Mechanism in 2013 offers the prospect of all countries still in difficulty having more time and space to resolve their problems in a way that balances public and private interests better than was possible in the emergency conditions of 2008.'

Why not now John? Now that we have 'saved the Euro', you want the Irish citizen-serfs to 'save the world'!

It is time to save ourselves - the banks' detritus is too heavy for the state, and its citizenry.
Today, 02:15:27
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Manofiona
In daring to challenge Prof Kelly's views, Mr Bruton will no doubt be widely criticised in the media. Of the 170 comments on Prof Kelly's article, I counted only 3, including my own, which disagreed with his proposals. The Irish people are being incited into believing that it is possible, and indeed desirable, to take unilateral steps whose only sure result would be to destabilise the Euro and therefore the whole process of European integration. Such consequences would be disastrous for Ireland and for every person in Ireland.

The terms of the so-called bail-out are tough: they had to be in order to be credible. If Ireland cannot meet them (and the evidence is by no means conclusive on this point), those terms will in all probability be changed. No one in the Eurozone wants a member state to fail. However, as is the case with all agreements, any change must meet the reasonable interests of all parties to it.

It is in the interest of all member states of the Eurozone for there to be an alignment over time of the economies of all the member states with the prevailing model in the zone, one which is very different from the model promoted by politicians who claimed that Ireland was closer to Boston than to Berlin. Any Irish government which wishes to establish credibility with its Eurozone partners must show that it is actively working to promote such alignment.

Instead of bamboozling the Irish people with prospects of unilateral actions which no sane Irish government could contemplate taking, those economists and commentators with pretentions to public influence would do well to look at the real challenges facing Ireland over the coming years as a member of a Eurozone which, as Martin Wolf noted in the Financial Times last week, will have to press on with ever closer economic and political integration in order for the Euro to be assured of a long-term future.
Today, 02:34:57
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Robert Browne
How about this for a way out. Reduce interest rates which were increased for Germany and France immediately and which our governor of the ICB Mr. Honohan voted for, telling us by so doing, that he was "playing for Ireland". Then the ECB can be mandated and empowered to proceed with the issuance of a common European sovereign bonds.

If our colleagues proceed with the slaughter of Piigs the foul stench will soon corrupt the entire body politic and destroy the entire European project. Ireland has become a venially corrupt country. We have been on a journey without maps and have not had a vision of where we wanted to go as a people for over 40 years now and that includes your time in office. The dystopia Ahern created was special. I am talking about people not GDP, GNP or some other esoteric ESRI statistical porn. Not one single coherent comprehensive plan has been put forward regarding where Irish society wants to be in 2020 or 2030. I am talking about philosophers, historians, artists, economists, politicians etc sitting down to come up with the road map we were never given. All the journeymen, politicians have done is piled up a mountain of debt as they cede more and more power to foreigners every single week. Meanwhile, all they can do is fill in the blank spots, left for them by the EU/IMF in the MOU (memorandum of understanding) Which one of our best journalists, Damien Kiberd accurately described as a surrender document. My one caveat about my "solution" is that I first want to see an end to the myriad Ponzi schemes, quango's, double pensions and political cronyism. I find it hard to be lectured by someone who preferring to leave office on the principle of putting VAT on children's shoes.

I want to see an end to the enormous moral and egregious abuses of power by unions and others that are continuing on a daily basis then I will move on. We always have the choice of making the hard decisions that Kelly prescribes and of bailing ourselves out by paying ourselves pro rata to what we take in, in taxes. We can take back control of our semi-states, adjust public sector pay and pensions, dole to the same levels as they are in the UK. After all, is it not us that is supposed to be insolvent? However, the likely hood of Irish people taking courageous decisions regarding their collective fate is slim to nil as long as the above mentioned continue with the balm of high public sector salaries and dole all paid for by endless borrowing from the ECB until the collapse comes.
Today, 02:42:07
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] conor77
No John, it's about a lot more than that, it's about what is right and what is wrong. It's about standing up for ourselves. That is how people will respect us, not on our knees begging for "trust" as you suggest...
Today, 02:45:55
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Roger Rafferty
If Ireland could have collapsed the Euro, as Mr Bruton says earlier on, what a glorious bargaining chip we had during the bail-out negotiations. Why then wasn't it played? A drastic measure indeed - but drastic measures were needed when the nation's sovereignty – now gone - was at stake. But I have absolutely no doubt that those batting for Ireland batted for the ECB as Morgan Kelly says, so the only drastic measures in play were those the ECB wanted. It’s treacherous stuff, but no surprise when you really see the allegiances of Ireland’s political elite, and top civil servants. The relationships between them and Europe are to the detriment of the ordinary Irish people. The allegiance or rather subservience of Irish politicians and critically their civil service advisers is to the EU project – a feature in part of years of gravy-training too. There needs to be serious decisions taken soon about Ireland's future relationship with the EU - and alternatives explored too. None of the political establishment in Ireland has any vision on this - Enda Kenny's speech yesterday, incredibly despite the kicking we've received from Europe, was to bemoan the fact that Ireland is no longer viewed by all as good European partners. This is shocking – as is the absence of comment about it in the papers. This kind of politics is finished, as it’s outdated guff, and doesn’t reflect our new – subservient – relationship with Europe (aided by our approval of the Lisbon Treaty, with a huge campaign effort helped by big business, bogus promises and an anti-democratic media consensus.) Mr Bruton and other EU insiders can bleat all they want about how it’s in Ireland’s interests to be closer to Europe – but the facts now tells ordinary people otherwise. Those days are over. A failure by those elected by the Irish people to grasp these new realities spells doom for them too like Fianna Fail. My money’s on the doom – and on Morgan Kelly’s analysis any day. We won’t have to wait long to see who’s right.
Today, 02:51:20
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Chris
To dispute everything said in this article we need one word, Iceland
Today, 04:26:08
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] CELTIC MELTDOWN
.
I find something very distasteful in lectures like this from a man who when he was Irish finance minister proposed the introduction of VAT on children's shoes.

He seems to be much more concerned with the welfare of EU bankers than with the welfare of the Irish people.
But then again, I suppose what else would one expect from the chairman of the Irish Financial Services Center, the location of all the chicanery which has brought Ireland's economy to it's knees.

.
Today, 04:27:54
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Chris
'The ECB might be insolvent' Really I am very disapionted in Mr. Bruton. He is scaremongering. Do we ever hear anyone talking about the US Federal Reserve being insolvent? What about quantitiative easing? Does the ECB not have access to printing presses to print new Euros to cover their losses? Please Mr. Bruton do not patronise the Irish people. They have had enough of that.
If we were to walk away from the EU-IMF deal we would be out of the Common Agricultural Policy. Again scarmongering. First of all Ireland now contibutes more to the EU than it receives. Secondly, there is no treaty or policy etc that says that not paying back debt of a bank based in your country would lead to being cut off from the CAP. Come in Mr. Bruton you can do better than this.
Mr. Bruton if you are reading this I believe that a student with a masters degree in International Economics and a good knowledge of EU integration could easily defeat you in a debate on this topic. Which is probably why you will never engage in one.

Des Canine
The Europhile establishment is circling the wagons - Maire GQ and Kenny are talking similar nonsense!

So now all the assurances we were given at the various EU referendums are exposed, by Mr Bruton, to mean nothing. We could be kicked out of the EU for refusing to pay for private Franco-German gambling debts.

Rather more interesting and relevant stuff in the Wall Street Journal today by the leader of the True Finns.

I suggest you read that.

As Mr Burton says - pay attention to "how others might react" to this continued Euro-scam; organised and orchestrated by the same clique of failed politicians and bankers who got us into this mess despite the clear warnings of Morgan Kelly and many others.

Oh yes. And given the choice again I'd have no hesitation in refusing to pay war reparations to the former imperial power under the guise of "international obligations". There is actually a much greater similarity to the events of the 1930s and today then perhaps Mr Bruton intended to reveal.
Today, 09:04:28
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Jim O'Sullivan
"We all have domestic political constituencies and media to appease"

Not to mention the vested interests of those with the money. Any chance that, as we face into our difficulties, we might try appeasing justice and fairness? Can Mr Bruton justify the pensions and other perks he receives from the Irish state given that the incomes of the most vulnerable are being cut for example? The whole taxation policy created by the outgoing govenrment, that sees wealth redistributed upwards, remains in situ and so long as we refuse to bite the bullet and decide to share what we have a bit more fairly, we continue to expose the country to the disastor of social breakdown, a point which the political establishment refuses to confront or even discuss.
Today, 09:08:12
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Brian Flanagan
All very well for you to talk down to us as a paid lobbyist for the financial services industry with big EU and Dail pensions. Look at what you wrote:

"All banking, all money, is based on mutual trust and confidence. Why else do we accept a scrap of paper, with no inherent value itself, as worth €100 or €500 or whatever other number is written on it?"

Why do you think that huge amounts of cash have left the Irish banking system? Why are 10year bonds over 10%? Becauase of lack of trust and confidence.

"Why else do we hand over our saving to banks on the promise that the money will be there when we need it?"

Not exactly comparable but lots of people invested their savings in the Irish banks in the expectation that they would provide a modest, low risk flow of dividends. They need the cash now so where is it? Burnt by a crowd of greedy incompetent bankers. Their share certs are "scraps of paper, with no inherent value".

"It is all about trust. Without trust, the entire modern economy, built up over three centuries, would disappear overnight."

You are right on that one. People don't trust bankers (Irish or EU), politicians and ex-politicians. That is why the economy is going down the plug hole. Ireland has no credibility thanks to these people. No amount of spinning will restore it. We should have these people in jail.

All your response to Kelly has done is to annoy people even more. Apologies for coming across as angry. While anger is not a policy (as Conor McCarthy said recently) it can be a very powerful motivator to pursue change.

Ireland needs real, real help or we default: http://www.planware.org/briansblog/2011/04/banking-crisis-help-us-or-we-default.html
Today, 09:09:55
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Pope Epopt
So we have it on good authority that any form of default will cause the skies to be rent asunder, the earth with groan and all manner of plagues will be visited upon this land.

The problem is that we've stopped believing in this consensus.

Ireland is bankrupt. Let's get on with the default - the ECB, with it's constitutional mono-mania about price stability is an absurdity anyway. If we did bring about a crisis in that institution, possibly leading to it's replacement with something more functional, then we would be doing the rest of Europe a favour.
Today, 09:22:28
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Gavin O'Neill
Mr Bruton has been an excellent servant for Ireland but today his argument is flawed. It implies that if Ireland refuses to pay back the debts of private banks that the ECB could become insolvent. It won't. It always has the option of increasing liquidity in a manner similiar to the way that the US and UK central banks have done. The ECB, and particularly the Germans, do not want to do this, but it is fast becoming the only option. Ireland can not afford to pay the bank debts back and the current policy of bowing down to the EU/ECB in the hope that they take pity on us, eventually, will do more damage in the long run than taking some dynamic or dramatic acion. It is in the power of the ECB/EU to sort out this mess, but they need to be forced to take action. We need to get on the front foot or the country will die................
Today, 09:24:29
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Praetorian Guard
Ironic piece is it?
Today, 09:32:57
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Mark Keenan
John Bruton admits "If Ireland were to walk away from the EU-IMF deal, that would leave the European Central Bank itself with a huge shortfall". The EU-IMF deal is therefore as much a bailout for europe. Therefore why should a country of only 4 million people be forced to pay the burden for shielding europe (600 million people) from collapse of the ECB??? In addition there is no moral reason for citizens to pay the gambling debts of private banks.
In addition, ECB is part of a flawed global banking system (fractional reserve banking) that is scrambling to save itself from collapse. Mr. Bruton doesnt seem to realise that bailing out a flawed system is not the answer. Two wrongs do not make a right.

David McWilliams stated on Pat Kenny yesterday, that Finland (a highly successful country) and Asian countries imposed 'haircuts' on internatonal bondholders during past crises. but the FF and FG/Lab govs have miserably failed to do this here.

John Bruton also conveniently forgets that Ireland gave away 95% of its fishing rights (worth an estimated €400 billion) so as to get grants for landowners, (all the money the landowners got from the EU wouldn't cover what we lost by or could have developed with one of the biggest fishing sea areas in the world - which should have been our main industry). EU hand outs to landowners also drove land prices through the roof - thus causing the cost of housing and land for roads, factories, hospitals, etc. to become the most expensive in Europe. This caused the vast majority of the Irish people to pay for the wealth of the landowners. And, today we have Nama because of it.

Establishment figures like Mr.Bruton dont seem to realise there is a bigger picture and a bigger storm on the way and redesign of the current outdated flawed neo-classical economic system is needed to avoid ecological and resource collpase. See article at http://www.thinkorswim.ie/?p=1324

Also why has the Irish Times stopped allowing comments on the runaway success of Morgan Kellys article ???
Today, 09:44:17
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Mark Keenan
John Bruton shouts about what might happen in case of default but doesnt seem to realise some sort of default is inevitable anyway under the current unjust bailout/austerity package to pay for the gambling debts of privvate banks. I agree with Professor Morgan Kelly.
Today, 09:50:32
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Jim
The choice is simple. We either allow ourselves to become the sacrificial lamb on the altar of EU financial stability, or we take our destiny into our own hands. Both options will be extremely painful but in the case of the second we would be acting solely in the interests of Ireland and its people. Who else out there cares as much about this country? The ECB? The IMF? The US Treasury?

What is stopping us from taking the right course of action is the kind of 'guilt-trip' regularly foisted on us in articles such as this, as in we 'benefited more than most from EU agricultural, regional and cohesion funds'. Even if we were net beneficiaries of EU largesse as Bruton suggests, it should still not prevent us taking action in our own national interest. However, like all Europhiles, Bruton never mentions the price we paid for those benefits. And I don't just mean the loss of national sovereignty, but also the giving away of our vast natural resources in the seas around this island. Properly exploited, this would have been worth a multiple of the billions we received from Europe.

Ireland has endured hardship in the past in the interests of restoring our freedom. However, nothing in Prof. Kelly's bleak prescription would come close to the impact of the Penal Laws or the Famine, for instance. Nevertheless, compared with our recent history, times would get very tough. But they will be even tougher after the inevitable bankruptcy.

This is why it is essential for the present government to take action now, instead of waiting for some chimerical uplift in the world economy to rescue us. As Prof. Kelly stated, we really only have until the next election, when perhaps more extreme elements will be waiting to replace yet another failed administration.
Today, 09:53:15
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] daniel king
The only thing our government should be doing immediately, is informing the E.U that if we do not receive a 200 billion euro loan at a reasonable interest rate over 30 years, then it is a default scenario in the next few months for this poor sovereign state.

Ethicist
The folly of taking seriously the views of economists is well demonstrated with the latest ranting from Ireland’s own version of Dr. Kevorkian (aka Morgan Kelly) who seems intent on directing Ireland to commit national suicide.

As much as Ireland’s very own Dr. Kevorkian would have it commit mass kamikaze, common sense needs to prevail.

Much of Ireland’s present difficulties can be traced to the ranting of economists who backed the disastrous PD led policies of deregulation and freewheeling market capitalism that has brought Ireland to its present state.

That Ireland’s media continues to give credibility in the destructive ranting of economists given the damage that they have already wrought on the country is incredible.
Today, 10:07:54
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Jim Walsh
Interesting that in all the criticism on John Bruton and his article he was right in pointing out that nobody here has even attempted to address the second point of Morgan Kelly's article - the fact that by walking away we would have to eliminate our fiscial deficit immedidately. Everybody is just too busy bashing Euope and Mr. Bruton without facing the reality of ALL of what Morgan Kelly has suggested.

So wise people, if we walk away from the ECB/IMF/EU deal, how would you implement the €18 billion adjustment that would be required immediately to stop the country from going bankrupt. How about €12 billion of cuts in public services and €6 billion of tax increases? Or the other way around? Anybody here interested in tax rates of 50%-60% or wage cuts of 30%-40%?

Also how would we expect our ecomony to grow in such circumstances, especially since our the financial crisis in Europe cause by such an Irish default would probably send most of our main export markets into recession. For all the Europe hatred being expressed here we should be aware that most of our exports go there.

And lets not mention the fact that the rest of the Irish banks would probably collapse as the ECB removes funding from them, taking with them billions in savings of ordinary Irish people. Where would the government get the money to guarantee those deposits? Shall we go back to a barter system when we don't have a functioning banking system.

Easy to support the part of Morgan Kelly's analysis you like, but if you're on the bandwagon at least have the honesty to address the impact of ALL of his suggestions.
Today, 10:09:32
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Sjöhuvud
"If Ireland did what Morgan Kelly advocates, the European Central Bank itself might go bust and the euro could collapse."

So instead Ireland is doing what the European Central Bank is advocating, and Ireland is going bust.
Today, 10:14:27
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] mikeirl
It's crystal clear Bruton speaks here as a representative of the ruling elites of the banker & wealth classes.

ECB go bust? What complete & utter nonsense.

How rich of Bruton to talk about 'trust'. He is one of the elites whom ordinary people 'trusted' to set up a European common currency & banking system that was not designed from the outset to become a cesspit of corruption & gambling with profits for themselves & the losses for the rest of us.

Note Mr Bruton, along with all the rest of the present system's cheerleaders, isn't too vocal on delving into the mess itself to establish how it all went wrong & what needs changing to prevent it happening again. Sure, why would they? They aren't much affected & are very well placed to profit from recession fire sales.
Today, 10:17:52
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] chomp
Mr Bruton - what you describe is a European problem due to the breadth of its impact. Yet what you are asking for is for Ireland to deal with the majority of this problem alone.

A possibly simplistic solution would be for Ireland to deal with its (massive) budgetary issues while the ECB/EU take the legal obligation of the banks liabilities. It is simply unsustainable, and indeed immoral, to ask the population of this country to deal with the debts of international banks and not default. This was a situation forced on us with incorrect information and massive pressure from the global powers to be. Without the threat of a default, we simply cannot force this hand from the ECB. The rest of Eurrope has taken a schadenfreude stance, which may be somewhat justifiable in the short term, but places a noose around our necks in the medium to long term.

As a population many did gain massively from the boom and some have yet to re-adjust to the bust. We should be willing to accept that our current budget deficit is ridiculously unrealistic. This will be a painful short term adjustment, but the long term slow grinding pain is not the answer. We need to allow people to plan for the future. In the mean-time the Irish population needs to show to the TV cameras of Europe why this is unsustainable and our displeasure at the circumstances of being forced into guaranteeing bank liabilities due to the ECBs concern of contagion. If they are so worried about it, they need to help us to a greater extent than short term funding, or expensive bailout financing.
Today, 10:57:08
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] V
The entire modern economy is all about trust..?? Trust in mammon..?? One way or another this little EU member state will pay the price for losing the run of itself and throwing caution to the wind……….which is to say putting its “trust” in the philanthropy of the ECB loan sharks that instinctively prey on smaller fish splashing about in the unchartered waters of uncertainty that surround this whole project of the homogenisation of Europe based solely on currency.
Today, 10:57:49
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate

Morgan Kellys article - Irelands future depends on breaking free from bailout

2011-05-09T02:50:00.000-07:00

OPINION: Ireland is heading for bankruptcy, which would be catastrophic for a country that trades on its reputation as a safe place to do business, writes MORGAN KELLY

WITH THE Irish Government on track to owe a quarter of a trillion euro by 2014, a prolonged and chaotic national bankruptcy is becoming inevitable. By the time the dust settles, Ireland’s last remaining asset, its reputation as a safe place from which to conduct business, will have been destroyed.

Ireland is facing economic ruin.

While most people would trace our ruin to to the bank guarantee of September 2008, the real error was in sticking with the guarantee long after it had become clear that the bank losses were insupportable. Brian Lenihan’s original decision to guarantee most of the bonds of Irish banks was a mistake, but a mistake so obvious and so ridiculous that it could easily have been reversed. The ideal time to have reversed the bank guarantee was a few months later when Patrick Honohan was appointed governor of the Central Bank and assumed de facto control of Irish economic policy.

As a respected academic expert on banking crises, Honohan commanded the international authority to have announced that the guarantee had been made in haste and with poor information, and would be replaced by a restructuring where bonds in the banks would be swapped for shares.

Instead, Honohan seemed unperturbed by the possible scale of bank losses, repeatedly insisting that they were “manageable”. Like most Irish economists of his generation, he appeared to believe that Ireland was still the export-driven powerhouse of the 1990s, rather than the credit-fuelled Ponzi scheme it had become since 2000; and the banking crisis no worse than the, largely manufactured, government budget crisis of the late 1980s.

Rising dismay at Honohan’s judgment crystallised into outright scepticism after an extraordinary interview with Bloomberg business news on May 28th last year. Having overseen the Central Bank’s “quite aggressive” stress tests of the Irish banks, he assured them that he would have “the two big banks, fixed by the end of the year. I think it’s quite good news The banks are floating away from dependence on the State and will be free standing”.

Honohan’s miscalculation of the bank losses has turned out to be the costliest mistake ever made by an Irish person. Armed with Honohan’s assurances that the bank losses were manageable, the Irish government confidently rode into the Little Bighorn and repaid the bank bondholders, even those who had not been guaranteed under the original scheme. This suicidal policy culminated in the repayment of most of the outstanding bonds last September.

Disaster followed within weeks. Nobody would lend to Irish banks, so that the maturing bonds were repaid largely by emergency borrowing from the European Central Bank: by November the Irish banks already owed more than €60 billion. Despite aggressive cuts in government spending, the certainty that bank losses would far exceed Honohan’s estimates led financial markets to stop lending to Ireland.

On November 16th, European finance ministers urged Lenihan to accept a bailout to stop the panic spreading to Spain and Portugal, but he refused, arguing that the Irish government was funded until the following summer. Although attacked by the Irish media for this seemingly delusional behaviour, Lenihan, for once, was doing precisely the right thing. Behind Lenihan’s refusal lay the thinly veiled threat that, unless given suitably generous terms, Ireland could hold happily its breath for long enough that Spain and Portugal, who needed to borrow every month, would drown.

At this stage, with Lenihan looking set to exploit his strong negotiating position to seek a bailout of the banks only, Honohan intervened. As well as being Ireland’s chief economic adviser, he also plays for the opposing team as a member of the council of the European Central Bank, whose decisions he is bound to carry out. In Frankfurt for the monthly meeting of the ECB on November 18th, Honohan announced on RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland that Ireland would need a bailout of “tens of billions”.

Rarely has a finance minister been so deftly sliced off at the ankles by his central bank governor. And so the Honohan Doctrine that bank losses could and should be repaid by Irish taxpayers ran its predictable course with the financial collapse and international bailout of the Irish State.

Ireland’s Last Stand began less shambolically than you might expect. The IMF, which believes that lenders should pay for their stupidity before it has to reach into its pocket, presented the Irish with a plan to haircut €30 billion of unguaranteed bonds by two-thirds on average. Lenihan was overjoyed, according to a source who was there, telling the IMF team: “You are Ireland’s salvation.”

The deal was torpedoed from an unexpected direction. At a conference call with the G7 finance ministers, the haircut was vetoed by US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner who, as his payment of $13 billion from government-owned AIG to Goldman Sachs showed, believes that bankers take priority over taxpayers. The only one to speak up for the Irish was UK chancellor George Osborne, but Geithner, as always, got his way. An instructive, if painful, lesson in the extent of US soft power, and in who our friends really are.

The negotiations went downhill from there. On one side was the European Central Bank, unabashedly representing Ireland’s creditors and insisting on full repayment of bank bonds. On the other was the IMF, arguing that Irish taxpayers would be doing well to balance their government’s books, let alone repay the losses of private banks. And the Irish? On the side of the ECB, naturally.

In the circumstances, the ECB walked away with everything it wanted. The IMF were scathing of the Irish performance, with one staffer describing the eagerness of some Irish negotiators to side with the ECB as displaying strong elements of Stockholm Syndrome.

The bailout represents almost as much of a scandal for the IMF as it does for Ireland. The IMF found itself outmanoeuvred by ECB negotiators, their low opinion of whom they are not at pains to conceal. More importantly, the IMF was forced by the obduracy of Geithner and the spinelessness, or worse, of the Irish to lend their imprimatur, and €30 billion of their capital, to a deal that its negotiators privately admit will end in Irish bankruptcy. Lending to an insolvent state, which has no hope of reducing its debt enough to borrow in markets again, breaches the most fundamental rule of the IMF, and a heated debate continues there over the legality of the Irish deal.

Six months on, and with Irish government debt rated one notch above junk and the run on Irish banks starting to spread to household deposits, it might appear that the Irish bailout of last November has already ended in abject failure. On the contrary, as far as its ECB architects are concerned, the bailout has turned out to be an unqualified success.

The one thing you need to understand about the Irish bailout is that it had nothing to do with repairing Ireland’s finances enough to allow the Irish Government to start borrowing again in the bond markets at reasonable rates: what people ordinarily think of a bailout as doing.

The finances of the Irish Government are like a bucket with a large hole in the form of the banking system. While any half-serious rescue would have focused on plugging this hole, the agreed bailout ostentatiously ignored the banks, except for reiterating the ECB-Honohan view that their losses would be borne by Irish taxpayers. Try to imagine the Bank of England’s insisting that Northern Rock be rescued by Newcastle City Council and you have some idea of how seriously the ECB expects the Irish bailout to work.

Instead, the sole purpose of the Irish bailout was to frighten the Spanish into line with a vivid demonstration that EU rescues are not for the faint-hearted. And the ECB plan, so far anyway, has worked. Given a choice between being strung up like Ireland – an object of international ridicule, paying exorbitant rates on bailout funds, its government ministers answerable to a Hungarian university lecturer – or mending their ways, the Spanish have understandably chosen the latter.

But why was it necessary, or at least expedient, for the EU to force an economic collapse on Ireland to frighten Spain? The answer goes back to a fundamental, and potentially fatal, flaw in the design of the euro zone: the lack of any means of dealing with large, insolvent banks.

Back when the euro was being planned in the mid-1990s, it never occurred to anyone that cautious, stodgy banks like AIB and Bank of Ireland, run by faintly dim former rugby players, could ever borrow tens of billions overseas, and lose it all on dodgy property loans. Had the collapse been limited to Irish banks, some sort of rescue deal might have been cobbled together; but a suspicion lingers that many Spanish banks – which inflated a property bubble almost as exuberant as Ireland’s, but in the world’s ninth largest economy – are hiding losses as large as those that sank their Irish counterparts.

Uniquely in the world, the European Central Bank has no central government standing behind it that can levy taxes. To rescue a banking system as large as Spain’s would require a massive commitment of resources by European countries to a European Monetary Fund: something so politically complex and financially costly that it will only be considered in extremis, to avert the collapse of the euro zone. It is easiest for now for the ECB to keep its fingers crossed that Spain pulls through by itself, encouraged by the example made of the Irish.

Irish insolvency is now less a matter of economics than of arithmetic. If everything goes according to plan, as it always does, Ireland’s government debt will top €190 billion by 2014, with another €45 billion in Nama and €35 billion in bank recapitalisation, for a total of €270 billion, plus whatever losses the Irish Central Bank has made on its emergency lending. Subtracting off the likely value of the banks and Nama assets, Namawinelake (by far the best source on the Irish economy) reckons our final debt will be about €220 billion, and I think it will be closer to €250 billion, but these differences are immaterial: either way we are talking of a Government debt that is more than €120,000 per worker, or 60 per cent larger than GNP.

Economists have a rule of thumb that once its national debt exceeds its national income, a small economy is in danger of default (large economies, like Japan, can go considerably higher). Ireland is so far into the red zone that marginal changes in the bailout terms can make no difference: we are going to be in the Hudson.

The ECB applauded and lent Ireland the money to ensure that the banks that lent to Anglo and Nationwide be repaid, and now finds itself in the situation where, as a consequence, the banks that lent to the Irish Government are at risk of losing most of what they lent. In other words, the Irish banking crisis has become part of the larger European sovereign debt crisis.

Given the political paralysis in the EU, and a European Central Bank that sees its main task as placating the editors of German tabloids, the most likely outcome of the European debt crisis is that, after two years or so to allow French and German banks to build up loss reserves, the insolvent economies will be forced into some sort of bankruptcy.

Make no mistake: while government defaults are almost the normal state of affairs in places like Greece and Argentina, for a country like Ireland that trades on its reputation as a safe place to do business, a bankruptcy would be catastrophic. Sovereign bankruptcies drag on for years as creditors hold out for better terms, or sell to so-called vulture funds that engage in endless litigation overseas to have national assets such as aircraft impounded in the hope that they can make a sufficient nuisance of themselves to be bought off.

Worse still, a bankruptcy can do nothing to repair Ireland’s finances. Given the other commitments of the Irish State (to the banks, Nama, EU, ECB and IMF), for a bankruptcy to return government debt to a sustainable level, the holders of regular government bonds will have to be more or less wiped out. Unfortunately, most Irish government bonds are held by Irish banks and insurance companies.

In other words, we have embarked on a futile game of passing the parcel of insolvency: first from the banks to the Irish State, and next from the State back to the banks and insurance companies. The eventual outcome will likely see Ireland as some sort of EU protectorate, Europe’s answer to Puerto Rico.

Suppose that we did not want to follow our current path towards an ECB-directed bankruptcy and spiralling national ruin, is there anything we could do? While Prof Honohan sportingly threw away our best cards last September, there still is a way out that, while not painless, is considerably less painful than what Europe has in mind for us.

National survival requires that Ireland walk away from the bailout. This in turn requires the Government to do two things: disengage from the banks, and bring its budget into balance immediately.

First the banks. While the ECB does not want to rescue the Irish banks, it cannot let them collapse either and start a wave of panic that sweeps across Europe. So, every time one of you expresses your approval of the Irish banks by moving your savings to a foreign-owned bank, the Irish bank goes and replaces your money with emergency borrowing from the ECB or the Irish Central Bank. Their current borrowings are €160 billion.

The original bailout plan was that the loan portfolios of Irish banks would be sold off to repay these borrowings. However, foreign banks know that many of these loans, mortgages especially, will eventually default, and were not interested. As a result, the ECB finds itself with the Irish banks wedged uncomfortably far up its fundament, and no way of dislodging them.

This allows Ireland to walk away from the banking system by returning the Nama assets to the banks, and withdrawing its promissory notes in the banks. The ECB can then learn the basic economic truth that if you lend €160 billion to insolvent banks backed by an insolvent state, you are no longer a creditor: you are the owner. At some stage the ECB can take out an eraser and, where “Emergency Loan” is written in the accounts of Irish banks, write “Capital” instead. When it chooses to do so is its problem, not ours.

At a stroke, the Irish Government can halve its debt to a survivable €110 billion. The ECB can do nothing to the Irish banks in retaliation without triggering a catastrophic panic in Spain and across the rest of Europe. The only way Europe can respond is by cutting off funding to the Irish Government.

So the second strand of national survival is to bring the Government budget immediately into balance. The reason for governments to run deficits in recessions is to smooth out temporary dips in economic activity. However, our current slump is not temporary: Ireland bet everything that house prices would rise forever, and lost. To borrow so that senior civil servants like me can continue to enjoy salaries twice as much as our European counterparts makes no sense, macroeconomic or otherwise.

Cutting Government borrowing to zero immediately is not painless but it is the only way of disentangling ourselves from the loan sharks who are intent on making an example of us. In contrast, the new Government’s current policy of lying on the ground with a begging bowl and hoping that someone takes pity on us does not make for a particularly strong negotiating position. By bringing our budget immediately into balance, we focus attention on the fact that Ireland’s problems stem almost entirely from the activities of six privately owned banks, while freeing ourselves to walk away from these poisonous institutions. Just as importantly, it sends a signal to the rest of the world that Ireland – which 20 years ago showed how a small country could drag itself out of poverty through the energy and hard work of its inhabitants, but has since fallen among thieves and their political fixers – is back and means business.

Of course, we all know that this will never happen. Irish politicians are too used to being rewarded by Brussels to start fighting against it, even if it is a matter of national survival. It is easier to be led along blindfold until the noose is slipped around our necks and we are kicked through the trapdoor into bankruptcy.

The destruction wrought by the bankruptcy will not just be economic but political. Just as the Lenihan bailout destroyed Fianna Fáil, so the Noonan bankruptcy will destroy Fine Gael and Labour, leaving them as reviled and mistrusted as their predecessors. And that will leave Ireland in the interesting situation where the economic crisis has chewed up and spat out all of the State’s constitutional parties. The last election was reassuringly dull and predictable but the next, after the trauma and chaos of the bankruptcy, will be anything but.

Morgan Kelly is professor of economics at University College Dublin

* Comments Feed
* |
* Email
* Facebook
* Twitter
* LinkedIn
* Reddit
* |
* More

157 Comments »
Echo 157 Items
Admin

Log Out

Follow

Moderation

General Settings

Admin Notices

–
[This user is an administrator] Robert Browne
"National survival requires that Ireland walk away from the bailout. This in turn requires the Government to do two things: disengage from the banks, and bring its budget into balance immediately."

This is the crux of it and we had better get on with it. Dissolve NAMA now and let the ECB swing in the air instead of going along with their dastardly plan to grab our national assets before making us a pariah bankrupt state.

Serves them right. Thank's Morgan you figured it out, others could only talk about asymmetric risks. As a reward I am going to vote for you to deliver the speech from the steps of the GPO in 2016.
2 days ago, 01:04:02
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Lorcan Roche Kelly
Astonishing article.

Frightening, numbing, and worst of all, 100% accurate.
2 days ago, 01:12:32
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] John O'Driscoll
This is Ireland's karma. Some of us have been saying since March 2003 or not long after, when the sham cloak of Irish ''neutrality'' and the pious mendacities of Ireland's constitutional 'aspirations' to observe international law became camofluage for the the offshore US warbase and torture facilitation centre known as Shannon Airport.

Some of us saw then that if a country with a history of 800 years of being oppressed and brutalised could nod and wink at Her own cause being so betrayed to cowardice inhumanity and rapine as to allow herself be made a part of the greatest obscenities the 21st century yet has seen, why, She could nod and wink at anything.

But I doubt any tho' would have foreseen that the karmic consequences of that would be so damn...elegant.

Anyway. Moving on. Over a century ago Standish O'Grady - a man who did some work to try and restore Ireland's national pride in herself through his setting out of old heroic myth and legend - tried also to use the report of the Childers Commission as a cause for the Irish to rally around. This report found that, since the Act of Union, Ireland had been overtaxed by some 200 million pounds sterling by England. O'Grady thought that this might help the Irish to shake off what he called ''the Great Enchantment'', the moral and physical paralysis of the Irish caused as he saw it by the projection of evil men's wills from Westminster.

Of course, nothing happened. The report was quietly buried. Ireland continued to be raped and exploited by her own power elite just as she is today. The debt was ignored. Just as today, the Irish supinely, passively, allowed and indeed collaborated in the continuing rape of their Nation.

If we were really a country with any sense of self-respect and national pride, we would tell the ECB and the IMF to FF Off. Tell them we'll pay them back at the rate of 10 million a year for the next 300 years, interest frozen on the settlement amount. And if they don't like that they'll get nothing. Of course, the Irish moral cowardice so astutely identified also by Michael Davitt, the same moral cowardice that allowed us subordinate our own laws against torture and those of the UN's to appease the evil despot Bush and his cabal of demons Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld et al, so as to earn some filthy lucre, would never allow us to take such a brave step.

Not yet anyway. But 'tis a long road that has no turning, and the Irish people haven't even begun yet to feel the pain that 'karma', or rather the foreign and domestic enemies of this country are going to inflict. It'll be awhile yet but eventually hands will reach into thatches and pikes will be taken down. That's the way these things tend to go.
2 days ago, 01:44:11
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] David O'Donnell
Yes. It is possible. That is positive.
2 days ago, 01:49:01
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Michéal
Great article from Morgan. Of course waiting for the present Coalition to grow a backbone will take an eternity.
Wish I was fitter and younger and then I could take the boat.....or take the revolutionary road.
2 days ago, 02:11:43
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] peter
The truth hurts, especially when Professor Kelly says so. We're in the Sh*t and no denying it. When will we get leaders who will stand up for us? The endgame draws ever closer...
2 days ago, 02:21:25
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] David Smith
This course of action requires vision of Franklin Roosevelt, the courage of Winston Churchill and the swashbucking daring of Errol Flynn; we've got Enda Kenny, Michael Noonan, and Eamonn Gilmore.
2 days ago, 02:50:11
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Irish Citizen
This is a superb summary. A bleak synopsis but one with a workable solution. You say: "Of course, we all know that this will never happen". The truth is that it can, and must for Ireland to regain its independence.
2 days ago, 03:10:40
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Paul Chillage
Scrap the Dail and Presidency and ask Timothy Geithner does he want of be High King of Ireland?
2 days ago, 04:24:29
Mein Gott! So much for blandishments about "Professor Honohan said; Professor Honohan did not say" during the election campaign. Typical sign of absolute political failure when "officials" are transformed into the sole guardians of democratic legitimacy.

But chopping the budget deficit to zero within year is a delusional proposal. It would effectively mean closing the ENTIRE health service and education system. In other words, assuming Kelly is right about the inevitability of default, we are even more sunk than he claims. This is Weimar Republic stuff now.
2 days ago, 06:08:54
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] CELTIC MELTDOWN
Excellent as always Morgan.
A beacon of reason shining out on a turbulent sea.

Will they heed you THIS TIME?

Jesus said to them, "Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor."

.
2 days ago, 07:02:14
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Sam Simpson
best article on the crisis currently I have seen. In the medium - long term national interst, I would suggest economic realists with expertise lend support to Sinn Féin - the only political party worth investing in in this country...
2 days ago, 07:02:16
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] David Fowler
Succinct, informative and brave article. Bernard Connollys' book of 1995(The Rotten Heart of Europe) lost him his job in Brussels for speaking the truth, but we should all have taken note. Where are the politicians brave enough to take note of this article?
2 days ago, 07:21:53
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Finfacts
Ireland is bankrupt now and if restructuring is inevitable in say 2 year's time, the issue is would triggering a Eurozone crisis now be better for the country?

For decades we have had a twin-track economy; in one, world class companies have prospered supplying European markets, relatively independent from the broken governance system and low-level but insidious corruption.

Our challenge is to keep the existing foreign companies and being within the euro system is likely seen as a plus; it is much more difficult to win significant new projects as the centre of gravity of world trade moves to Asia.

Without the foreign sector, we would look more like a Balkan country than a Northern European one.
On swiftly cutting the budget deficit to zero, Ireland would need a level of national solidarity that hasn't been evident so far.

The Department of Finance's stability update report last week said that while taxation receipts in 2011 are projected to be around 2004 levels, gross voted expenditure of Government Departments and Offices in 2011 is projected to be about 40% above the 2004 level. It is this large gap between the State’s revenues and expenditure that is now being addressed by budgetary policy, and will continue to be in the coming years.

In 2004, Gross capital and current spending was €47bn; in 2011 it is forecast at €67bn.

Tax, PRSI and other revenues were €45.2 in 2004; in 2011, they are forecast at €48bn.

The current estimate of the Exchequer Balance for 2011 is -€18.21bn.

The vested interests who remain with bubble gains need to be challenged but it's evident that for too many of the
85% with jobs, unemployment is not the front burner issue as it is in the US.

If we want to embrace an economic emergency, it cannot be left solely to the politicians.

Insiders like Morgan Kelly have to come forward and propose what could be done in their own institutions with a lot less.

Otherwise, the efforts of political leadership would be sabotaged by the vested interests.

There are big unsustainable sums other than easy pickings on the welfare budget; dependence on the Exchequer is hugely expensive.

€2.7bn on public staff pensions; science budget €2.5bn; public procurement at €16bn; public legal bill at €500m and on it goes.

- - Michael Hennigan
2 days ago, 07:23:15
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Paul Slattery
If only there was the collective leadership to engage the policies discussed here. A powerful article that cuts through the rhetoric and explains exactly where we stand.
2 days ago, 07:32:45

- - Mark Keenan
The FF goverment gave away some of Ireland's economic sovereignty in its deal with the ECB/IMF. After fighting for independence for 800 years will Ireland have to regain independence all over again in 2016?
It is worth noting that under the Lisbon Treaty, the ECB got an even more iron-clad statute of independence from political supervision. Hardly ideal given the ECB now effectively influences Irish economic policy. http://www.ecb.int/press/key/date/2008/html/sp080124.en.html
Such a blatant handing over of economic power was done without any recourse or consultation with the people of Ireland. There was no referendum, no evaluation or public debate allowed of the other options available, for example Richard Douthwaite's proposal. This handover was done over a weekend in which our government agreed to taking an ECB/IMF bailout and could be viewed as economic treason by the FF government.
In reality the Irish government is also bailing out the IMF/ECB flawed banking system. If Ireland did not accept a bailout the Euro currency could collapse as unpaid debts to foreign banks could result in the collapse of foreign banks - risking a domino effect.
A blanket gaurantee to protect the international bondholders at the expense of Irish citizens was the first time this has ever happened anywhere in the world. Iceland rejected this option when the banks tried to force them to bailout the bondholders. Forcing the people of Ireland to pay for the gambling debt of the banks bondholders is a financial crime. The banks did not provide the full picture about their balance sheets that surely makes the banking gaurauntee null and void.
Ireland's assets ESB, Eirgrid, Coillte (Ireland's forests) etc are at risk of sale to foreign corporations. This must be opposed. Ireland has one of the best renewable energy sites in the world. In addition, €400 billion worth of oil has been discovered of the coast of Kerry. Ireland's must control her own natural resources at a time when global oil supplies are running out.
There has been little resistance by the people of Ireland for various reasons. Many are unemployed, many are on large public sector salaries, many people are just 'getting by', many are busy minding and raising children, many are 'busy watching english soccer teams on sky sports' while their country is being ransacked. Our nation's talented and skilled men and women are being forced to emigrate. This is unacceptable when Ireland has all the resources it needs to be a vibrant and succesful nation.
We must also note that what is happening is part of a much larger systemic crisis. Ireland must stay positive and prepare herself for the years ahead. See article at http://www.thinkorswim.ie/?p=1324
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Blankfiend
Outstanding article Prof. Kelly! Only one thing you got wrong, and that was calling Geithner's veto of the bond haircut "unexpected." Mr. Geithner is the most avid advocate of bank-owned taxpayers in the world.
2 days ago, 04:58:46
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate

Is eco-innovation enough ?

2011-02-16T12:32:00.001-08:00

Author: Mark Keenan
The challenge of the 21st century is to align our political, economic, social and technological systems with the science of sustainability and the reality of resource limits, while maintaining wellbeing for citizens. In 2011, we are facing the decade of the ‘turbulent teens’. As the economic system scrambles to save itself from collapse (at the expense of ordinary citizens), we also face the challenges of ‘peak oil’, a slow (or no) growth decennia and increases in the prices of energy, food, and raw materials, which will impact citizens’ buying power, and the stability of our societies.

These events represent an opportunity for a re-evaluation of the values that our economic system is based on and an opportunity for transition toward a more sustainable, resilient and just society.

Eco-systems and global resources such as arable land, fish stocks, and oil reserves are in decline and Europe is faced with scarcity and access problems in the field of energy (gas and oil), water, and critical raw materials that Europe does not have. In addition, climate change needs to be addressed. These constraints are design challenges and opportunities for innovation. Societies, businesses, and governments that take a systems view and have the foresight to develop strategies in alignment with sustainability principles will avoid hitting the walls of the funnel (‘The Natural Step’ concept of the funnel – see diagram) and in the process capitalise on the strongest long term trend globally. However, Tim Jackson has estimated that the level of innovation and industrial improvement required to de-carbonise our systems sufficiently by 2050 is ten times faster than ever achieved in industrial history. The sustainability U-turn, if it happens at all, has to happen fast.

Our current economic system, which requires ‘growth’ to pay back ‘interest’ on loans, has failed to create a sustainable society for humanity, and has failed to recognise that we live in a finite world with resource limits and ecological limits. There are physical limits to continuing economic growth based on resource use. The economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system, the biosphere, hence permanent growth is impossible. Thus, the term ‘sustainable growth’ becomes an oxymoron (unless the economic activity is ‘de-coupled from environmental and resource impact).

Without growth this flawed economic system becomes unstable and crashes. Wuppertal Institute has estimated that a total global resource extraction of around 80 billion tonnes in 2020 (200% of the 1980 value) will be necessary to maintain global economic growth. On a planet with finite resources there is obviously a conflict here.

To keep the financial system from crashing civil society has to continually work to pay ‘interest’ on money that banks created from nothing (via fractional reserve banking and sometimes via quantitative easing). People exist to serve a flawed economy, whereas the economy should exist to serve the people. Meanwhile the resources, bio-diversity and eco-systems our species’ relies on, continue to be consumed or destroyed. As Satish Kumar said ‘Humanity is cutting the branch upon which it sits’.

Will GDP growth solve environmental and resource problems?

In the late 20th century ways to decouple resource use from economic growth were hypothesised by environmental economists. A hypothesis, called the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), predicts increasing decoupling of resource use from GDP/capita as technology improves and material substitution occurs. In some cases, this accurately describes reality. In other cases, the resource flow continues to increase with increasing GDP/capita. An EKC hypothesis has not been validated. If it were validated then it would imply that economic growth is the means to environmental improvement.

Can we rely on the market to solve resource issues?

The market cannot be relied on to solve the problem. According to an Aldersgate report ‘Beyond carbon: Toward a resource efficient Europe’ markets respond to short-term supply restrictions, they do not anticipate constraints in natural resource stocks. Therefore a prudent policy would promote low resource consumption as an important part of securing future competitive advantage, in advance of the market and before resource-constraint shocks force change in the economy. Acting on resource efficiency ahead of the market would support the transition to a low carbon resource efficient economy. Market failures in resource management must be overcome.

The future of resource efficiency and eco-innovation

Technological innovation is one of the main approaches governments emphasise to maintain the growth required to keep this system going, and to address resource constraints governmental policy approaches to date have focused on decoupling GDP growth from resource use. This is an important step in ensuring non-renewable resources are not exhausted. Some relative decoupling of economic growth from materials and energy consumption has been achieved by a number of EU countries during the past 10 years, however ‘business as usual’ has not achieved absolute decoupling of economic growth and resource use in the EU.

As part of the EU 2020 strategy the European Commission is putting forward seven flagship projects. One of these is called “Resource Efficient Europe” to help decouple economic growth from the use of resources. This involves a shift towards a low carbon economy, increasing the use of renewable energy sources, and promoting energy efficiency. In the U.K., a recent WRAP report states that resource efficiency can make a significant contribution to achieving climate change targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and that resource efficiency could reduce carbon emissions with no significant negative effect on GDP.

In Ireland, the need to become a low carbon and resource efficient society was explicitly recognised in Comhar Sustainable Development Council’s Green New Deal report. The Irish government’s own high-level group on Green Enterprise also identified a key role for resource efficiency in the green economy. There is a need to assist front-runners and eco-innovators in Ireland. In my opinion the synergies and alignment of resource efficiency priorities, green public procurement and eco-innovation could make a significant contribution to achieving a more environmentally and economically sustainable Ireland. (The public procurement spend is ~€12 billion per annum, so GPP has significant potential to drive innovation. Minister Gormley’s department published a GPP consultation, but the GPP national action plan was not published before the party left office.) According to the Wuppertal Institute the world market for eco-innovation is likely to double by 2020 (market volume estimated at €3,100 billion).

The Irish government will likely need to develop a ‘National Action Plan for Resource-efficiency and Eco- innovation’, that will add value to current initiatives, address priorities, and create new multi-stakeholder initiatives. A policy framework would need to be developed in a co-operative way that increases uptake across all sectors of Irish society and economy. Comhar Sustainable Development Council is currently conducting research to provide recommendations in these areas. Recommendations could include the launch of Irish multi-stakeholder eco-innovation networks or transition platforms; the development of co-operative eco-enterprises (sharing innovation and open-source developments are becoming key ways of achieving sustainability); and developing or acquiring technology (including mid-level technology) that is not reliant on fossil fuels or resources that have a high supply risk.

Tools such as ‘environmental footprint, life-cycle analysis, material flow analysis, sustainable design (such as ‘cradle to cradle’, ‘zero-waste systems’, design for disassembly and longevity), and sustainability planning frameworks, such as ‘The Natural Step’ are relevant. Across the developed world significant resource efficiency developments and eco-innovations are taking place, but…

Is resource efficiency enough to reduce resource use?

It is (in my opinion) unlikely that resource use can be reduced by resource efficiency improvements alone – due to what is known as the ‘rebound effect’. Relying on resource efficiency will be insufficient to de-couple GDP growth from environmental and resource degradation. Most economists tend to think that greater efficiency enhances sustainability, however many environmental scientists think that it doesn’t. William Jevons stated in 1865: ”an increase in efficiency in using a resource leads, in the medium to long term, to an increased usage of that resource rather than to a reduction in this use”.

This contention has been called the “Jevons paradox”. In many cases, due to increased efficiencies the resource flow per unit of product or service created tends to decrease with increasing GDP/capita. However, this decoupling of resource use from GDP growth is often not sufficient to curb the total flow of resources, because total consumption continues to increase as a result of the consumption of more units. This effect can be explained to some extent by price mechanisms (decreasing price induces growing demand).

The gap between the decreased use of resources that is expected from increased “eco-efficiency” and the actual utilization has been called the “gross rebound effect” (GRB). An example described by the International Energy Agency is that although efficiency in the usage of energy per unit of product or service in the OECD-countries improved by about 30% between 1970 and 1991, the use of energy in these countries increased by about 20%. GRB describes the net effect of societies overall resource use/environmental impact due to consumption patterns, population development and degree of eco-efficiency.

A study conducted by scientists at the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umea University indicated that improved efficiency in the use of natural resources is insufficient to prevent further increases in global resource use and is insufficient to counterbalance the effects of increasing affluence and increasing population.

The study finds that the ecological footprint across 135 countries did not decrease at high levels of GDP per capita. The improved eco-efficiency, which is seen in many wealthy countries, is associated with economic growth which increases the global ecological footprints of these countries. One example of this ‘catch 22’ is that “Finland, a wealthy and eco-efficient country has been classified as both the most sustainable country (Devitt and DeFusco, 2002) and the country that caused the fifth largest per capita ecological footprint in the world (Loh, 2002)”. The study also finds that a highly efficient information society does not lead to decreased use of natural resources. For example, investments in rail transport can lead to a local decrease in air pollution, but also increase the economic activity in a region, which in turn leads to a net increase in the human ecological footprint.

In addition, a separate report ‘Analysing Rebound Effects’ from the Wuppertal Institute states “the policy conclusion one may drive from neo-classical analysis could be that stimulating efficiency gains for conservation purposes is not very useful or even harmful”.

In my opinion resource efficiency needs to be viewed as part of the wider system that it is operating within, and it is the destructive effect of the ‘system’ we need to alter. To echo McDonagh and Braungart, the key is not to make human industries and systems as resource efficient as possible but to redesign them in a way that has zero impact on (or contributes to) the natural systems that we rely on. The Natural Step sustainability framework is an example of a scientific methodology for redesigning our systems toward the ideal of full compliance with the laws of a sustainable biosphere.

Is technological innovation enough to create a sustainable society?

These concepts have been described using the Holdren/Erlich equation I=PAT, where I represents environmental impact, P is population size, A is affluence per capita and T is the effect of technology. A factor describing behaviour/lifestyle (B) has also been added (I=PBAT).

The Umea study maintains that to find a way to sustainability, it will be justified to determine sustainable levels of resource and energy flows locally–globally; adapt population (P), change individual consumption (A) and improve technology (T) in the IPAT equation so that sustainable resource and energy flows are reached. Another policy proposed is that rebound effects need to be limited by price policies (e.g. a tax on resources which experience efficiency gains).

Unless economic activity that violates the laws of sustainability (for example The Natural Step principles) is reduced or stopped for conservation purposes, the problems will continue. A sustainable steady-state economy based on the science of sustainability and resource limits needs to replace the current system.

Redesigning the system

A Green Economy needs to be more than just a technology platform for eco-industries. It has to be guided by a vision of what a sustainable society should look like in the long run. In my opinion the economic system needs to be redesigned based on the Science of Sustainability (which includes ecological and resource limits) The Natural Step Scientific framework for Strategic Sustainability, is an example of a successful framework for moving toward environmental, social and economic sustainability and is being utilised in over 30 countries. In 2009, I authored a policy proposal to government to embed peer-reviewed scientific sustainability principles in all government departments to create policy alignment and a shared understanding of sustainability in our system.

In the absence of effective de-coupling, economic systems and models must be considered that are in alignment with the resource-efficiency constraints. The human economy must be enabled to function within the limits of the environment and its resources and in such a way that it works with rather than against natural laws and processes of a sustainable biosphere. A strong concept of sustainability is needed, in which economy adapts to ecological imperatives, rather than seeks technological substitutes that may fail to deliver the same range of functions and services. In the absence of a move toward systems, such as steady-state economics or ecological economics, re-allocation of growth to more environmentally friendly sectors is to be expected. Systemic effects due to peak oil (as described by David Korowicz) may pre-empt any redesign and according to Dimitri Orlov systems collapse before they re-organise. It is important (in my opinion) that local and national resilience planning is promoted in Ireland.

A Sustainable Ireland

Very little adherence to sustainability principles over the past 20 years has left Ireland overdependent on foreign oil, foreign investment, foreign goods and borrowing. We have built little ‘self-reliance’. Resource efficiency and eco-innovation will be an insufficient strategy for sustainability in the years ahead. In light of global resource challenges, the economic downturn, winter freeze and seasonal flooding we urgently need national and local community resilience planning. While maintaining Ireland’s place in a globalised society, more support and planning law needs to be directed to creating a more ‘self-reliant’ Ireland in terms of food, energy, water, technology and economy. We need a new vision and design for the future direction of Ireland that is based on sustainability policy, otherwise we will remain vulnerable to external factors.

The philosophy of sustainable living must underpin everything that we strive for. Ireland is blessed with many natural attributes that are advantageous including: adequate rainfall and mild climate for food production and water supply; huge renewable energy potential (the development of which could be hindered by the ongoing economic collapse); and highly educated people. We have the capacity to re-invent our nation. It is up to us – increased ‘quality’ is always within our capability. A ‘Sustainable Ireland’ can emerge that values fundamental human needs, quality of life, a progressive economy, and the environmental resources upon which we all rely. Education, co-operation, optimism and leaders with vision are needed for the transition.

Mark Keenan has worked with the Department of Energy and Climate Change, U.K. and with Comhar Sustainable Development Council, Ireland. He has a Masters Certificate in ‘The Natural Step’ sustainability framework, BTH, Sweden; MSc studies in Sustainable Development and Climate Change, DMU, UK; and PhD research experience in Sustainability Strategy, Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development, UK. See also www.sustainableireland.net

see also

http://www.thinkorswim.ie/?p=1324

The reality behind the Finance Bill

2011-01-24T16:24:00.000-08:00

Of course the EU (Ollie Rehn) is saying that the Finance bill is essential - the EU need to pass severe austerity on the people of Ireland to save their failed banking system. If banks start to fail there will be a domino effect into Europe. The flawed and corrupt banking system itself is the root of the problem. We have no obligation to save private corporations who have no authority over us. Pouring money into this failed banking banking system is like kicking a can down a road, but sooner or later you run out of road. For many months I have pointed out the fact that bank gaurauntee should not have been implemented (it is a financial crime to make the people of Ireland pay for the debts of private banks (i.e. corporations) and their international bondholders.) Their massive debt (it is not our debt!) is unpayable..default is inevitable...

Ireland would be crippled by €10 billion per year interest payments.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/home/ireland-to-be-crippled-by-10bn-a-year-interest-137916.html

The current flawed system based on fractional reserve banking requires GDP growth in order to pay interest (transfer wealth to the bondholders) to the banks.
Ireland will simply not achieve the very high levels of GDP growth required to make these huge interest payments. In addition, we live in a planet of finite resources - i.e there are limits to growth. The GDP growth fixation is outdated and flawed. We need a new system based on ecological economics and the science of sustainability.

heres a quote from David McWilliams..
"The Finance Bill simply endorses the IMF/EU deal which will bankrupt us."

prosecute a banker today..
http://www.villagemagazine.ie/index.php/2011/01/prosecute-a-banker-today/

Preserve and cherish the Earth our only home

2010-12-04T16:24:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on sustainable development..

http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/10/relevant-aspects-of-national.html

Karl Sagan cherish the earth video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

More challenging ideas.. what do you think ?
Vinay Gupta: "Stop being violent toward each other and stop being violent toward the planet"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkQCy-UrLYw&feature=related

Shaping environmental values.. what do you think ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gboAHIXqe6Q&feature=related

Back to Ireland.. exit the euro
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/11/article-in-guardian-claims-ireland-may.html

It is a financial crime to make the Irish people pay for thegambling debts of private banks and international bondholders.

2010-12-02T14:22:00.000-08:00

For many months this blog has pointed out the fact that 'blanket' bank gaurauntee should not have been implemented (it is a financial crime to make the people of this state pay for the debts of private banks and their international bondholders. The massive debt is unpayable..default is inevitable...

Ireland would be crippled by €10 billion per year interest
http://www.irishexaminer.com/home/ireland-to-be-crippled-by-10bn-a-year-interest-137916.html

Here's an interesting article in the IT that also says default is the only option. Bear in mind however that the Irish Times and all the mainstream media has failed to mention the underlying problem, that is that the debt-based global monetary system itself is flawed. See http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/09/banking-system-creates-money-from.html?showComment=1290071264359#c421214872807061830

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/1202/1224284564382.html

Latest Keiser Report says Ireland being raped by the IMF - but no haircut for the senior bondholders

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y-YmyTXdBs&feature=player_embedded

IMF brings economic mayhem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQFHgcFlrlw

See also
The dying days of a system based on fractional reserve banking...
http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/2010/11/ireland-welcome-to-the-death-spiral/

See also 'obsession with creating a euro state'...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CEu2sy2Z_0

Here comes the ECB/IMF to save/bailout 'their' system at our expense
http://www.thefuture.ie/news/article/troubled_mortgage_holders_stop_paying_banks

In addition, Fianna Fáil and this government may be exposing themselves and the state,to an illegal and unconstitutional move that may now block the so called bailout in the courts..
Under article 29.5.2 of the Constitution, the terms of all international agreements which impose a charge on public funds and are not of a technical and administrative character must be approved by Dáil Éireann prior to the Government agreeing to the State being bound by it.

See also
The Watson Institute presents Mark Blyth on Austerity
http://vimeo.com/15061570

Related topic

Greens calls for 90% tax on banking bonuses...

http://greenparty.newsweaver.ie/1p9rqpxh10b1ramsmbzryt?email=true&opc=true#commentsAnchor4235184-17646144

Seperate bank debt from state debt or face econocide...
http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2010/12/15/separate-bank-from-
state-debt-or-else-face-econocide

Update: Joe Higgins makes some good points here despite rude interuptions..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUq8lvZnE68

Inter Alpha Banking Group

2010-11-27T15:22:00.000-08:00

This video claims that the Inter Alpha Banking Group is attempting to take economic control of sovereign nations to bail out its private banking debts..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LyVbZbjLZ0&feature=player_embedded#!

Who are bondholders ? These are the people and banks who made the mistakes. Irish people are being forced to pay for the bad bets of the bondholders

2010-11-27T14:52:00.001-08:00

Who are bondholders ? These are the people and banks who made the mistakes - the Irish people are being forced to pay for the bondholders' bad bets
If you are I went to the bookies and put a bet on a horse and it didnt win - would we ask the bookie to pay us our money back ? No we wouldnt and we wouldnt get it back. However the senior bondholders who made bad 'private' investments in private banks are co-ercing the Irish government (via the IMF and ECB) to force the Irish people to pay for their bad investments.

Noted from
http://www.broadsheet.ie/2010/11/26/the-senior-bondholders-an-analysis/

...the senior Anglo bondholders are, and what they’re worth:

“SO…. on one side we have Ireland whose bond holders, its people, have between them a total GDP wealth of 0.207 trillion euros. Who are being FORCED, against their will, to pay Anglo Irish bank’s debts to its bond holders, who between them hold 20.8 Trillion euros. The people of Ireland are paying to, and protecting the wealth and power of, people who have 100 times more wealth!

So where do these wealthy bond holders live and work?

Germany has the most with 15 of the bond holders. Who between them hold 5.3 trillion euros.

France is next with 10 bond holders. Who have about 4 trillion to keep them warm.

Britain is third with 9 who have around 3 trillion.

The Swiss have 6 but who have about 8.5 trillion.

America has only three and hold only a trillion.

Other nations include, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Holland Finland, Norway, Sweden, Poland, South Africa and Italy.

All these figures are very rough. The figure for Switzerland is certainly under because Private Swiss banks just don’t publish figures. What we can say for sure, figures or no figures, is these are not banks investing widow’s pensions or orphan’s pennies.

So who are they? Well many of the bond holders are privately held banks, which list their activities as asset management for off-shore, non-resident and high value individuals. To give you an example, one of the private banks is EFG Bank of Luxembourg. EFG stands for European Financial Group which is the third largest private bank group in Switzerland. It manages over €7.5 trillion in assets. It is ‘mostly’, 40%, owned by Mr Spiro Latsis, son of a Greek shipping magnate. He also owns 30% of Hellenic Petroleum. His personal fortune is estimated to be about $9 billion.”

Anglo Bondholder list at

http://newswhip.ie/national-2/here-are-the-anglo-irish-bank-bondholders

Robots having a chat about the financial crisis :-)

2010-11-26T14:49:00.000-08:00

See
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7806291/

Don't bailout Ireland - Free It, Default, and quit the Euro - Douglas Caswell

2010-11-26T11:36:00.000-08:00

Carswell's article below - I have been saying the same thing for the longest time now - see the very first post on my blog http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/01/this-article-was-submitted-to-green.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/23/ireland-must-decouple-and-default

Our billions will prolong the misery. Better for the Irish to quit the euro and default on their debts

Britain has just promised £7bn towards a €90bn package aimed at rescuing Ireland's economy. But the bailout has not worked. Instead, we are sinking billions into a temporary rescue of the euro that will prolong Ireland's economic misery. So we should change course and prepare to offer a dramatically different solution – help Ireland decouple from the euro and allow the country to default on its debts.

A prosperous Ireland is in Britain's interest, as the chancellor, George Osborne, was quick to tell the House of Commons. It is not simply a case of economics. There is scarcely a street in Britain in which family ties do not bind the fate of our two islands. It is precisely because we want to see Ireland prosper that we should help it escape from the euro. It was euro membership, with ruinously low interest rates for more than a decade, that plunged Ireland into the economic abyss. Diehard euro advocates might ignore reality, but if Ireland had had interest rates set according to the needs of the Irish economy rather than a wider eurozone, it would not be in this credit-fuelled mess today.

For all the fanfare, the bailout has not reduced the amount Ireland owes by a single euro. Rather, it has seen Ireland accept more debt. Ireland has now gone beyond the point at which it can pay back what it owes. The country can either spend miserable years trapped in debt, with high taxes and higher emigration, or it can decouple from the euro – and default.

Decouple and default works. Remember how the political elite in Argentina, as in Ireland, pegged their own currency to another? Yet when the peso was decoupled from the dollar and Argentina defaulted in 2002, it was free to grow again. Argentina has been chugging along at an enviable 7% to 8% annual growth each year since.

Defaulting on its debts – impossible while Ireland remains in the euro – could follow if it were to decouple. While no one would ever then want to lend Ireland such mountains of money again, would that be such a bad thing?

What is certain is that as long as Ireland remains in the euro, its economic anguish will not end. Unable to devalue, Ireland will never become properly competitive – unless it suffers a dramatic fall in wealth. Yet a collapse in Irish wages is the inevitable outcome of the policy being pursued on both sides of the Irish Sea. How can that be in the interests of either us, or our closest neighbour?

Britain faces a time of unprecedented austerity. Yet many of the savings we have made in public services have now been soaked up by our massive contribution to bailing out the euro. Failure to bail out Ireland, some say, would place British banks in difficulty. But it is precisely because our banks are not out of the woods that we should keep any spare billions we have, for what still lurks on their balance sheets.

And the Irish bailout is also drawing us into potentially unlimited eurozone debt liabilities – in effect, it makes Britain a member of the euro as a debt union. Despite Osborne's best efforts to present it as an act of neighbourly goodwill, Britain had little choice but to cough up. Article 122 of the Lisbon treaty means we will have to hand over billions through the European Stabilisation Mechanism. Even if the chancellor were to say "no", the council of ministers would quickly overrule him. Thanks to the small print of our existing treaty obligations, should Portugal, Spain, or even Italy now seek a bailout, our potential liabilities would be unlimited.

Britain is discovering that it has been drawn into a long line of euro "debt dominoes", each one at risk from any of the others falling. Allowing the break-up of the euro could prove less ruinous than paying to keep everybody in line.

---------------------

Paul Krugman's article in the New York Times 'Eating the Irish'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/opinion/26krugman.html?_r=2

Most people know Swift as the author of “Gulliver’s Travels.” But recent events have me thinking of his 1729 essay “A Modest Proposal,” in which he observed the dire poverty of the Irish, and offered a solution: sell the children as food. “I grant this food will be somewhat dear,” he admitted, but this would make it “very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.”

O.K., these days it’s not the landlords, it’s the bankers — and they’re just impoverishing the populace, not eating it. But only a satirist — and one with a very savage pen — could do justice to what’s happening to Ireland now.

The Irish story began with a genuine economic miracle. But eventually this gave way to a speculative frenzy driven by runaway banks and real estate developers, all in a cozy relationship with leading politicians. The frenzy was financed with huge borrowing on the part of Irish banks, largely from banks in other European nations.

Then the bubble burst, and those banks faced huge losses. You might have expected those who lent money to the banks to share in the losses. After all, they were consenting adults, and if they failed to understand the risks they were taking that was nobody’s fault but their own. But, no, the Irish government stepped in to guarantee the banks’ debt, turning private losses into public obligations.

Before the bank bust, Ireland had little public debt. But with taxpayers suddenly on the hook for gigantic bank losses, even as revenues plunged, the nation’s creditworthiness was put in doubt. So Ireland tried to reassure the markets with a harsh program of spending cuts.

Step back for a minute and think about that. These debts were incurred, not to pay for public programs, but by private wheeler-dealers seeking nothing but their own profit. Yet ordinary Irish citizens are now bearing the burden of those debts.

Or to be more accurate, they’re bearing a burden much larger than the debt — because those spending cuts have caused a severe recession so that in addition to taking on the banks’ debts, the Irish are suffering from plunging incomes and high unemployment.

But there is no alternative, say the serious people: all of this is necessary to restore confidence.

Strange to say, however, confidence is not improving. On the contrary: investors have noticed that all those austerity measures are depressing the Irish economy — and are fleeing Irish debt because of that economic weakness.

Now what? Last weekend Ireland and its neighbors put together what has been widely described as a “bailout.” But what really happened was that the Irish government promised to impose even more pain, in return for a credit line — a credit line that would presumably give Ireland more time to, um, restore confidence. Markets, understandably, were not impressed: interest rates on Irish bonds have risen even further.

Does it really have to be this way?

In early 2009, a joke was making the rounds: “What’s the difference between Iceland and Ireland? Answer: One letter and about six months.” This was supposed to be gallows humor. No matter how bad the Irish situation, it couldn’t be compared with the utter disaster that was Iceland.

But at this point Iceland seems, if anything, to be doing better than its near-namesake. Its economic slump was no deeper than Ireland’s, its job losses were less severe and it seems better positioned for recovery. In fact, investors now appear to consider Iceland’s debt safer than Ireland’s. How is that possible?

Part of the answer is that Iceland let foreign lenders to its runaway banks pay the price of their poor judgment, rather than putting its own taxpayers on the line to guarantee bad private debts. As the International Monetary Fund notes — approvingly! — “private sector bankruptcies have led to a marked decline in external debt.” Meanwhile, Iceland helped avoid a financial panic in part by imposing temporary capital controls — that is, by limiting the ability of residents to pull funds out of the country.

And Iceland has also benefited from the fact that, unlike Ireland, it still has its own currency; devaluation of the krona, which has made Iceland’s exports more competitive, has been an important factor in limiting the depth of Iceland’s slump.

None of these heterodox options are available to Ireland, say the wise heads. Ireland, they say, must continue to inflict pain on its citizens — because to do anything else would fatally undermine confidence.

But Ireland is now in its third year of austerity, and confidence just keeps draining away. And you have to wonder what it will take for serious people to realize that punishing the populace for the bankers’ sins is worse than a crime; it’s a mistake.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on November 26, 2010, on page A37 of the New York edition.

Ireland warned it will have to stump up state assets in bailout

2010-11-24T15:37:00.000-08:00

A system of modern slavery - watch the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs0TRYnScC8&feature=related

I have warning against this exact scenario for many months now and now it comes to pass..
oh well..
stay positive people !
regards
Mark

http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2010/nov/21/ireland-warned-it-will-have-to-stump-up-state-asse/

Eamon Quinn
Aer Lingus: collateral damage

Bord Gáis and the Electricity Supply Board, Ireland's motorways, CIE, the national oil reserves, our stake in Aer Lingus as well as the best parts of the Dublin banks and the whole of the national pension fund are likely to be pledged as security in return for the tens of billions of euro in loans the government will receive from the IMF, the European Community and the European Central Bank.

The warning, from markets sources, comes as the talks between the Irish authorities and the IMF-led troika were due to extend through today and into this week. The talks were focusing on ways of limiting the amount of the private banking debts that a generation of Irish citizens will be made to pay for.

But in an investor note this weekend, Société Générale in Paris, which helps sell Irish sovereign bonds for the government, said there were calls from around Europe for Ireland to stump up "collateral" in return for its bailout loans.

"When a developing county is given aid, we can understand why no security is required. Not so when a government has access to reserves, investments and state holdings. We see this aspect of the aid package as a litmus test of how soft on moral hazard Europe might be. We also see a tough onus placed on the government in question to implement serious austerity."

Local economists believe the total size of the open-ended bailout funds could exceed €100bn if the ECB were to demand back some or all of the loans it advanced to the Irish banks in recent weeks. Europe may, however, inch toward a tougher line than the government and burn the private bond holders in the Irish banks. In relation to the IMF?presence, a government spokesman said the "objective there is to access funds for Ireland at a much better rate", adding that currently rates of 8% plus being charged by the markets were prohibitive.

The Sunday Tribune has also learned that, in the days leading up to last weekend, ECB officials made their growing concerns known to Dublin about the open-ended amounts of cash that Frankfurt and the Irish Central Bank were pledging to Anglo Irish, AIB and Bank of Ireland. Leading central bank watcher Lorcan Roche Kelly said that funding of over €165bn had been loaned by the ECB and the Irish Central Bank to all Ireland-based banks by the end of October.

Leading European consultants who have monitored the heave by big states such as Germany and France and now Britain to neutralise Ireland's advantageous 12.5% corporate tax rate say that Ireland has suffered major damage with multinationals considering creating thousands of jobs here. "The comments by the German, French and Austrian finance ministers just cannot be swatted away," said John Hume, of Hume Brophy Consultants in Brussels. The Irish Central Bank has provided more than €34.6bn in emergency funds to lenders, believed to be Anglo, Irish Nationwide and EBS, while Frankfurt separately provided an estimated €90bn to the main lenders and €40bn to banks in the IFSC, according to estimates.

Brian Lucey, associate professor at TCD, said that the open-ended bailout loans, which Ireland may not need to tap, would be huge if the troika wanted to deliver a fund to cover the week-by-week funding of the banks, the banks' additional capital as well as the budget deficits and repay back sovereign debts for three to five years.

See also Jamaica's experience with the IMF

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amd9NagMI54

Stiglitz on the IMF see
http://www.whirledbank.org/ourwords/stiglitz.html

Citizens Rights under the Irish Constitution

2010-11-23T17:10:00.000-08:00

Citizens Rights under the Irish Constitution see
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/82108

March from Wood Quay Dublin to the GPO at 11am Saturday 27th

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ing8xH3Qj-k&feature=player_embedded#!

Sovereignty or slavery

http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/11/sovereignty-or-slavery.html

Sovereignty or Slavery ?

2010-11-23T12:29:00.000-08:00

'retaining Ireland's sovereignty' or 'debt slavery for the people of Ireland'.
To retain our sovereignty we must reject the IMF/ECB bailout.
Why should we accept their credit and shackle our nation to paying off the credit the ECB creates from nothing ? We could just as easily create our own credit through the creation of a national credit system.

What do people make of these videos?

http://www.larouchepac.com/node/16581

http://larouchepac.com/node/16583

http://larouchepac.com/warroom

http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/11/ireland-say-no-to-any-bailout-by.html

March from Wood Quay Dublin to the GPO at 11am Saturday 27th

Jim Corr's assessment of the situation. Call for the people to take action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ing8xH3Qj-k&feature=player_embedded

IMF out of Ireland please. Ireland must default sooner or later it is inevitable. Default will be a good long term option for Ireland.

2010-11-23T08:16:00.000-08:00

The IMF is a private banking cartel who have financed military dictatorships and the corporate takeover of natural resources - the massive renewable energy resources in and around Ireland are under threat of takeover from international banksters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNEoOvMd8-Q

See also A Global Justice Perspective on the Irish EU-IMF Loans: Lessons From the Wider World

http://www.irishleftreview.org/2010/12/03/global-justice-perspective-irish-euimf-loans-lessons-wider-world/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+irishleftreview%2Ffeed+%28Irish+Left+Review%29&utm_content=FaceBook

McWilliams suggests a debt for equity swap, but that does not address the loss of Irish economic sovereignty. This could be viewed as an attempt by the ECB/IMF international banking cartel to gain access to resources, save their flawed debt-based monetary system, and as a fruitless attempt to save the doomed Euro (which will crash if Ireland does not accept a bailout). Ireland must default on this so-called state debt (bank bondholder debt, it is unpayable and it is not the responsibility of the people of Ireland to pay for the losses of International bond holders. Ireland must default sooner or later there is no other option.

http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2010/11/22/have-we-learnt-nothing-2

Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg banking group and convicted war criminal Henry Kissinger vsit Ireland

2010-11-23T07:13:00.000-08:00

Henry Kissinger earlier, the Tri-lateral Commission and the international banking cartel the Bilderberg Group visited Irealdn this year.

How come the people of Ireland were not told about this ?
How come no mainstream Irish media covered these significant events ?

This Fianna Fail led government is setting this country up to be sold to the highest bidder. Massive privatisation (i.e. selling of resources and assets to foreign corporations and foreign banking cartels) is on the way. This is being done without any consultation with the people of Ireland - note the current deals being done with the IMF without any referendum or consultation with Irish people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T63S-KNLEpg&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBQExI1lN6w

The ECB may not be the friend it seems!

2010-11-23T02:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2010/1122/1224283833586.html

The ECB may not be the friend it seems

JOHN McMANUS

BUSINESS OPINION: Suggestions that bailout may in fact be to protect European interests may not be too wide of mark

WHEN THE history of Ireland’s banking and fiscal collapse comes to be written, the role of the European Central Bank may well turn out to be the most controversial.

The question will be whether they really were some sort of honest broker who in the end forced us to confront our predicament or were they in fact the villain of the piece?

Both narratives have some resonance but the former is very much in the ascendant. The weary relief that characterises most people’s response to the arrival of the ECB, the European Commission and the International Monetary to negotiate a loan for Ireland is consistent with the view that time has finally been called by impartial outsiders on our botched effort to sort out the mess we have made of the Irish banks and our finances.

The main elements of the story are that the banks’ problems are so deep that they exceed the fiscal capacity of the State. We cannot borrow enough money from the bond markets to sort them out and also fund the exchequer deficit, so we have no choice but to turn to the European Financial Stability Facility and the IMF.

While the later point is unfortunately true, the role of the ECB in how we came to this sorry pass is worthy of some scrutiny. A more critical analysis might conclude that its policies over the last two years added greatly to our problems and ultimately its own. And it is the ECB’s problems as much as ours that brought things to a head last week.

One of the main differences between how the two-year-old crisis has played out in Europe and America has been the refusal of the ECB to allow any significant bank fail.

It is worth noting in this regard that Jean Claude Trichet rang Brian Lenihan over that fateful weekend in September 2008 to impress on him the importance of not letting any Irish bank fail. The obvious inference was that the ECB would play its part.

Trichet was, of course, pushing at an open door given the other factors at play in Ireland: profound regulatory failure combined with the inability of the administration or the banks to comprehend the scope of the problem.

But the fact remains that the Government could not have gone down the road it did without the support of the ECB. Frankfurt has provided the liquidity needed to make the National Asset Management Agency function and was committed to a similar facility for the winding up of Anglo.

Above all it has provided liquidity to the Irish system to such an extent that Irish banks account for something like one in every four euro it makes available through its emergency measures. We kept our end of the bargain. No Irish bank has failed although two are to be closed, but crucially their secured creditors are to be paid.

The reason the ECB did this was because it also misjudged the Irish banking crisis. Its calculation that stability in the euro system was best served by letting the Irish banks limp on with massive liquidity support was incorrect.

Instead a situation arose whereby the problems in the Irish banks were not dealt with as they should have been – through letting them fail or some sort of debt for equity swap – and the ECB found its own balance sheet contaminated by the amount of support it had to extend to Ireland as a consequence. Meanwhile, the Irish exchequer is left with a bill it cannot afford.

Now, in order to extract itself from this mess, the ECB has in effect withdrawn its support and said that the Irish taxpayer must now borrow even more money and try – for a third time – to fix the knackered banks so the ECB can get its money back.

The alternative to the Irish taxpayer stumping up – letting the badly broken AIB and Anglo Irish banks fail or default on their bonds – remains resolutely off the agenda at the insistence of the ECB. The reason being the same as it was in September 2008: the Irish banks are systemic in the European context . The big losers if either bank failed are the German, French and other European banks and institution that funded their insane lending sprees. And while these institutions and the euro system are probably strong enough now – as against two years ago – to absorb the loss, the fear remains that an Irish bank failure would trigger some sort of secondary European banking crisis.

Many are of the view that this crisis is in fact inevitable due to the level of debt in the system across Europe and the ECB – and the other European institutions should really focus their energies on getting ready to deal with it in the immediate future.

But, for the time being, the consensus seems to be that it makes more sense to try and put the fire out in Ireland by pushing the burden on to the Irish tax payer and its exhausted administration.

The Government may appear more mendacious and delusional by the day, but when they say this is a European problem they actually do have a point and history could well prove them right.

Prediction

2010-11-22T03:12:00.000-08:00

Okay we all know the future is impossible to predict, but I'll try and throw my hat on it :-)

1. the sovereign debt (which is largely private banking bondholder debt) will result in severe and unjust austerity measures being imposed on the irish people instead of on the bankers and politicans who caused the mess.

2. the sovereign debt will be unpayable for many reasons: peak oil; failed efforts at more flawed GDP growth will not enable the high ECB/IMF interest payments to be met while also paying off capital;

3. the state will attempt to sell strategic national assets to foreign corporations to pay for the unjust bailout of private banks and international bondholders

4. the state will nevertheless have to default or significantly restructure this unjust debt as the sums are so large (otherwise a generation of irish people will be shackled to severe austerity while foreign corporations plunder the natural resources in Ireland (renewable energies etc). If the state does not default the people of Ireland will be paying off interest to the IMF and the ECB for a generation or more. (Remember Ireland could refloat the punt and create its own credit rather than running to these international banking cartels).

5. Eventually the people of Irealnd will "wake up" to this reality and the IMF/ECB international bankster/gangster cartel will be sent packing and told to get out of Ireland.

6. Upon default or restructuring there is a significant probability the Euro currency will crash

7. Ireland will have to refloat the punt, which is a necessary long term move - to do this an extra constitutional measure will have to be introduced as Ireland is in the EU.

8. The people of Ireland will reclaim resources In Ireland that are being sought after by private corporations for profit. Corrib gas, renewable energy resources, fishing grounds, etc. (This should have been done anyway - e.g. StatOil, Norway's state owned oil company. Norway did not sell the oil reserves to foreign corporations for nothing. The FF government did however giveaway Corrib gas to Shell for nothing).

9. The disastrous policies of NAMA and Lisbon will have to be repealed.

10. A new and better Ireland will emerge, based upon more sensible and 'truly' sustainable policies and the development of sustainable communities and more national self-sufficiency. See my post on aspects of a National Sustainable Development Strategy

FF's corrupt budget should not be passed. NAMA and blanket bank garauntee should never have existed, so roll it back, declare it illigitmate debt..

2010-11-22T01:14:00.000-08:00

This Fianna Fail corrupt budget must not be passed ! Why should the poor and middle class pay for the mistakes of the banks and the so-calle elite!
Instead Ireland played nice to their bondholders, they invented the
National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), the planet's most fiscally
conservative "bad bank". A "system" t...hat prompted Nobel Prize-winning
economist Joseph Stiglitz to remark that the Irish government was
squandering state money to rescue banks.

The full story is available here: http://www.projectallende.org/archives/2010_11.html#000160#more

This
budget will place severe austerity measures on to the people of Ireland
in order to pay off the bondholder debt of private banks. Why should
the the people pay off the debts of bondholders?? ...The blanket bank
guarauntee was a major mistake...

THIS CORRUPT BUDGET SHOULD NOT BE PASSED !!!

This
Fiannna Fail budget will make the poor and middle class pay for the
mistakes of the banks and the elite - see Fintans O'Toole's article
today .. any budget must have the mandate of the people and therefore an
election must be called before... the budget takes place !!

Comment i noticed in the IT
The crux of the governance "mistake" is making the Irish people accept that their government is "responsible" to save the foreign bondholders who stand to lose a lot more than 81Bn. euros if the Irish banks default.

The Irish state is not responsible! For the Irish state to save the banks, if indeed this is either necessary or possible, is to commit financial suicide.

Why not take a leaf out of the Icelandic book on this? The bondholders are not Irish and hence should not be rescued by the Irish government. NAMA should never have existed (so roll it back, declare it illigitmate debt and go after the 100 person who created this debt both at home and abroad). The Irish government should have stuck to guaranteeing what governments do; bank deposits up to 100K or 200K, i.e. personal savings and nothing more.

Instead Ireland played nice to their bondholders, they invented the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), the planet's most fiscally conservative "bad bank". A "system" that prompted Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz to remark that the Irish government was squandering state money to rescue banks.

The full story is available here:
http://www.projectallende.org/archives/2010_11.html#000160#more

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/1123/1224283932871.html

These videos provide another interesting perspective..

http://www.larouchepac.com/node/16581

http://larouchepac.com/node/16583

http://larouchepac.com/warroom

French action against banks planned for december 7th - people to withdraw their money - it will crash the banks if enough people to do it...

2010-11-22T00:41:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uop5R7E314&feature=player_embedded

FF doing a deal with FG ?

2010-11-21T16:59:00.000-08:00

I have been informed that FG 'may' have done a deal with FF. They will vote with FF on the budget austerity measures and will comply with the IMF takeover of our economic policy. An election would then be called in the new year.

If this true it is hardly surprising given that FF and FG have differed little in their actual policies over the years.

(Update Dec 4th: Very shortly after this post the Green Party announced that an election would be called in the New Year..)

Friends the sovereign debt (former private banking debt) is unpayable and would shackle the people of Ireland to debt slavery.

A friend mentioned to me this evening:

"It might be that the only thing to do is to kick out FF/FG in a few years time and default on the foreign debt. This would probably involve re-floating the punt. This default would of course be unconstitutional, so it would have to be done extra-constitutionally before the adoption of a new constitution for a second republic."

Sovereignty or Slavery - Are the international banking cartels (IMF/ECB) and foreign corporations aiming to control Ireland's national assets ?

2010-11-21T15:01:00.000-08:00

The Fianna Fail goverment shamefully gave away Ireland's sovereignty in its bailout deal with the ECB.

(It is worth noting that under the Lisbon Treaty, the European Central Bank got an even more iron-clad statute of independence from political supervision. Hardly ideal given the European Central Bank now effectively dictates Irish economic policy) policy.http://www.ecb.int/press/key/date/2008/html/sp080124.en.html)

In 1916 ireland fought to gain independence from the British. 94 years later the Fianna Fail government handed ireland's economic sovereignty to the ECB/IMF. IMF (an international banking cartel that has been heavily criticised for its sponsoring of military dictatorships, and for its tendency to force countries to privatise and sell strategic assets and resources to foreign corporations by its 'conditionalities' on credit). Are the international banking cartels (IMF/ECB) and foreign corporations aiming to control Ireland's national assets ?
Such a blatant handing over of economic power was done without any recourse or consultation with the people of Ireland. There was no referendum. There was no evaluation or public debate allowed of the many other more viable economic options available (see for example Richard Douthwaite's proposal on the FEASTA website or the option published in the Guardian newspaper http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/19/ireland-bailout-brian-cowen) This handover was done over a weekend in which our government agreed to taking an ECB/IMF bailout and could be viewed as economic treason by the Fianna Fail government.

Of course in reality the Irish government is also bailing out the IMF/ECB flawed banking system. If Ireland did not accept a bailout the Euro currency could collapse as unpaid debts to foreign banks could result in the collapse of foreign banks - risking a domino effect.

Ireland's strategic assets ESB, Eirgrid, Bord na Mona, Bord Gais, Coillte (Ireland's forests) etc may be privatised to foreign corporations. This is a massive blow to the people of Ireland for the added reason that Ireland has one of the best renewable energy sites in the world and could create massive wealth from its renewable resources. n addition, €400 billion that is 400 thousand million euros worth of oil has been discovered of the coast of Kerry (Dunquin oil field). The IMF/ECB now effectively control Ireland's economic policy. One could take the view that this is a strategic move by the international banking cartels (IMF/ECB) to gain access to or control Ireland's wealth of natural resources at a time when global oil supplies are running out.

What will Irish people do about all of this ? Many are unemployed, many are on large public sector salaries, many people are just 'getting by', many are busy minding and raising children, many are busy watching english soccer teams on sky sports..

Meanwhile Ireland's hard won sovereignty is under threat (and has now been lost) and our nation's talented and skilled men and women are being forced to emigrate. This is unacceptable when Ireland has all the resources it needs to be a vibrant and succesful nation.

The only protest group I am aware of that has conducted regular 'peaceful' protests against the banks is now apparently (according to the Irish 'Sin'dopendent
newspaper) under garda surveillance. The garda also violently attacked a peaceful student protest a couple of weeks ago and have apparently undergone riot training throughout the country over the past months.

The IMF/ECB degree of control of economic policy in Ireland is in breach of our national sovereignty and constitution. According to the above video creating a blanket gaurantee to protect the international bondholders at the expnse of citizens was the first time this has ever happened anywhere in the world. The people of Iceland rejected this option when the banks tried to force them to bailout the bondholders. Forcing the people of Ireland to pay for the debt of the banks bondholders is financial crime. The banks did not provide transparent information about their balance sheets that makes the banking gaurauntee null and void in my opinion.

and most importantly are you the people of Ireland going to put up with this banking and Fianna Fail bullshit or are you going to do something about it ?

Wanted war criminal Henry Kissinger, the Tri-lateral Commission and the international banking cartel the Bilderberg Group visited Ireland in 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNQ7_Qp9yj4
How come the people of Ireland were not told about this ?
How come no mainstream Irish media covered these significant events ?

The Fianna Fail led government allowed this country to be sold to the highest bidder. Massive privatisation (i.e. selling of natural resources and assets to foreign corporations and foreign banking cartels) is on the way. This is being done without any consultation with the people of Ireland. Note: The deal was done with the IMF/ECB without any referendum or consultation with Irish people.

Key questions arise: Are our Garda loyal to the IMF/ECB policies or loyal to the Irish constitution and the people of Ireland ?

We live in a democracy. the word democracy means people power and comes from the Greek: Demos = People: and Kratos = Power.

Democracy is a political form of government in which governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy).[1] The term comes from the Greek: δημοκρατία – (dēmokratía) "rule of the people",[2] which was coined from δῆμος (dêmos) "people" and κράτος (Kratos) "power", in the middle of the 5th-4th century BC to denote the political systems then existing in some Greek city-states, notably Athens following a popular uprising in 508 BC.[3] Even though there is no specific, universally accepted definition of 'democracy',[4] equality and freedom have been identified as important characteristics of democracy since ancient times.[5] These principles are reflected in all citizens being equal before the law and having equal access to power.

greece asked to hand over sovereignty - ECB to collect taxes in greece
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EVbL8eWwER0#at=1538

Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi report - Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress

2010-11-21T13:35:00.000-08:00

http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/en/index.htm

President Sarkozy has decided to create this Commission, to look at the entire range of issues. Its aim is to identify the limits of GDP as an indicator of economic performance and social progress, to consider additional information required for the production of a more relevant picture, to discuss how to present this information in the most appropriate way, and to check the feasibility of measurement tools proposed by the Commission. Commission's work is not focused on France, nor on developed countries. The output of the Commission will be made public, providing a template for every interested country or group of countries.

The Commission is chaired by Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz, Columbia University. Professor Amartya Sen, Harvard University, is Chair Adviser. Professor Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, President of the Observatoire Français des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE), is Coordinator of the Commission. Members of the Commission are renowned experts from universities, governmental and intergovernmental organisations, in several countries (USA, France, United Kingdom, India). Rapporteurs and secretariat are provided by the French national statistical institute (Insee), OFCE, and OECD.

The Commission held its first plenary meeting on 22 - 23 April 2008 in Paris. It is expected to give in its final report after one year.

Banks-in-Ireland-on-brink-of-collapse. The banking guarauntee must must be deemed void as the banks provided false information.

2010-11-21T01:08:00.001-08:00

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1331690/Banks-Ireland-brink-collapse.html

Brian Lenihan provided a blanket bank gaurauntee (Bad move Brian!) and this measn that Ireland is effectively bust!

The guarauntee must must be deemed void as the banks provided false information.

The state debt Lenihan has created will eventually have to be defaulted.

Ireland must exit the Euro and create and issue its own currency.

Sinn Fein say throw IMF out of Ireland!

2010-11-21T00:53:00.000-08:00

November 20, 2010

Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh has said the Government should throw the IMF out of the country before resigning and calling a general election.

Speaking at the Annual General Meeting of Dublin Sinn Féin Deputy Ó Snodaigh said Irish Sovereignty is not something that Fianna Fáil and the Green Party can sell off to the highest bidder.

Deputy Ó Snodaigh said:

“This Government has brought the country to the brink of economic collapse and now they want to sell of our hard won sovereignty to the IMF.

“The history of the IMF in other countries is one of privatisation of vital public services and mass unemployment.

“But there is another way. It’s time to burn the bondholders and nationalise Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Bank.

“The Government should throw the IMF out of the country before resigning and calling a general election.

“Irish sovereignty is not something that Fianna Fáil and the Green Party can sell off to the highest bidder.

“They have absolutely no mandate for any of what they are doing and they are acting against the wishes of the people.” ENDS
Loading comments...

(Extracted from
http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/19555)

Poblacht na IMF

2010-11-20T14:12:00.000-08:00

Poblacht na IMF
The Temporary Government
To the people of Anglo-Ireland™
IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of Mammon and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of subservience, we declare the name of this country to be Anglo-Ireland™, and through us, Anglo-Ireland™ summons her children to aid her banks and abandon their old illusions about so-called freedom.
Having organised and trained her economists on her flawed debt-based monetary system system, and through her open propaganda organisations, the Irish Media and the subaltern intellectuals, having patiently turned citizens into punters and made of a society a mere economy, having resolutely waited until the people couldn't tell the difference, she now seizes that moment, and, supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on the control of the press and the power of capital to manipulate public opinion, she abandons whatever pretence she had to being a republic and opts instead to become a local branch of the IMF.
We declare the nonsense about right of the people of Anglo-Ireland™ to the ownership of Anglo-Ireland™ to be so much hot air, ditto the unfettered control of Irish destinies insofar as it ever existed. The long usurpation of these rights by the governing elite has extinguished them completely, nor can these rights ever be reignited except by the destruction of that governing elite, which I wouldn't hold my breath for. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their willingness to follow the gentry, even so far as to give over their independence from imperialism to their own gombeens and shoneens, proof positive that we are a nation of slaves or fools. Now, standing by that fundamental abrogation of the rights of the People and reasserting the rights of profit before the rights of the people, we hereby proclaim Anglo-Irish Republic Incorporated™ to be a banking, real estate and auctioneering business, and we pledge the lives of our one-time citizens (now punters or tax-payers™) as collateral for the debts of their masters. Anglo-Ireland™ calls on the poor, the old, the infirm, the young, the students, the workers, the unemployed, the public servants, the householders, the small businesses, the small farmers, the fishermen, the tradesmen and women, to pledge their lives and the lives of their children and their children's children to saving the corporate elite and the Fianna Fáil party whose long sacrifice in the name of holding onto power has finally borne fruit in this declaration.
Anglo-Ireland Incorporated™ guarantees the freedom of capital, the right to make profit out of other people's suffering, and declares its resolve to pursue the prosperity of the rich at the expense of the poor with special emphasis on the benefits of emigration, balancing the obvious benefits of keeping our children at home against the equally obvious savings to be made by exporting our demographic problems to other nations, and proud of the differences carefully fostered by Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, which have divided a minority from the majority and given us one of the biggest rich-poor gaps in the world.
Until we are forced by time into a general election, the Temporary Government™, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the corporations, determined to put down by force of arms if necessary, as already demonstrated, any attempt by the people to reassert any of the rights they mistakenly thought they had.
We place the cause of the Anglo-Ireland Incorporated™ under the protection of the The ECB, the EC and the IMF, whose blessing we invoke upon our banks and businesses, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will endanger it by doing anything precipitous such as resigning his Dáil seat. In this extreme hour the Irish Nation™ must, by its squalor and passivity and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the standard of living of the few, prove itself worthy of the august austerity to which it is called.
(I noticed this extract on Guardian.co.uk)

Comments about Ireland on the Guardian.co.uk

2010-11-20T13:25:00.000-08:00

The IMF has a record of pushing countries' economies into collapse so that they can be privatized. It did this in the Asian financial crisis - deliberately withheld loans so that the corporations could scoop up assets dirt cheap.

One thing we could probably all agree on, this banking cartel has to be smashed. That is the caused of our enslavement.

Default is perfectly acceptable. It worked for Argentina.

The IMF has a record of pushing countries' economies into collapse so that they can be privatized. It did this in the Asian financial crisis - deliberately withheld loans so that the corporations could scoop up assets dirt cheap.

It is very simple really, you ask the IMF for a course of action and then do the exact opposite.
No country that has done an IMF bailout has ever survived it, and almost everyone that didn't take it, is doing much better today.

"Default" situation you and other people keep talking about has been happening over the last few years in the USA, UK, Iceland and the EU- It is the reason for the Global financial crisis.

The Irish situation is not unique and the "Default Bond/ Bank Default" is a recurring factor. For gods sake these banks have defaulted, they are Capitalist Institutions run by Boards of Directors without any due care of Governance.

The Corporate risk takers have blackmailed the Tax-payer into guaranteeing there negligence.by DEFAULTING>

Who remembers ireland saying no to joining the EU. me i do, who remembers the eu forcing another vote onto ireland, me i do. who knows how the imf have financially raped a load of poor south american countries with their "loans" me i do. Here's some facts, The EU is a tyranny, and the imf are gangsters. both are scum.

The Argentinian solution.

Yes, default on the debt, withdraw from the euro, and tell the IMF and the rest of them to eff off. (if it leads to the collapse of the euro they'll be doing the rest of us a favour).

It worked for Argentina. After too much suffering the country defaulted, then over a couple of years and a period of dual currencies it decoupled the peso from the fixed exchange rate with US dollar (a bit easier but essentially the same as dropping the euro) repaid its IMF debts, while telling them where to go with their restructuring programmes -- and then registered something like 7-8 per cent growth for the next five years.
Unfortunately the political class in Ireland does not seem to possess a single politician with the cojones of the late president Kirchner.

Admittedly a touch of schadenfreude.....
To all the Irish readers.....
You joined the euro
You voted for Mastricht
You Voted for Lisbon
Live with it

Ireland Free? Ireland a nation once again? You have been betrayed by traitors. Bankers ,"developers" and GOVT that have sold the people out. Who forced the Irish people to vote again on the Lisbon Treaty? The new Holy Roman Empire is now your new masters. The Neo-Habsburgs have got you were they want you. For what did the men of 1916 die for? To pay for bankers greed? Will we sit by and do nothing?

The church was never an established church, merely one acknowledged to have a special position in Irish life -- on that it forfeited in recent years in circumstances that nothing to do with current economic problems. That acknowledgement was not the result of de Valera "meddling" unless by meddling you mean his participation in the insurrection against British rule, his becoming head of state and his authorship, in large degree, of the Irish constitution.
If the British hadn't invaded and dominated Ireland for centuries, expropriated the wealth of the country, driven Irish people off their own land and and peopled it with planters and mercenaries, brutally suppressed the Irish language and engaged in sectarian persecution, then de Valera's "meddling" wouldn't have been necessary. As it was, he had the overwhelming support of the Irish people at the time.
Frankly, sniping at the fact that the south was an overwhelmingly Catholic society is pretty irrelevant. The point was that the Irish are not going rejoin anything less than a proper republic.

The Irish debt is actually unknown at this stage, what is known is that every figure given by the government over the last two years has doubled. It was 20 billion, then 40 billion now there is this magic figure of 70-90 billion (give or take 10 billion or so).
But even this 90 billion loan merely kicks the can down the road for a year or two, the Irish banks owe the British banks alone €140-160 billion, they owe German and French banks something similar, the actual overall debt for this is 3-4 times Irish GDP. The ECB has sunk €160 billion into Ireland and they want their money back.
You don't revive a country by layering debt on debt. Plus unemployment is sucking the life out of the country (there is no stimulus package and there won't be any, we are a debt servicing agency now, not a nation-state), that and austerity measures plus high costs including salaries at the high end in the public sector, the Prime Minister of Ireland is on about 260,000 euro per annum, he makes more than Obama, Sarkozy, and Merkel, and has no problem with this. Will the IMF cut his salary? Will they cut the salaries of University Presidents which are in the same range? Some academic managers and vice-presidents make obscene amounts.
The problem begins at the top as Upton Sinclair said "impossible to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding", hence the presence of the IMF which I suspect will make the poor pay for the criminal negligence of the elite business and political classes.

The Irish government would not be in trouble except for the guarantees it gave the banks.
After those guarantees were given, the risks guaranteed proved to be different than the government was told when the guarantee was discussed. The amounts were much larger, and the failure of the security was far worse. The banks knew that, and lied to the government.
Ireland has a much better remedy than pillory for its citizens. Declare the contract of guarantee to the banks breached or void ab initio for fraud. Walk away from the banks.
The Credit Default Swaps will kick in. Germany and the like will pay the entire loss. All Ireland loses are some insolvent banks that it cannot afford anyway.
Dump the banks. Make it the problem of the banks and those who profited from them, not the Irish taxpayers, disabled, and unemployed. Priority here.

I see that the IMF is telling everyone that we MUST support the Eurozone.
Corporate fascism here we come.

This is a process of shrinking the economy and creating so much unemployment that wages fall dramatically, and the Irish economy becomes more competitive internationally on the basis of lower unit labour costs."
But surely anyone who can will just up and leave, why on earth would the Irish people just stay there and wait for the country to be turned into some kind of low pay sweatshop that can compete with the likes of China and India? Ireland of all places, with it's history of mass emigration, could be half empty this time next year, with only the elderly left. I'll be honest, if I lived there that's what I'd be doing now.

You have hit the heart of the matter right in the centre -- The Government of Ireland gave the guarantee based on the information provided by the banks. Information now proven to be false. Guarantee no longer applies.
Germany, France, UK - your banks were part of the problem - we invite you to be part of the solution.

And what on earth has "capitalism" got to do with an article about bureaucrats trying to force a government to accept a bail-out which it doesn't believe it needs?
Governments voluntarily and unilaterally guaranteeing the debts and liabilities of private businesses is not "capitalism".
Governments spending more money than they receive in income is not "capitalism".
EU and IMF bureaucracies are not "capitalism"

Ireland needs to leave the Euro. This is the only logical course of action, so that they can then devalue their own currency. This is a bit like defaulting on their debt, but more acceptable. In effect, it means shrinking the size of their debts, at the same time as lowering their own income. It's a reasonable way of 'sharing the pain'. Greece and Portugal should follow suit, and possibly others too..

Anglo and AIB should not have been gauraunteed and bailed out.
Personal deposits gauraunteed only.
NAMA was a mistake.
I and others campaiged against NAMA.
Now the results are clear.
Ireland best option back in '08 was to exit the Euro and Ireland to issue its own currency and credit - see
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/11/european-debt-bomb-greens-against-nama.html

Ireland will be better off exiting the Euro!

2010-11-20T12:34:00.000-08:00

Richard Douthwaite acurately predicted in January '08 at the Green economics conference that Irealnd's only viable long term option was to exit the euro annd issue its own debt-free money. His latest article on solutions to the crisis is at..

http://www.constructireland.ie/index.php?option=com_myblog&Itemid=107&lang=en&show=Bailout-talks-four-truths-Ireland-cant-ignore.html

I have also pasted Richard Douthwaites article below:

Ireland's negotiations with the ECB and the IMF are perhaps the most important talks that this country has engaged in since Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, in late 1921. This time, the Irish team is led by the governor of the Central Bank, Patrick Honohan, the financial regulator, Matthew Elderfield, and the head of the National Treasury Management Agency, John Corrigan. Unless these three men insist that the following four truths are accepted by those on the other side of the table, the country will be presented with an agreement that will blight its future for at least a generation.

Truth 1. If Ireland has to pay interest on the loans being negotiated at a rate which exceeds the rate at which the economy grows over the next few years, it will make the country's situation worse, not better. 

Let's look at the figures. The Greek rescue plan involved loans at 5%. If the same rate is offered to Ireland and the Irish economy shrinks by an average of only 2% a year for the next four years as a result of the tax increases and spending cuts to be introduced under the government's deficit-reduction programme, the real interest rate would be 7%. This is simply not affordable. This is not just because of the interest the country will have to pay on the new debt facility but also because it will have to pay the same rate on the €72 bn of foreign debts the state owes already and on the overseas borrowings of the banks which the state has guaranteed.  

The banks' loans are put at €34bn from German banks, €31bn from British banks, €19 bn from US banks, and $16bn from French banks, a total of €100bn. If all the €85bn of additional foreign debt under the ECB/IMF facility is drawn down, the country's overseas debt would be €257bn by the end of the four-year austerity programme. As a result , Ireland's public debt to national income ratio would be over 200%, an entirely unsustainable level for a country without its own currency. The interest burden would be €18bn a year. This amounts to half the total tax revenue that can be expected in 2015 and perhaps the whole of that year's trade surplus. More frighteningly, it would be €10,000 a year for each person in employment.  

It could be claimed that the banks will pay some of this interest themselves but it is far more likely that they will still be making losses because of the bad debts caused by the continuing contraction of the economy. The state may even have to inject more capital into them. If the banks can pay the interest on their borrowings in Ireland they will be doing well.  

Ireland is therefore totally unable to pay any interest on any new loans unless the rate of interest is no greater than its growth rate. If its growth is negative, the interest rate needs to be negative too. What is therefore needed is not a loan but a bailout – either a grant or a loan with an interest rate based on the economy's future economic performance.  

Truth 2. Any grant or loan to Ireland will only buy time for the eurozone to come up with a cure for the whole sick system. Ireland should not be asked to bear more than its proportionate share of the cost of gaining this time which is for the benefit of every euro user.  

Without exception, every eurozone country is running a budget deficit bigger than the Stability and Growth Pact allows and only five small countries have debt-GDP ratios below the 60% ceiling. As a result, all are planning budget cuts which, because they are being implemented simultaneously, could make matters worse by reducing national incomes at a time when national debts are still going up. In other words, the whole eurozone system is sick and Ireland and Greece are just bad cases of a disease which everyone shares. A collective cure needs to be found and it makes no sense for Ireland to make sacrifices unless such a cure is being planned. Part of any agreement between Ireland and the ECB/IMF team should therefore be an assurance that the eurozone is going to be transformed. Preventing governments running large budget deficits should not be part of that transformation since such deficits are a symptom that something is wrong rather than the prime cause. States need to be able to act counter-cyclically to protect their economies and, in any case, Ireland's problems are largely due to its banks.  

The cost Ireland will bear for helping to stabilise the euro until an overall solution can be introduced is not just a matter of money. In fact, money would be the least part of the cost and it can always be repaid later. The greater part would be social — the poverty, the unemployment and the forced emigration — and the lives blighted as a result can never be fully restored. The transition to the new basis for the eurozone should therefore be quick and Ireland and other troubled countries should be supported by their less-sick partners while it is coming about.  

Another element of the cost could be that Ireland will be asked to sell its national investments in companies like the ESB and CIE. This would raise very little money — recent estimates by Siobhan Creaton put their total market value at about €12bn — but would end the possibility of having these companies play a national developmental role. Under private ownership, immediate short-term profits would be the primary goal. The privatisation of Eircom is an awful warning. The company was loaded with debt by a succession of private owners and, as a result, did not have the resources to roll out broadband as quickly as happened in other countries. No-one will ever know how much income the country lost because of this failure.  

Truth 3. The ECB bears a large share of the responsibility for the regulatory failure which led to the property bubble. 

Since the eurozone was set up, the Irish Central Bank has been the local office of the ECB. The Central Bank knew the extent to which the commercial banks were going in for excessive property-based lending and gave details each month in its publications. These showed that Irish debts were increasing at an excessive rate in relation to the rate of income growth. For example, over at least three years between 2004 and the end of 2006, private sector debts to Irish banks grew at an average rate of just under 30% a year. This meant that the amount households and firms owed more than doubled in that short period. Tbe Central Bank also knew that most of this excessive lending – over 60% of it in some years - was to do with property. Some loans were for mortgages, others to finance construction companies and developers, and some to people who wished to borrow against their real estate assets. It sent all this information back to head office but it is not clear whether the ECB tried to persuade the Financial Regulator and the government of the dangers the country was running. If it did, it was ineffective. The ECB must pay a share of the cost for this failure.  

Truth 4. There is a Plan B. Ireland doesn't have to take anything that is offered. It can leave the euro quickly and easily.  

If the deal offered by the ECB/IMF negotiators is unsatisfactory, the Irish government can simply announce that, when the banks open the following morning, the accounts in them will be in a new currency – let's call it the harp - and all wages, rents, debts and other payments are to be paid in harp with immediate effect. (Cash payments would have to be made in euro notes and coins until harp ones could be introduced). After the announcement the government would issue itself with the new currency on a debt-free basis so that it no longer needed to borrow to cover its budget deficit. External debts in euros would be negotiated down to an affordable level. The devaluation brought about by the switch would make the country very competitive and any inflation the new money caused would provide the higher incomes needed to pay harp debts and support harp asset values, and thus strengthen the banking system.

The Irish negotiating team must make it very clear to the Commission and the ECB that Ireland would prefer to take this road and undergo an acute but brief crisis rather than accept a deal that entails an indefinite period of national penury with no guarantee that, eventually, its debts can be cleared. It is imperative that the ECB/IMF team understand that unless Ireland is offered a real road out of its present situation within the eurozone, the country will retrieve its national sovereignty and opt out.  

Conclusion

Ireland's bank guarantee was a bluff which the government prayed would never be called because it knew that the country would be unable to honour it if it was. Well, now it has. The day it dreaded has come and the government needs to admit that Ireland cannot honour its guarantees without grants towards their cost from its EU partners. Loans will not suffice. Unless it gets this help, Ireland has no alternative but to renege on the guarantees and to build itself a future within the EU but outside the eurozone.  

Richard Douthwaite is an economist and writer with a special interest in climate and energy issues and local economic development. His new book is Fleeing Vesuvius.

see also
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/19/ireland-bailout-brian-cowen

There is another way for bullied Ireland

Brian Cowen Brian Cowen, the beleaguered Irish prime minister, who is coming under severe political pressure to conclude a deal with the European Commission and IMF. Photograph: Georges Gobet/AFP/Getty Images

As another one of the so-called "PIIGS" countries is being led to the slaughterhouse, it is worth asking whether all the carnage advocated by the European authorities is really necessary. Ireland is in its third year of recession, and income per person has already declined by more than 20% since 2007. Unemployment has more than tripled from 4.3% at the end of 2006 to 13.9% today.

The baseline projection from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is that debt stabilises at close to 100% of GDP by 2014, but even that depends on the volatile and sometimes contradictory sentiments of the "bond vigilantes" – who don't always seem to know what they want. One day, the bond markets are happy because the government is cutting the budget and laying off workers; the next day, they relearn their national income accounting and realise that this will shrink the economy, and make the deficit and debt burden bigger relative to GDP.

Unfortunately, the European authorities do know what they want: they want to squeeze Ireland, they want more fiscal tightening and they want to shrink the size of the government. And they want it now, even if it means that Ireland will sink further into recession.

So, it is understandable that the Irish government would resist an agreement with these authorities – which include the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF. The European Financial Stability Facility was set up in May with the proviso that contractionary conditions would be attached to any "bailout".

Is there an alternative? Yes – in fact, there are many. It is perfectly feasible for the European authorities to help Ireland recover from its recession without subjecting the economy – and the people – to further punishment.

Ireland is a small economy of just 4.5 million people, with a GDP of about 166bn euros. With a small fraction of the funds already set aside for this purpose, the European authorities and IMF can loan Ireland any funds needed in the next year or two at very low interest rates. We are talking about some 80-90bn euros over the next three years, out of a 750bn euro fund.

Once these borrowing needs are guaranteed, Ireland would not have to worry about spikes in its borrowing costs like the one that provoked the current crisis, in which interest rates on their 10-year bonds shot up from 6 to 9% in a matter of weeks. This creates self-fulfilling prophecies in which a debt burden becomes unsustainable – because the "bond vigilantes" think it might be.

The European authorities could scrap their pro-cyclical conditions and, instead, allow for Ireland to undertake a temporary fiscal stimulus to get their economy growing again. That is the most feasible, practical alternative to continued recession.

Instead, the European authorities are trying what the IMF, in its July 2010 Article IV consultation with the Irish government, calls an "internal devaluation". This is a process of shrinking the economy and creating so much unemployment that wages fall dramatically, and the Irish economy becomes more competitive internationally on the basis of lower unit labour costs. This would allow the economy to recover from the stimulus of external demand (that is, by increasing its net exports).

Aside from huge social costs and economic waste involved in such a strategy, it's tough to think of examples where it has actually worked. And it's even less likely in this case, when you look at Ireland's major export markets: the eurozone, UK and US – which don't look like they will be sources of booming demand for Irish exports in the immediate future.

If you want to see how rightwing and 19th-century-brutal the European authorities are being, just compare them to Ben Bernanke, the Republican chair of the US Federal Reserve. He recently initiated a second round of "quantitative easing", or creating money – another $600bn dollars over the next six months. And today, he made it clear that the purpose of such money creation was so that the federal government could use it for another round of fiscal stimulus. The ECB could do something similar – if not for its rightist ideology and politics.

While Ireland may seem outgunned in any confrontation with the European authorities, it is far from powerless. The European authorities and their banker allies do not want to see Ireland default on its debt or exit from the euro. This is true for all the "PIIGS" countries, although they all face different situations. But Ireland has already lost more, in terms of output and employment, than it might have lost in a restructuring/default and, possibly, even by an exit from the euro.

The question is, how much more are the Irish willing to sacrifice in order to satisfy the wishes of the European authorities?

State of the nation message

2010-11-18T14:56:00.000-08:00

If you believe in this message please post it on your website and pass it on.

European Debt Bomb / Greens against NAMA / Exit the Euro

2010-11-17T17:36:00.000-08:00

That debt bomb diagram that was posted in the New York Times I posted it on my blog back in May !
see
'Who will bail out the countries that bailed out the banks ?'
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/05/international-news.html
'What th...e European debt bomb looks like'
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19239

18 months ago I and many other Greens campaigned against NAMA to no avail - NAMA resulted in the unjust bailout of private banks at the expense of irish citizens - the anti NAMA people warned it would end up in tears and have been proved correct ! that doesnt make this catastrophe any easier to bear. I have been warning about the dangers of an IMF bailout now for over a year - the Green Party leadership despite very good work done in certain areas complied with a banking bailout that had created massive sovereign debt - now who will bailout the state? If we are shackled to the IMF / ECB it would be a catastrophe for this nation.
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/11/irish-govt-slaves-to-imf-terror-machine.html

Richard Douthwaite called it correctly back at the Green Economics conference back in Jan '08 when he stated in his presentation that Ireland's only viable option was to exit the Euro - he was right - now it too late in the game. Of course pro- Euro Greens did not listen to his points.

Facebook reactions to the ECB/IMF bailout

2010-11-17T16:49:00.001-08:00

comments from a facebook conversatoin about the people of Ireland accepting the unjust bank bailout at the expsne of irish citizens and the likely flawed bailout by ECB / IMF and firesake if Ireland' semi-state bodies:

Shane..the problem is the IRISH HAVE TURNED IN TO A NATION OF COWARDS, not hungery enuff yet, wait till were on our knees and our children are crying with hunger and sickness, a revalaution, BOLLOX , the irish men today havent got the balls to take a stand for the childern of the future to busy in the bookies or watching football on the tv,the imf is going to fuck us up the ass, and they wont bother to pull our trousers down.

Declan
Shane its hard to disagree with you, we have turned into a nation of cowards, at the GP convention on Nama I debated that there was a wiff of social revolution in the air, when the party voted to support NAMA and stay in government I couldn...t believe it, as i said before, we had two referendums on lisbon, yet no vote on what has now removed our economic sovernity and not a whimper from the public, what the fuck is going on? too busy watching reality tv, keep the public entertained. listening to a FF minister on vincent browne, he is an accurate representative of the party and a government spokeman, honestly it would drive one to violent reaction, if i was on the panel i would just say, shut the fuck up, your fired.

Mark
Declan Im extremely angry about all this bailout nonsense and the unjust bailout of anglo private bondholders by the state which has placed us in the riduclous position of a state bailout - im beside myself with anger and its all the worse ...because like yourself I capaigned through the Greens to no avail and Ii saw the IMF scenario coming from 18 months ago and they will only be to happy to get a hold on this country with our massive renewable energy resources. Our worst predictions being proven right doesnt make the reality any easier to take. Treason is right - hanging isnt good enough for the banking and political criminals that transferred private banking debt into sovereign debt at the expense of the Irish people.
Richard Douthwaite has proposed a solution its on the feasta website at
http://www.feasta.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=956#p1577

Declan - Mark i imagine what will happen now is that all semi-state sectors will be sold off, esb, bord gais, they will privatise water, waste (already done largely) coillte, what remains of our state assests will be sold off and yes our renewable resources with them. To even attempot Richard proposal we need a social and cultural revolution first. What will it take for this to happen? we all seem to waiting for someone to make the first step.

Mark
Yes Declan, ESB and Eirgrid are hugely important strategic assets in the context of Ireland's massive renewable resources and if these are privatised it will be another huge blow for the people of this nation - the Irish constitution states... "Ireland and her resources" are for the people of this nation - unless a social and cultural revolution takes place the resources will continue to controlled by foreign corporations - will Irish people have to fight for their country all over again ? willl people take the emigration route as the easier option ? I returned to this country from the UK as an Irishman it is my favorite place in the world. We need an Irish leader to emerge - a new michael collins, a modern day brian boru. It is time for all the seperate protest groups to join together to reclaim our nation. The truth will not be denied.

Flawed debt-based monetary system

2010-11-17T15:04:00.000-08:00

namawinelake blog has a list of the anglo bondholders but they already been unjustly paid off by the state with the anglo bailout - now the state needs bailing out -
the global debt-based banking system is flawed and it is therefore a matter of time before complete collapse - the 2008 collapse caused the extreme policy of quantitative easing i.e. creating more money from nothing.

Check out the link below

http://www.webinformation.at/material/debtmoney.pdf

Irish govt slaves to IMF ( a private banking cartel)

2010-11-17T14:14:00.000-08:00

Support for a bailout by a foreign banking cartel such as ECB or IMF could be viewed as treason. Such as bailout would shackle our country to generations of debt slavery to a private banking cartel and place our sovereignty and strategic assets at risk - it was banks that created the crisis, why run to private international banks such as the ECB/IMf (Who are themeselves virtually bankrupt). The global monetray system run by these private banking cartels is on its knees - these banking cartels need Ireland to accept their credit otherwise their banking systems may collpase due to unpaid debts to European banks. The Irish people should not be forced to pay for the mistakes of the banks international bondholders. Ireland could create its own credit and not run to the IMF/ECB.

CHECK OUT THE VIDEO BELOW!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQFHgcFlrlw

I posted the above link on Irish Times - below is a response from an Irish Times reader

MikeOH
@Mark

Leaving aside the rediculous emotional hyperbole, the youtube clip's analysis is correct. The global (US & EU particularly) private banking cartels, given the right, free gratis, to create & control Money, either knew precisely what the creation of the financial bubble would produce or should have known.

They are either crooks or utterly incompetent - either way, the monetary system needs to be removed from them & replaced with a public - nation state or collective eurozone - banking system. Both elected officials & senior civil servants also need to be replaced, via political reform, with people who will actually represent the welfare of citizens, not the interests of a wealthy & powerful few.

The private banking cartels completely dominate mainstream economics & politics. (Think for a moment where most economists gain employment.)

Frankly, it is very hard to see how 'incompetence' at the most senior levels could be the more likely explanation. The creation of debt 'bubbles' in 3rd world countries, leading to debt peonage (slavery) is a tactic of economic imperialism as old as the hills. The 'strong' praying on the 'weak' using what amounts to bribery of local 'officials', as required, to sign up to debt which is then transferred to citizens when the bubble bursts. The mechanisms of debt creation may be different, but the effect is exactly the same.

Morally, those banks who loaned to Irish Banks amounts which could only lead to a 'bubble' & 'bust' should be taking a massive haircut. As has been said already, the expected maximum public exposure to losses (€4B ?) stated by politicians/banks at the time of the original state 'guarantee' was understated by a factor of 10 of more. There is no reason why that could not have been accurately assessed at the time. Morally, & by the legal principles of 'financial' statements, the extent of the state contribution should be no more than was publicly stated at that time, some two years ago.

response from David Walker
David Walker
@Mark, Ireland was sold off years ago, what do think all this open economy stuff is about. Tell me how much of Ireland that Irish people actually own, mostly mortgage slaves, the clowning in the Dail is just a pretence to keep the boys in cushy jobs while the banks sell everything of any value. Ireland is just a theme park, for the amusement of Americans and Plastic Paddy British.

A viable alternative to this flawed proposed ECB/IMF bailout has been suggested by Richard Douthwaite.

2010-11-17T14:05:00.001-08:00

A viable alternative to this flawed proposed ECB/IMF bailout has been suggested by Richard Douthwaite. His proposal can be viewed and downloaded at

http://www.feasta.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=956#p1577

All talk of aligning our country with ECB or IMF bailouts is nothing short of treason it risks loss of Irish soveriegnty and loss of strategic assets

2010-11-16T12:51:00.000-08:00

Large sections of the Irish media are assuming and welcoming an EU or IMF bailout which IMO is the worst possible scenario for the reasons I have outlined.
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/11/ireland-say-no-to-any-bailout-by.html
All talk of aligning our country with ECB or IMF bailouts coyuld be viewed as treason - it risks loss of Irish soveriegnty and loss of strategic Irish assets such as ESB and Eirgrid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason
see Irish constitution
nows wheres me cupa tea :-)

Rethinking Education Declaration

2010-11-16T05:54:00.000-08:00

I received the following draft declaration from the working group. (I presented The Natural Step sustainability framework at this event earlier this year and participated in the declaration formation.)

Rethinking Education Declaration
At a convention held at Tipperary Institute in Thurles, County Tipperary as part of the Convergence Festival of 2010, upwards of one hundred participants considered how education provision must change in order to play its part in addressing the urgent issues faced by our planet and in order to contribute to the emergence of communities with the beliefs, insight, knowledge and skills that will allow their members to live rich and fulfilling lives in a radically changed local and global environment.
This declaration is an outcome of that convention and is informed by the views expressed by participants though it is not suggested that every participant necessarily assents to every clause. It must also be remembered that this declaration addresses issues relating to education only – it is not a declaration on all aspects of sustainability.
Context
The participants in the Rethinking Education event held as part of Convergence 2010 believe that –
1. Continuous economic growth is neither possible nor desirable
2. The global circumstances in which we and future generations must live are changing substantially and irreversibly
3. These circumstances include increasing population, declining non-renewable resources, changing climate patterns and reducing bio-diversity
4. The emerging circumstances will impose permanent changes in behaviour on human beings in the short to medium term
5. Scientific and technological advances may mitigate but will not remove the need for radical changes in behaviour
6. Human beings should respond to the changing circumstances in a proactive way rather than await the inevitable change that will be required
7. If a proactive approach is not taken the change is likely to be more intense, more violent and more unjust
8. The changes in behaviour that will be required should be just and any negative impacts of these changes should be distributed in an equitable manner
9. The immediate needs of the human beings that currently inhabit the planet do not take precedence over the needs of future generations and other species
10. Communal needs are as important as individual desires
11. The current behavioural paradigms and the dominant narratives and cultures do not envisage significant changes in behaviour in response to the changing circumstances
12. Long-term sustainable change will be possible only when these paradigms, narratives and cultures change
13. Behavioural and cultural change will require a combination of enhanced knowledge, changing patterns of status determination, change within communities and changing expectations of the production and consumption of scarce resources
14. Education in all its forms is a fundamental resource in the creation of the new culture and should be the point of departure for the change required though it is only one element of a much broader programme of necessary actions
15. The primary function of education is the creation of a community of resilient and fulfilled individuals and not the creation of individual and communal wealth
16. Learning is a life-long activity and learning how to learn and how to respond to learning are skills that are fundamental to a sustainable existence
17. Education should include the transfer of knowledge, the development of beliefs and attitudes, the development of skills and the provision of good example
18. The transfer of the skills required by a resilient community is particularly important and urgent as the associated knowledge is often tacit and unrecorded
19. The extent of the resources currently provided to support formal education is a product of relative wealth and may not be sustainable
20. The application of the principles of sustainable living cannot wait until we can afford it or until our current economic problems are resolved
Actions
In response to these beliefs we ask -
1. That the Minister for Education and Skills require that all teacher education programmes include training in the principles of sustainable living
2. That all HEIs involved in teacher education and training develop methods of enhancing the knowledge, skills and understanding of teachers regarding sustainable living
3. That the HEA require each HEI by which they are funded to develop strategies and action plans for the inclusion of education in sustainable living in all the programmes of study delivered in the HEI and that the learning outcomes of such strategies and action plans relate to attitudes, skills and behaviour as well as knowledge
4. That the HEA also require that HEIs develop strategies and action plans for the illustration of principles of sustainability within their own activities and on their own campuses in order that the actions of the HEIs reflect their teaching activities
5. That the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment commence the preparation of a strategy for the inclusion of the principles of sustainable living throughout the second-level curriculum and that adherence with such principles form part of the mechanisms for examination at this level
6. That the Minister for Education and Skills require that the principles of sustainable living be included in the education curriculum at primary level and that the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment be requested to advise how such might be put into effect
7. That the Minister for Education and Skills require each provider of further education whether in the public or private sector, to develop strategies and action plans for the inclusion of education in sustainable living in all the programmes of study delivered by such providers and that the learning outcomes of such strategies and action plans relate to attitudes, skills and behaviour as well as knowledge
8. That civil society organisations, the VECs through their community education function and other community development organisations would be provided with targeted resources and supports to devise and implement a programme of practical behaviour change within local communities
9. That the Government require that knowledge of and commitment to the principles of sustainable living be included as a selection criterion for appointments to positions within the public sector
10. That the Government introduce regulations facilitating the application of the principles of sustainable development by all state organisations throughout their activities including those relating to procurement, travel and other communication methods, bonus and rewards systems and use of non-renewable resources
11. That the Government require the principle organs of mass communication and particularly those that are supported by public funding to develop a strategy and action plan for the inclusion of the principles of sustainable living within their offerings
12. That the Government develop a system that will require that public sector bodies initially proof all communications for their implications for the principles of sustainable living and for the inclusion of balancing statements where communications are in conflict with such principles
13. That HEIs review the basis of promotion and preferment and how the principles of sustainable living might be included in the assessment of promotion candidates
14. That the Government implement a programme of action research and investigation on the factors, including those relating to education, that impact on societal behaviour change that has a focus that is longer than the immediate

--------------------------------------------------------
My personal comments on the declaration are copied below.

Hi Catherine/Ciaran and working group,

Congratulations on this. Excellent document.
1. Yes - the draft generally reflects my views
I would also like to make some additional points (see below)
Regards
Mark

The document refers to 'principles of sustainable living' a number of times, but does not define what these principles are.
For example, on behalf of the GP sustainability group I proposed a set of 'Sustainability principles for Ireland' (i.e.Motion 24) to the Green Party in 2009 and these were passed at the 2010 convention. I am not saying you should use these necessarily, but you may find these of benefit. These principles are listed at http://www.sustainableireland.net/gpage1.html and are based around a scientific definition of sustainability listed in the RSBS Science of Sustainability Report 2006

In relation to GDP growth, one of the main drivers is the flawed debt-based interest-based monetary system. This creates a vicious circle of environmental destruction - the compulsion is for growth to be created in order to pay back capital 'plus interest' to the banks.
See http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/09/banking-system-creates-money-from.html
FEASTA has done a lot of work on this area.

Imo it should also be noted that increased population level (currently) results in increased environmental destruction
In relation to this it could be should be noted that Ireland has the fastest population growth in the EU. In Ireland, population rose by 18% from 2000 to 2009. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0916/breaking25.html
Growth in the rates of population growth and /or growth in the rate of consumption of non-renewable resources cannot be sustained. It is intellectually dishonest to talk about sustainability without stressing the obvious fact that stopping population growth is (currently) a necessary condition for sustainability. The U.K. Green Party states in their policy on population that "a stable or slowly reducing population is also necessary to achieve a sustainable and equitable society" see http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/policypointers/pppopulation.pdf
We should remember that Ireland’s low population of 4.5 million is an advantage and the potential exists to meet all our energy needs via renewables. The U.K. for example, has a population of 62 million and therefore has a much bigger energy demand problem. However, the Irish nation is not currently living within Ireland’s biocapacity. The overshoot of Ireland’s ecological footprint compared to biocapacity is graphed at: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/trends/ireland/
See also http://www.optimumpopulation.org/ Note the FEASTA link below to an OPT report listing Ireland as an overpopulated country.
http://www.feasta.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=949#p1568

Ireland say NO to any bailout by a foreign private banking cartel (ECB/IMF) - why should we take their credit when we can create our own credit

2010-11-16T03:34:00.001-08:00

IRELAND SAY NO TO ANY BAILOUT BY A FOREIGN BANKING CARTEL - WHY SHOULD WE TAKE THEIR CREDIT WHEN WE CAN CREATE OUR OWN CREDIT. WHERE DO YOU THINK THE ECB OR THE IMF WILL GET THE MONEY? THEY SIMPLY CREATE CREDIT THROUGH FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING..

http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/11/forget-imf.html

Brian Lenihan provided a blanket bank gaurauntee (Bad move Brian!) and this means that Ireland is effectively bust! The guarauntee must must be deemed void as the banks provided false information. There is no legal basis or mandate for FF to force the people of Ireland to pay off the debt off the banking bondholders. The state debt Lenihan has created will eventually have to be defaulted as it is unpayable. The levels of reckless GDP growth that would be required to pay off the bank bondholder debts are completely unfeasible and not aligned with the creation of a sustainable Ireland. Ireland must exit the Euro and create and issue its own currency.

Almost 20 years of GDP growth and virtually no adherence to Sustainability principles has left Ireland a nation utterly dependent on foreign oil, foreign investment, foreign goods and foreign borrowing. A cog in a flawed and failing global economy, we have built little self-reliance and are €865 billion in debt.

We need a new vision for the future direction of Ireland that is based on sustainability and self-reliance, otherwise we remain beholden to a foreign banking cartel. The good news is In facing these challenges Ireland has and always has had key advantages over many other European countries, these include a low population, truly massive wind and wave resources, abundant fertile land, abundant rainfall and the untapped potential in our seas. We must protect these advantages, and to face the challenges successfully Ireland must prioritise and move toward 'Sustainability' as soon as possible.

Ireland is in fact BETTER placed than most European countries in these fundamentally key areas yet successive inept governments have failed to create indigenous industries instead relying on foreign corporations and have blindly ceded resources when we joned the EU. When Ireland joined the EU we gave up 2/3 of our sea fishing rights to EU worth an estimated 200 billion.

Ireland gave away its 420 billion oil and gas resource (signed off to shell by Bertie and Ray burke). Note:Norway did NOT join the EU, Norway created its won state oil company (StatOIl) to harness its oil reserves, yet in Ireland Bertie and Ray burke simply gave it way to shell for nothing

Also Ireland has one of the best renewable energy resources on the entire planet - yet we are about 35 years behind the likes of Denmark in developing these resources. Ireland has everything it needs yet we are on the cusp of losing it if we accede to a foreign bailout! Anglo a private institution and its international bondholders should not have been bailed out by the state and this unjust act which has no constitutional basis has placed ireland's strategic assets and sovereignty at risk

Being tied to the Euro means we cannot now devalue our currency as the UK has done. Ireland need to take control of issuing its own money and issuing its own credit - rather than accepting bailouts and being tied to paying off interest to a private foreign banking cartel (IMF) for generations. The UK, the USA, Denmark etc all create/issue their own money. Ireland as soverign nation needs to create its money. This bullsit about pleasing the markets -is just that - bullshit. The markets will not desert Ireland - Ireland has one of the best renewable energy resources on the entire planet and the ESB and eirgrid are strategic assets that could ensure great future wealth in harnessing our renewable energy resources and exporting renewable energy. Foreign corporations, the ECB and foreign banking caretels like the IMF would only be too delighted to get their hands on these strategic assets.

In addition, the quantitative issue of peak oil will make GDP growth more unlilkely due to rising oil prices in the years ahead – significant GDP growth would be required to pay the interest on foreign controlled debts and peak oil adds a significant risk.

IRELAND SAY NO TO ANY FOREIGN BACKED BAILOUT - CREATE OUR OWN CREDIT BY REFINANCING OUR ASSETS - USE FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING TO CREATE CREDIT JUST AS THE INTERNATIONAL BANKING CARTELS DO - WHY SHOULD WE TAKE THEIR CREDIT WHEN WE CAN CREATE OUR OWN !

Ireland will always be a vibrant part of Europe, but we must move away from this mindset of ‘dependency’ on the EU and move toward self-determination and self-reliance! Ireland HAS all the resources it needs to be a succesful country. Now there is an opportunity to change and transform Ireland into the most sustainable country in Europe due to the advantages listed above – this would bring sustainable wellbeing and quality of life for Irish citizens and future generations.

Resilience and Self-Reliance’ are absolutely critical to a successful and sustainable future for Ireland and we must ensure we do all we can to push this as a priority.

IRELAND STAND UP AND BE CONFIDENT - THE FOREIGN CARTELS WANT OUR STRATEGIC ASSETS - WE DONT NEED OUTSIDE ASSISTANCE FROM FOREIGN PRIVATE BANKING CARTELS - WE HAVE ALL THE NATURAL RESOURCES WE NEED TO CREATE WEALTH SO LETS REFINANCE OUR ASSETS OURSELVES!!

Of course to do this we would actually need to leave the Euro because since we have joined the EU we no longer have control of this area of monetary policy.

If a bailout by the ECB or IMF takes there will be severe austerity measures that will only postpone the problem but not solve it. If Ireland were to accept an ECB or IMF bailout we would also be bailing out the EU project because the flawed debt-based EU banking system will collapse if we do not accept a bailout. However the bailout will not solve the underlying problems it will merely buy some more time.

A viable alternative to this flawed proposed bailout has been suggested by Richard Douthwaite. His proposal can be viewed and downloaded at

http://www.feasta.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=956#p1577

The current choice is between
'debt slavery for the people of Ireland' or 'retaining Ireland's sovereignty'
To retain our sovereignty we must reject the IMF/ECB bailout. Why should we accept their credit when we could just as easily create our own credit through the creation of a national credit system !
Another perspective can be viewed here..

http://www.larouchepac.com/node/16581

Related link
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/10/relevant-aspects-of-national.html

My comments on James Nix article on thinkorswim.ie nov 15 2010

2010-11-15T14:35:00.000-08:00

http://www.thinkorswim.ie/?p=1118#comments

Hi James
Your article links nicely with some of my previous posts in which I describe issues such as physical limits to growth, the flawed debt-based interest-based monetary system, the vicious circle of environmental destruction caused by the compulsion for growth in order to pay back capital 'plus interest' to the banks.

Sept 14th 2010 Flawed monetary system
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/09/banking-system-creates-money-from.html

Richard Douthwaite pointed out at the Green Economics conference Jan '08 that Ireland's best option was to exit the euro and have control of issuing her own money.
The work of Herman Daly and FEASTA in advocating steady-state economics are also relevant in relation to these issues, I have included references and links in my posts below.

Oct 23rd 2010 Relevant aspects of national sustainability
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/10/relevant-aspects-of-national.html

Sept 24th 2010 Debt will never be repayed unless default or hyperinflation
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/09/exit-euro-ireland-needs-to-have-control.html

Oct 18th 2010 Societies that cancelled debts
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/10/societies-that-cancelled-debts-in-past.html

January 15th 2010 The attainability of sustainability
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/01/this-article-was-submitted-to-green.html

Economic Challenge of Sustainability - Douthwaite and O'Siochru
http://www.feasta.org/documents/landhousing/CORI_RD_EOS.html

regards

Mark

Ireland failed to recognise the long term strategic value of issuing its own currency and issuing its own credit

2010-11-15T14:31:00.001-08:00

Forget the IMF
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/11/forget-imf.html

Ireland failed to recognise the long term strategic value of issuing its own currency and issuing its own credit

http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/09/banking-system-creates-money-from.html

Also the levels of GDP growth required to service the interest payments on the proposed bailout will be unlikely to be achieved (and besides that GDP growth is an outdated philosophy - sustainability in the biosphere requires we move toward steady-state economics)
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/10/energy-and-food-constraints-will.html
http://sustainableireland.blogspot.com/2010/10/things-may-unravel-faster-than-you.html

Comments copied from IT website about Donal O'Mahonys article in the Irish Times

2010-11-14T10:43:00.000-08:00

Brian Flanagan
For an alternative view, worth watching this short video interview with Jospeh Stiglitz, an economics professor at Columbia University, about the prospects for the Irish government's austerity program. At
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/64449376/

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz is quite familiar with Ireland as he appeared as an expert witness for Paddy McKillen in his recent court case against Nama. His statement is an interesting read. More at
http://namawinelake.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/paddy-mckillen-v-nama-expert-witness-statements-published-on-namawinelake/
Today, 09:01:54
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Curran_C
'Donal O’Mahony is global strategist with Davy' - thats all you need to know!! Morgan Kelly is right on the money.
Today, 09:17:02
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Graham Little
Davy stockbrokers, the same stockbroker who repeated told us there would be a 'soft landing' in the property bubble. The same stockbroker who deals in Irish government bonds, earning money from transactions, regardless of what way they go. It's no wonder that they would not want any default on bonds, thereby making them worthless and eliminating the lucrative trading commissions/fees. I think we gave enough airtime and column inches to this kind of vested interest throughout the boom years. Can we please keepl commentary impartial?

Donal is a professional financial instruments salesman, you see them everyday been interviewed on RTE at 1.15. No matter what the markets say (with their money), these professional salesmen stick their heads in the sand as if everything is fine. There is a very good reason for them to do this, its their job, no sales means no commission.
The truth would be nice to hear, instead been drip fed inaccurate and misleading inforamtion every day. No wonder the markets have us where we are, its like shooting fish in a barrel. We sold our souls years ago when we joined the euro. Now we have no currency to devalue to get us out of this mess.
Today, 10:38:56
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Peter Finan
Ah, good old Davy Stockbrokers. Kings of accurate forecasts.... http://195.7.33.36/newspaper/finance/2007/0228/1172185239733.html
Today, 10:47:54
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Fishy
I have never met Donal O’Mahony and he is probably a fine fellow.
When reading this article I remembered a piece he wrote earlier this year.
Looking at both pieces I am reminded of the 2000 movie Momento in which Guy Pearce suffers short term memory
loss and resorts to writing on pieces of paper to remind him who he and what he is doing.

I'm sorry to say that it appears Donal suffers from a similar affliction.

Regardless of what we think of Mr Morgan Kelly he is remarkably consistant in his views. We cannot and should not become morose about what is happening but we should always understand the difference between expert opinion and bullshit.

I wonder how many bonds were sold by stockbrokers plying the line that we were turning the corner.
It's remarkable that the author is using this article to warn about bond default when the only way we can play tough is to threaten to default.

Image for a moment if we as a nation said no to bondholders and refused to pay.Would the sky fall in? No.
Would we be locked out of the markets, probably for a little while but suddenly we would have the upper hand in any negotiations and our terms would include access to the market at our terms.When people are owed a lot of money the pendulum is always on the borrowers side.

We need to address our own problems but now is the time to stand tough together and not worry about faceless strangers who merrily lend money to bankers and now want us to pay it back.

This wouldn't be in Donal O Mahony's interest our his employers but then their's is a narrow interest.

Morgan Kelly may not be palatable to some but like Michael O Leary he suffers from that rare disease of being almost always right.

I have pasted a section of Donal O Mahony's piece from last April.

April 2010 by Donal O Mahony
Here'sCourtesy of Nama and the stepped-up prudential requirements of a new and vigorous financial regulator, Ireland will soon find itself with two of the most strongly capitalised banks in Europe (AIB and Bank of Ireland).

Domestically, malcontents continue to vent their spleen against the Government’s stabilisation policies, in stark contrast to the increasingly receptive audiences overseas, including an endorsement from the International Monetary Fund last week. Of course, continued political opposition is the obligatory stock-in-trade, but the relentless criticisms of both media and academia is more bemusing at this juncture, not least given the paucity of credible alternatives proffered to date.

Bertie Ahern and Shell

2010-11-14T02:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DySF-3b2D0&feature=related

Bertie Ahern v Pat O`Donnell

2010-11-14T01:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwgktMklJ0w

The Oil and Gas giveway - Ireland's resources signed away to Shell by convicted criminal Ray Burke and Bertie Ahern

2010-11-14T01:37:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbppH0xJHTk&feature=related

How the Irish police treat people in Ireland and protect Shell Corporation

2010-11-11T17:12:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSMF4GgnC_I&feature=related

Shell in Mayo: A New Nigeria?

2010-11-11T17:05:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLpDmh4BU8w&feature=related

Shell Cop Garda Kevin Conroy has no idea why he's guarding Shell's net at Glengad

2010-11-11T16:59:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmLO39EJexw&feature=related

Six days after last weeks Garda riot in Dublin the state TV channel was finally forced to broadcast the footage of cops beating students

2010-11-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

Six days after last weeks Garda riot in Dublin the state TV channel was finally forced to broadcast the footage of cops beating students that has been circulating on the internet from the time of the assaults. The RTE 1 TV report referenced the fact that thousands of people were viewing this footage at a couple of points in the report including at one point admitting that 86,000 had viewed one clip.

Perhaps to try and make up the ground lost during its 6 days of self imposed silence the commentary from the state broadcaster pointed out the obvious, that the Gardai had been caught on film assaulting people with no visible provocation. The clips broadcast included a women been dragged along the ground by her hair, another being dumped on the ground unconscious, riot police beating students sitting on the ground around the head and closed with footage of two students pushed up against a wall, hands in the air being beaten. This last footage was very similar to that broadcast after the police riot of 2002 when Reclaim the Street participants were battered, leading to an anti-police brutality demonstration some 3,000 strong. View the RTE footage, it starts at 14.45.

http://www.rte.ie/player/#v=1084459

The USI leadership, some of whom have connections to the ruling party, has shamefully been trying to marginalize its members who were beaten last Wednesday. Students have had to quickly come together to independently organise a demonstration tomorrow night for 18.00 meeting up at the Wolfe Tone statue on Stephens green. The state TV report ended by mentioning there would be a demonstration but was careful to avoid mentioning the time or place it was to take place.
(Extracted from http://www.wsm.ie/)

Nobel-prize-winning-economist-says-throw-the-bankers-in-jail-or-else-the-economy-wont-recover-2010-11

2010-11-09T12:36:00.001-08:00

http://www.businessinsider.com/nobel-economist-says-we-have-to-prosecute-fraud-or-else-the-economy-wont-recover-2010-11

McWilliams on Keiser. Irish government has no legal authority to impose austerity measures on the Irish people to rescue the Anglo bondholders

2010-11-09T11:18:00.000-08:00

See from 6:40 minutes on the video link below - David McWilliams appears on Max Keiser Show - good synopsis of the corrupt bailout of bondholders at the expense of Irish citizens.

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/98096

toxic-chemicals-in-the-home-may-double-your-risk-of-cancer

2010-11-08T09:40:00.003-08:00

http://thedetoxspecialist.com/blog/detox/toxic-chemicals-in-the-home-may-double-your-risk-of-breast-cancer

Nama to issue €6 billion to Anglo in blind transfers

2010-11-08T08:36:00.000-08:00

Nama to issue €6 billion to Anglo in blind transfers
03 October 2010 By David Clerkin Markets Correspondent

Anglo Irish Bank will be paid more than €6 billion for the last set of loans it transfers to the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) before the agency has a chance to assess their true value.

The decision will allow Anglo to use newly-issued Nama bonds as collateral for fresh borrowing from the ECB, in an effort to ease its increasingly stretched liquidity position.

The agency will pay for the loans upfront, despite its previous insistence that due diligence be carried out on all loans before a transfer takes place.

Nama will seek to recoup the difference if its due diligence subsequently discovers that it has overpaid for some or all of the loans.

The Department of Finance revealed last week that Nama had brought forward the timetable for all five participating institutions - Anglo, AIB, Bank of Ireland, EBS and Irish Nationwide - and planned to conclude the transfer of their remaining Nama-bound loans in one final tranche.

Prior to last week, it had been expected that the institutions would transfer their remaining loans over three, or perhaps four, more tranches.

It has emerged that Nama will apply special conditions to Anglo’s transfer, however.

Finance minister Brian Lenihan said Anglo would complete its loan transfers to Nama by the end of October - significantly earlier than the previous deadline of December.

Lenihan said ‘‘bonds will issue to Anglo in return on the basis of Nama’s current estimate of their value’’.

Forget the IMF

2010-11-08T08:13:00.000-08:00

Transcript of a letter I read in the Irish Daily mail Oct 20th 2010

Should the IMF take over the Irish economy and make our politicians suffer for the disaster they have inflicted upon us ?
It's the Irish people who would suffer the most with the IMF in control. The IMF has long had a reputation as an international pirate acting as an enforcer for the big banks.
It will rob us us of any state assets that may have been left over after the bank bailouts and the creation of NAMA.
The crux of our dilemma - and the answer to our dilemma - is the creation of money.
The government allows private banking cartels to create our money through an incredibly fraudulent scheme called 'fractional reserve lending' whereby the banks create credit (not money) out of thin air and then charge us interest for the priviledge of borrowing this magic 'money'.
Our government could create debt-free, interest-free money the same way the bankers do - but they won't.
Until we can compel our blundering politicians to create our nation's money, we have more immediate alternative that would generate all the money we need. We can monetise some of our national assets (instead of selling them and squandering the proceeeds) and set up a state bank, an option that should have been taken before NAMA.
The Irish people own billions of Euro in the form of public buildings, property, national parks, lakes, ports and harbours. etc
All we need do is monetise a small proportion of those assets - say €10 billion.
Then playing the bankers own game, we can expannd that €10 billion to €120 billion through fractional reserve lending and loan this money to the small businesses and individuals who will use it to jump start the economy (MK says - I would amend this to say 'use the money to invest in renewables and businesses, communities and projects based on sustainability principles).
But if the government proceeeds down the doom and gloom road of bailing out the banks and taxing us all into slavery, then we know who is really running this country.
(MK says i.e. the banks in conjunction with their Fianna Fail cohorts)

Email I received about the proposed Poolbeg incinerator

2010-11-08T07:30:00.000-08:00

It has been abundantly obvious since last February that a new PR initiative to promote the proposed incinerator at Poolbeg was under way, and that this was both more professional and better funded that any previous one. Opponents of this ruinous facility have since found it impossible to achieve publication of rebuttal letters, press releases or other material, and access to the air waves has also dried up.
Bias is now apparent in the way events are reported in the media, and the old deceptive mantras of the proponents are regurgitated at the slightest opportunity. This is a well-tried tactic of spin-meisters like the renowned Alastair Campbell and operates on the principle that if something is repeated sufficiently often it will be accepted by the mass of the population as true.
Covanta are really desperate to build this facility, as their revenue stream is shrinking almost by the week now – another “trash burning plant” (=incinerator) operated by them in Detroit has just closed because it was no longer economical and the city could not afford it! This desperation is shown in their retention of Stephen O’Byrnes’ publicity firm MKC to promote their cause. Stephen has a long record in media work, having been PRO for the Progressive Democrats at the zenith of their brief existence, is a member of the RTE Authority and well knows his way round Leinster House. Other partners in the firm include Gerry Howlin, a close associate of Bertie Ahern, making the orientation of the pressure for the project to go through rather obvious, while the current Fine Gael Communications Director, Ciaran Conlon, is also a former employee!
RTE last week showed the latest stunt, where a posse of sympathetic journalists was taken to Copenhagen and brain-washed about the great benefits of incineration. Among the more ridiculous statements reported from the trip was that nothing was discharged from the chimney but steam, making that incinerator remarkable indeed, as all the rest also spew abundant carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides as well as smaller amounts of heavy metals, dioxins, furans and microscopic particles, all hazardous to health. Anyone doubting this should check the evidence of DCC consultants to the Bord Pleanala and EPA hearings and not take our word for it. The CO2 load of an incinerator is virtually equal to that of landfill.
It is also clear that great political pressure is being exerted, from the Taoiseach down, to expedite the plant, though it hardly seems appropriate for the American ambassador to tell the head of the Irish Government how to run our affairs! All of this is costing a lot of money, though it is not clear who is paying. This must be added to the 25 millions paid by DCC to their consultants, all highly qualified and expensive though not necessarily very accurate, and the further amounts being poured into compulsory purchases and legal fees. In contrast, the outlay of those opposed is only a few thousand euros, with many, many hours of voluntary effort, making the debate grossly unfair.
The result of this extravagance is that the citizens of Greater Dublin and the Irish people as a whole are being subverted, cajoled and smothered with a barrage of half truths and outright lies to accept the project, with all its costs, disadvantages and dangers. For example, it is now being stated that there would be 100 permanent jobs at the facility, although the two enquiries were told the number would be 60. However, when Covanta visited a local resource centre which handles employment matters in South East Dublin, it emerged that the great majority of the plant vacancies would require specialist knowledge and experience, and that only ONE could be filled from local applicants. The same is probably true for the “600 construction jobs”!
Discontent is building across Europe, by no means least of all here in Ireland, which is sure to grow hugely as the extent and depth of the measures needed to restore the economy to good health become clear. Similar popular rage is evident in and around Poolbeg, and the PR offensive being waged so obviously and unfairly by MKC may turn this into direct action. Dubliners have had enough of hard times without having an extra 80 million in subsidies taken from their pockets to prop up an ailing American waste company!
NOW IS THE TIME TO CANCEL THIS MONSTROUS CONTRACT ONCE AND FOR ALL!
THIS PROPOSED INCINERATOR IS STILL THE WRONG PROJECT IN THE WRONG PLACE!

See also

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0903/breaking47.html
SEE THE C.R.A.I. WEB SITE AT http://www.nodublinincinerator.webs.coml

Etenders: Title: Strategic Approach to Sustainability Published by: Bord Iascaigh Mhara - Irish Sea Fisheries Board

2010-11-08T06:52:00.001-08:00

This Post on Etenders is a little ironic given that Ireland gave away most of its fishing rights when it joined the EU (estimated economic loss ~ €200 billon).

Title: Strategic Approach to Sustainability
Published by: Bord Iascaigh Mhara - Irish Sea Fisheries Board
Publication Date: 22/10/2010
Application Deadline: 05/11/2010
Notice Deadline Date: 12/11/2010
Notice Deadline Time: 17:00
Notice Type: Invitation to Tender
Has Documents: Yes
Abstract: International and Irish policy requires fisheries sustainability issues to be addressed and, as highlighted in the 2006 report of the Irish Seafood Industry Strategy Review Group, growing environmental concerns about the state of fish stocks and the impact of fisheries on the marine environment will become a major factor in determining consumption trends. The Irish fishing industry has taken important steps in dealing with these issues with the introduction of environmental management systems and responsible fishing schemes which promote positive environmental aspects of the Industry which are achieved at a national level. Of fundamental importance to the long term survival of the fishing industry, fish stock sustainability in a multinational shared resource is predominantly dealt with under EU common fisheries policy making it more difficult to achieve at a national level. Based on fish stock, environmental, and ecosystem sustainability, the globally recognised MSC standard is growing dramatically, particularly in European retail and fisheries sectors and engagement with the MSC programme is essential if Ireland is to remain competitive. A number of fish stocks identified in the current Marine Institute stock book are considered to be in good health and some Irish fisheries targeting these stocks could potentially be sustainable. This project proposes to carry out a macro-analysis of all relevant Irish fisheries to identify potentially sustainable fisheries and weaknesses and gaps in others which are not considered to be sustainable. In addition a selection of fisheries across a range of fishing methods and species will be pre-assessed against 31 performance indicators of the MSC fishery assessment methodology. This analysis will be used to develop fisheries management strategies with clear stock, environmental and management targets towards sustainability. Results of the project will also assist future projects on pre-assessment or full certification of Irish fisheries under MSC certification and inform Irish and EU policy on sustainable management and fishing practices.

FEASTA's new book

2010-11-08T06:14:00.001-08:00

Email I received from FEASTA..

Feasta is launching its new book, Fleeing Vesuvius: Overcoming the risks of economic and environmental collapse, on Saturday, November 20th, in Dublin. Our most important book to date, it draws together many of the ideas our members have developed over the years and applies them to a single question - how can we bring the world out of the mess in which it finds itself?

Fleeing Vesuvius confronts this mess squarely, analysing its many aspects: the looming scarcity of essential resources such as fossil fuels - the lifeblood of the world economy; the financial crisis in Ireland and elsewhere; the collapse of the housing bubble; the urgent need for food security; and the enormous challenge of dealing with climate change.

The solutions it puts forward involve changes to our economy and financial system, but they go much further: this substantial, wide-ranging book also looks at the changes needed in how we think, how we use the land and how we relate to others, particularly those where we live.

While it doesn't discount the complexity of the problems we face, Fleeing Vesuvius is practical and fundamentally optimistic. It will arm readers with the confidence and knowledge they need to develop new, workable alternatives to the old-style expanding economy and its supporting systems. It's a book that can be read all the way through or used as a resource to dip in and out of.

You can find out about the book's 27 authors here. The table of contents includes summaries of each article, and you can also read the preface by Eamon Ryan, the Irish Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, and the introduction by Richard Douthwaite.

If you would like to get your hands on a copy of Fleeing Vesuvius before the launch, you have the opportunity to order it online. From now til November 11th you can order directly from us (with free p+p within Ireland or a 3 euro discount on p+p outside Ireland.)

You can pay via PayPal on the Feasta website. If you live in Ireland and would prefer to pay by cheque, send your address and a cheque/PO/bank draft (payable to Feasta) for €20 per copy to the address below.

Of course it may suit you better to buy copies in person at the launch on November 20th (details of this will follow shortly). If you live in the United States or Canada, you'll be interested to know that New Society Publishers has just bought the North American publishing rights and are rushing to get the book into shops there before Christmas.

We are very excited about this book. We hope that you will be excited about it too.

Feasta, AE House, Main St., Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary, Ireland.

Ireland Covered By Popular Max Keiser RT Show

2010-11-08T03:23:00.000-08:00

If you thought the bank bailout was bad, wait until the mortgage defaults hit home

2010-11-08T01:50:00.000-08:00

If you thought the bank bailout was bad, wait until the mortgage defaults hit home
In this section »

THE BIG PICTURE: Ireland is effectively insolvent – the next crisis will be mass home mortgage default, writes MORGAN KELLY

SAD NEWS just in from Our Lady of the Eurozone Hospital: After a sudden worsening in her condition, the Irish Patient, formerly known as the Irish Republic, has been moved into intensive care and put on artificial ventilation. While a hospital spokesman, Jean-Claude Trichet, tried to sound upbeat, there is no prospect that the Patient will recover.

It will be remembered that, after a lengthy period of poverty following her acrimonious divorce from her English partner, in the 1990s Ireland succeeded in turning her life around, educating herself, and holding down a steady job. Although her increasingly riotous lifestyle over the last decade had raised some concerns, the Irish Patient’s fate was sealed by a botched emergency intervention on September 29th, 2008 followed by repeated misdiagnoses of the ensuing complications.

With the Irish Patient now clinically dead, her grieving European relatives face the melancholy task of deciding when to remove her from life support, and how to deal with the extraordinary debts she ran up in the last months of her life . . .

WHEN I wrote in The Irish Times last May showing how the bank guarantee would lead to national insolvency, I did not expect the financial collapse to be anywhere near as swift or as deep as has now occurred. During September, the Irish Republic quietly ceased to exist as an autonomous fiscal entity, and became a ward of the European Central Bank.

It is a testament to the cool and resolute handling of the crisis over the last six months by the Government and Central Bank that markets now put Irish sovereign debt in the same risk group as Ukraine and Pakistan, two notches above the junk level of Argentina, Greece and Venezuela.

September marked Ireland’s point of no return in the banking crisis. During that month, €55 billion of bank bonds (held mainly by UK, German, and French banks) matured and were repaid, mostly by borrowing from the European Central Bank.

Until September, Ireland had the legal option of terminating the bank guarantee on the grounds that three of the guaranteed banks had withheld material information about their solvency, in direct breach of the 1971 Central Bank Act. The way would then have been open to pass legislation along the lines of the UK’s Bank Resolution Regime, to turn the roughly €75 billion of outstanding bank debt into shares in those banks, and so end the banking crisis at a stroke.

With the €55 billion repaid, the possibility of resolving the bank crisis by sharing costs with the bondholders is now water under the bridge. Instead of the unpleasant showdown with the European Central Bank that a bank resolution would have entailed, everyone is a winner. Or everyone who matters, at least.

The German and French banks whose solvency is the overriding concern of the ECB get their money back. Senior Irish policymakers get to roll over and have their tummies tickled by their European overlords and be told what good sports they have been. And best of all, apart from some token departures of executives too old and rich to care less, the senior management of the banks that caused this crisis continue to enjoy their richly earned rewards. The only difficulty is that the Government’s open-ended commitment to cover the bank losses far exceeds the fiscal capacity of the Irish State.

The Government has admitted that Anglo is going to cost the taxpayer €29 to €34 billion. It has also invested €16 billion in the other banks, but expects to get some or all of that investment back eventually.

So, the taxpayer cost of the bailout is about €30 billion for Anglo and some fraction of €16 billion for the rest. Unfortunately, these numbers are not consistent with each other, and it only takes a second to see why.

Between them, AIB and Bank of Ireland had the same exposure to developers as Anglo and, to the extent that they were scrambling to catch up with Anglo, probably lent to even worse turkeys than it did. AIB and Bank of Ireland did start with more capital to absorb losses than Anglo, but also face substantial mortgage losses, which it does not. It follows that AIB and Bank of Ireland together will cost the taxpayer at least as much as Anglo.

Once we accept, as the Government does, that Anglo will cost the taxpayer about €30 billion, we must accept that AIB and Bank of Ireland will cost at least €30 billion extra.

In my article of last May, when I published my optimistic estimate of a €50 billion bailout bill, I posted a spreadsheet on the irisheconomy.ie website, giving my realistic estimates of taxpayer losses. My realistic estimate for Anglo was €34 billion, the same as the Government’s current estimate.

When you apply the same assumptions about lending losses to the other banks, you end up with a likely taxpayer bill of €16 billion for Bank of Ireland (deducting the €3 billion they have since received from investors) and €26 billion for AIB: nearly as bad as Anglo.

Indeed, the true scandal in Irish banking is not what happened at Anglo and Nationwide (which, as specialised development lenders, would have suffered horrific losses even had they not been run by crooks or morons) but the breakdown of governance at AIB that allowed it to pursue the same suicidal path.

Once again we are having to sit through the same dreary and mendacious charade with AIB that we endured with Anglo: “AIB only needs €3.5 billion, sorry we meant to say €6.5 billion, sorry . . .” and so on until it is fully nationalised next year, and the true extent of its folly revealed.

This €70 billion bill for the banks dwarfs the €15 billion in spending cuts now agonised over, and reduces the necessary cuts in Government spending to an exercise in futility. What is the point of rearranging the spending deckchairs, when the iceberg of bank losses is going to sink us anyway?

What is driving our bond yields to record levels is not the Government deficit, but the bank bailout. Without the banks, our national debt could be stabilised in four years at a level not much worse than where France, with its triple A rating in the bond markets, is now.

As a taxpayer, what does a bailout bill of €70 billion mean? It means that every cent of income tax that you pay for the next two to three years will go to repay Anglo’s losses, every cent for the following two years will go on AIB, and every cent for the next year and a half on the others. In other words, the Irish State is insolvent: its liabilities far exceed any realistic means of repaying them.

For a country or company, insolvency is the equivalent of death for a person, and is usually swiftly followed by the legal process of bankruptcy, the equivalent of a funeral.

Two things have delayed Ireland’s funeral. First, in anticipation of being booted out of bond markets, the Government built up a large pile of cash a few months ago, so that it can keep going until the New Year before it runs out of money. Although insolvent, Ireland is still liquid, for now.

Secondly, not wanting another Greek-style mess, the ECB has intervened to fund the Irish banks. Not only have Irish banks had to repay their maturing bonds, but they have been haemorrhaging funds in the inter-bank market, and the ECB has quietly stepped in with emergency funding to keep them going until it can make up its mind what to do.

Since September, a permanent team of ECB “observers” has taken up residence in the Department of Finance. Although of many nationalities, they are known there, dismayingly but inevitably, as “The Germans”.

So, thanks to the discreet intervention of the ECB, the first stage of the crisis has closed with a whimper rather than a bang. Developer loans sank the banks which, thanks to the bank guarantee, sank the Irish State, leaving it as a ward of the ECB.

The next act of the crisis will rehearse the same themes of bad loans and foreign debt, only this time as tragedy rather than farce. This time the bad loans will be mortgages, and the foreign creditor who cannot be repaid is the ECB. In consequence, the second act promises to be a good deal more traumatic than the first.

Where the first round of the banking crisis centred on a few dozen large developers, the next round will involve hundreds of thousands of families with mortgages. Between negotiated repayment reductions and defaults, at least 100,000 mortgages (one in eight) are already under water, and things have barely started.

Banks have been relying on two dams to block the torrent of defaults – house prices and social stigma – but both have started to crumble alarmingly.

People are going to extraordinary lengths – not paying other bills and borrowing heavily from their parents – to meet mortgage repayments, both out of fear of losing their homes and to avoid the stigma of admitting that they are broke. In a society like ours, where a person’s moral worth is judged – by themselves as much as by others – by the car they drive and the house they own, the idea of admitting that you cannot afford your mortgage is unspeakably shameful.

That will change. The perception growing among borrowers is that while they played by the rules, the banks certainly did not, cynically persuading them into mortgages that they had no hope of affording. Facing a choice between obligations to the banks and to their families – mortgage or food – growing numbers are choosing the latter.

In the last year, America has seen a rising number of “strategic defaults”. People choose to stop repaying their mortgages, realising they can live rent-free in their house for several years before eviction, and then rent a better house for less than the interest on their current mortgage. The prospect of being sued by banks is not credible – the State of Florida allows banks full recourse to the assets of delinquent borrowers just like here, but it has the highest default rate in the US – because there is no point pursuing someone who has no assets.

If one family defaults on its mortgage, they are pariahs: if 200,000 default they are a powerful political constituency. There is no shame in admitting that you too were mauled by the Celtic Tiger after being conned into taking out an unaffordable mortgage, when everyone around you is admitting the same.

The gathering mortgage crisis puts Ireland on the cusp of a social conflict on the scale of the Land War, but with one crucial difference. Whereas the Land War faced tenant farmers against a relative handful of mostly foreign landlords, the looming Mortgage War will pit recent house buyers against the majority of families who feel they worked hard and made sacrifices to pay off their mortgages, or else decided not to buy during the bubble, and who think those with mortgages should be made to pay them off. Any relief to struggling mortgage-holders will come not out of bank profits – there is no longer any such thing – but from the pockets of other taxpayers.

The other crumbling dam against mass mortgage default is house prices. House prices are driven by the size of mortgages that banks give out. That is why, even though Irish banks face long-run funding costs of at least 8 per cent (if they could find anyone to lend to them), they are still giving out mortgages at 5 per cent, to maintain an artificial floor on house prices. Without this trickle of new mortgages, prices would collapse and mass defaults ensue.

However, once Irish banks pass under direct ECB control next year, they will be forced to stop lending in order to shrink their balance sheets back to a level that can be funded from customer deposits. With no new mortgage lending, the housing market will be driven by cash transactions, and prices will collapse accordingly.

While the current priority of Irish banks is to conceal their mortgage losses, which requires them to go easy on borrowers, their new priority will be to get the ECB’s money back by whatever means necessary. The resulting wave of foreclosures will cause prices to collapse further.

Along with mass mortgage defaults, sorting out our bill with the ECB will define the second stage of the banking crisis. For now it is easier for the ECB to drip feed funding to the Irish State and banks rather than admit publicly that we are bankrupt, and trigger a crisis that could engulf other euro-zone states. Our economy is tiny, and it is easiest, for now, to kick the can up the road and see how things work out.

By next year Ireland will have run out of cash, and the terms of a formal bailout will have to be agreed. Our bill will be totted up and presented to us, along with terms for repayment. On these terms hangs our future as a nation. We can only hope that, in return for being such good sports about the whole bondholder business and repaying European banks whose idea of a sound investment was lending billions to Gleeson, Fitzpatrick and Fingleton, the Government can negotiate a low rate of interest.

With a sufficiently low interest rate on what we owe to Europe, a combination of economic growth and inflation will eventually erode away the debt, just as it did in the 1980s: we get to survive.

How low is sufficiently low? Economists have a simple rule to calculate this. If the interest rate on a country’s debt is lower than the sum of its growth rate and inflation rate, the ratio of debt to national income will shrink through time. After a massive credit bubble and with a shaky international economy, our growth prospects for the next decade are poor, and prices are likely to be static or falling. An interest rate beyond 2 per cent is likely to sink us.

This means that if we are forced to repay the ECB at the 5 per cent interest rate imposed on Greece, our debt will rise faster than our means of servicing it, and we will inevitably face a State bankruptcy that will destroy what few shreds of our international reputation still remain.

Why would the ECB impose such a punitive interest rate on us? The answer is that we are too small to matter: the ECB’s real concerns lie with Spain and Italy. Making an example of Ireland is an easy way to show that bailouts are not a soft option, and so frighten them into keeping their deficits under control.

Given the risk of national bankruptcy it entailed, what led the Government into this abject and unconditional surrender to the bank bondholders? I have been told that the Government’s reasoning runs as follows: “Europe will bail us out, just like they bailed out the Greeks. And does anyone expect the Greeks to repay?”

The fallacy of this reasoning is obvious. Despite a decade of Anglo-Fáil rule, with its mantra that there are no such things as duties, only entitlements, few Irish institutions have collapsed to the third-world levels of their Greek counterparts, least of all our tax system.

And unlike the Greeks, we lacked the tact and common sense to keep our grubby dealing to ourselves. Europeans had to endure a decade of Irish politicians strutting around and telling them how they needed to emulate our crony capitalism if they wanted to be as rich as we are. As far as other Europeans are concerned, the Irish Government is aiming to add injury to insult by getting their taxpayers to help the “Richest Nation in Europe” continue to enjoy its lavish lifestyle.

My stating the simple fact that the Government has driven Ireland over the brink of insolvency should not be taken as a tacit endorsement of the Opposition. The stark lesson of the last 30 years is that, while Fianna Fáil’s record of economic management has been decidedly mixed, that of the various Fine Gael coalitions has been uniformly dismal.

As ordinary people start to realise that this thing is not only happening, it is happening to them, we can see anxiety giving way to the first upwellings of an inchoate rage and despair that will transform Irish politics along the lines of the Tea Party in America. Within five years, both Civil War parties are likely to have been brushed aside by a hard right, anti-Europe, anti-Traveller party that, inconceivable as it now seems, will leave us nostalgic for the, usually, harmless buffoonery of Biffo, Inda, and their chums.

You have read enough articles by economists by now to know that it is customary at this stage for me to propose, in 30 words or fewer, a simple policy that will solve all our problems. Unfortunately, this is where I have to hold up my hands and confess that I have no solutions, simple or otherwise.

Ireland faced a painful choice between imposing a resolution on banks that were too big to save or becoming insolvent, and, for whatever reason, chose the latter. Sovereign nations get to make policy choices, and we are no longer a sovereign nation in any meaningful sense of that term.

From here on, for better or worse, we can only rely on the kindness of strangers.

Morgan Kelly is Professor of Economics at University College Dublin

* Comments Feed
* |
* Email
* Facebook
* Twitter
* LinkedIn
* Reddit
* |
* More

22 Comments »
Echo 23 Items
Admin

Log Out

Follow

Moderation

General Settings

Admin Notices

–

22 Comments »
Echo 25 Items
Admin

Log Out

Follow

Moderation

General Settings

Admin Notices

–
[This user is an administrator] Anthony O'Farrell
Holy high interest rates batman! This is the grimmest prognosis yet. Grim not only for it's content but because the author has been hitting the nail on the head for the last few years. Plus this isn't Captain Hindsight talking - Kelly was against the bank guarantee from the start.
Today, 01:02:49
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Mad AboutEire
Well, what can be said if Professor Kelly is correct (and no reason to doubt him given previous pronouncements) we appear to be in the most serious of trouble with large scale mortgage defaults the coup de grace for the failing State. With the collapse of the construction sector, rocketing unemployment and then the complete and total implosion of the banking sector requiring one of the largest bailouts ever (as politicians laughed, joked and traded insults across the floor), we have become unwittingly, witnesses to the slow end of the first Irish Republic.

I only hope the 2nd Republic is better but with a closed political system and crony capitalism of the worst kind, I don't hold my breath. Unprecedented times but I have a gut feeling this was on the cards quite a while, the rotten core is exposed for all to see (from the senior political levels to the financial sector, to the so called professions and the corporate Church, the 90 year game appears to be finally up). How the people respond to this slowly unfolding disaster is the next question. One thing seems certain, we are on a collision course of epic proportions.
Today, 01:05:08
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Robert Browne
A long reckoning comes at last now you know that FF Parish Pump Politics does not work. What was it that Lenihan said recently and I paraphrase "AIB and BoI being restored to their former glory".

Yes, and now I live on a gulag thanks Bertie.
Today, 01:05:10
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Declan J Foley
Chickens always come home to roost is an old and true adage. Alas, Ireland's financial problems come from the inability of many bankers to mature. Their egos got the better of them. How many senior Irisher bankers ever worked in the larger financial institutions of Europe, America etc?
The truth of the matter is that a number of politicians, bankers and house builders got caught up in what could best be described as an incestuous self promoting club: where there never was a tomorrow, let alone three years from 2007 !
Today, 01:05:30
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Sancho
Mr Kelly, don't forget the Credit Unions!! Those things are being run by incompetent fools too and will be going down the tubes in the coming months- they'll need a couple of billion too. The sooner the IMF et al come in the better. It's the blind leading the blind at the moment. Lenihan is way out of his depth. Just rip the plaster off and let's get on with it.

As an aside though, I drove through Ranelagh yesterday and was stopped at the lights when I starred across at AIB. I wondered allowed, "do you think any of the people who were running AIB over the last few years feel any personal responsibility for their performance? do they feel ashamed that the bank went down on their watch? and not even for the sake of the country but because these are ambitious people and the failure of the bank surely reflects very poorly on their ability and intelligence. The obvious answer to all, is "no". No doubt they all blame some/everyone else. AIB and BoI blame Fitzpatrick, Fingelton. Fitzpatrick and Fingelton blame Biffo/McCreevy/Bertie for the lack of regulation. And Biffo/Lenihan blame the civil servants. It's a shambles. That said, I won't be surprised when Bertie runs for president- and he'll probably win! Good old Irish, huh!
Today, 01:22:18
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Jon Israel
Fateful that Morgan Kelly chose to end with a quote from A Street Car Named Desire. It was unregulated desire in politics, banking and property that sank the economy. Several times in the past I, among many others, have mentioned that mortgage difficulties were a real and growing problem. But not one political party in the parliament has shown that the extent and implications of a few hundred Titanics full of impaired mortgages have been grasped. For anyone with a private sector job the key question at the end of the week, fortnight or month is whether the paycheck covers the mortgage repayment. Every time the government spun the wheel in the fairground it got held the loosing ticket and yet insisted it had won. Figure after figure has been wrong and the government acts as if the people hadn't noticed. One needs recurrent amnesia to live in Ireland. Is that what keeps politics afloat?
Today, 01:31:51
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] LoyalIrishCitizen
This a big article and yet it still misses some interesting parts.

1. Ireland never had a Celtic Tiger. You don't give away the assets of a country to pretentious American Corporations and create an economy. You don't speculate with property putting people into horrendous levels of debt and have success.

2. Ireland lost the European Funds in 1997 and the value of the Irish Punt went from 1.08 sterling down to 62p sterling at its lowest which does destroy exports. You don't destroy the value of your money and call it a Celtic Tiger.

3. Fine Gael / Labour coalition introduced opinions into Irish law in 1996 and the only reason to use opinions in law is to commit crimes and hide the evidence. You cannot keep proper accounts in an economy that did not exist with the use of opinions.

In summary, successive so called Irish Governments have made a monumental mess of everything since the beginning of the state and managed to hide all of there mistakes in recent times using opinions and corrupt court systems. Irish Politicians and there corrupt supporters have been complete denial of the mess they made.

If Ireland is to recover as a nation, we need to destroy the judicial systems and deal with the traitors who are running everything.
Today, 01:34:03
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] tom b.
Being no longer a sovereign nation the only meanignful choice Ireland can make at this point is to put the people resposible for this tragedy behind bars.
But even that, I am sorry to say, is too much to ask. Most of them are in a sovereign state of bliss on some tropical island.
Today, 01:41:21
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Colm
I hope you are wrong this time.
Today, 01:45:04
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Florida Steve
Excellent article - the Irish government completely sold out this generation - and the next generation. We're now basically off to the poor house until we pay off the bailouts. And you're certainly right about Florida. I think Irish home prices have a long way to drop yet. Here is what you can buy in Florida in my neck of the woods - a nice 3 bed 2 bath for $39,000 - http://reo.wachovia.com/WBREODetails.aspx?INTCID=143659

[This user is an administrator] Pope Epopt
@Colm. "I hope you are wrong this time."

Prof. Kelly has always been one the money about this crisis, and is not wrong about this coming phase.

He also rightly points out the essential political issue. It was the economic treason of FF/Greens, in the disastrous way they lumbered the state with avoidable private debt, who caused this insolvency, and all the suffering that is resulting from it.
Today, 09:06:36
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Tracie Hughes
This is certainly very grim reading. I'm not an economist but maybe someone out there will clarify this for me. A long time ago David McWilliams was on the Gerry Ryan show and said that we had an option of reverting to our own currency. Apparently Sweden did something similar in the 90's to save themselves and it worked. Is this still an option for us?

Very very concerned.
Today, 09:09:06
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Mark
The Anglo shoulfd not have been guaranteed by the state and as economist richard douthwaite explained at the green economics conference jan 2008 irelands only viable option was to exit the euro and be in control of printng and issuing her own money...
Message awaits moderator approval

22 Comments »
Echo 25 Items
Admin

Log Out

Follow

Moderation

General Settings

Admin Notices

–
[This user is an administrator] Simon McGuinness
Why go the moronic Tea Party route when we could go the heroic Cuba route and end up with good hospitals, good schools, organic food, and a sustainable economy? If we continue to follow the two Brians, very soon we will have nothing left to lose but our chains.
For what died the sons of Roísín? http://www.last.fm/music/Luke+Kelly/+videos/+1-C14U7JYGRgA
Today, 02:02:23
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] John O'Driscoll
''Ireland faced a painful choice''... I take that to mean Fianna Fail and their almost equally depraved Green Party enablers faced a painful choice. Pardon me if I ain't sympathetic. They've had other painful choices. One was whether in March 2003 and May 2007 they might stand up to imperialist aggressive-war-mongering, rapacious, torturing, foreign, despots and refuse to allow Ireland be used as a weapons carrier and neo-Auschwitz Railway via Her ports or rather airports; and they chose the painless option. Painless for them and painless for Ireland as they thought. They took the 30 pieces of silver and they allowed this country with Her 800 cruel years of maltreatment at the hands boots blades and guns of imperialist aggressive war mongering rapacious torturing foreign despots to become nothing but a catspaw, a tool, used for the purposes of doing the same murder and torture now to other countries who never offered us harm nor threat.
Such depravity is nothing new to Fianna Fail, for 70 years ago FF and thus Ireland turned their backs and shiveringly crept away as the rest of the world was getting its throat cut. Strategic Irish ports were denied to the Allies in their fight against the U-Boat and 5000 men and 300 ships died as a result of the loss of strategic air and sea cover. How ironic. Having failed now to do once what She ought to have done, and then done what She ought not to have done, Ireland has finally been Herself torpedoed. By Fianna Fail. Who to my mind are PReCisely the inhumane cowards that the Proclamation warned against. Ain't it poetic. Thanks for the article Professor Kelly. And the Germans own us now. Surely a fearful symmetry. Reminds me yet again to be glad I got a valid passport. Sorry if that seems a bit disconnected from your excellent article, not that it really is. Just had to say it. Cheers
Today, 02:52:40
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] ShaneO
The current crisis can be averted if Ireland finally does the right thing and tells the bond holders to go to hell. Nobody in their right mind will invest in Ireland if they think the money the lend is going to used to bail out the bondholders of totally insolvent financial institutions. The likes of Peter Sutherland representing Goldman Sachs should be told that Anglo is going to be liquidated and they as creditors will get what's left over after the liquidation.
Today, 04:07:05
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Pablo
Morgan as usual your article is another sobering terrifying reality check.

The Republic of Ireland died in September 2008, it will be outlived by the worthless banks that it was sacrificed to save. So much for the "Republican Party". What happens from this point in will be decided by others from outside our country as you say. I hope they show some more consideration for the welfare of the Irish People than our current leaders, that's all I can say.

This signifies the end of the Irish political and economic independence won for us by our grandparents generation in 1923, and for what? The title deeds to our country were gambled away in a crazy bluff called the "bank guarantee" which was organized to be the "greatest Irish stroke of them all", but which has backfired and we now find that we are about to be told "sorry, your economy has been gambled away and the men that we (you) owe are coming to town".

So, to allow the banks, (any banks) to fail was inconcieveable, but to destroy the Republic of Ireland's economic independence in some mad gombeen stroke, sure that's grand lads no bother? We have all been sacrificed economically to cover up the actions of individual politicians and public officials not fit for office and a set of Irish banks not fit to be called businesses. Now we are all invited to the spectacle of watching our country being ransacked and our society destroyed in order to find the money to pay off bank gambling debts and Irish developer hubris. It's being portrayed as fiscal rectitude and common sense, because once more we are "living beyond our means" but the truth is that the wealth of the nation was squandered by its banks in a creating a massive credit bubble that destroyed the economy, and now we have to pay the bill. Anyone speaking out against it will be tarred as being "unpatriotic" or "not getting the big picture"; protesters will be battened off the streets, as the guards demonstrated last week.

It's just too sad, too depressing for words.

I love my beautiful country and its people, but to see it destroyed and betrayed like this because of the incompetence, greed, crony-ism and dishonesty of its own establishment, as the rest of us watch mutely on, makes me truly ashamed. We are all cowards and fools to allow this to happen to us, and bitterly will we regret it now.

Something tells me that this article and the one in May that preceded it are going to be read by students in the future, who will ask: why did they allow this to happen to themselves, why?
Today, 04:13:03
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Ronan Flanagan
Brilliant article, sums up our current situation perfectly.We got suckered by greed, by pretentiousness, by showing off and our big thick ignorant irish egos loved it and lapped it up. We found the thickest most stupid people we could to govern us, and when the shit hit the fan we hadn't the gumption to call them to account. Because of this we were played like puppets on the euro/world stage.
'From a middle-class perspective you might see the economy failing, but the truth is that capitalism has done it's work perfectly, as it was bound to do. While the markets appear to fail in suburbs, ghettos, in shops and on the news, we actually live in the richest time of all human history."
DBC Pierre Lights Out in Wonderland
Today, 05:55:05
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] oliver
This is the first piece I've read in an Irish paper that joins up all the dots and articulates the position Ireland is in. Of course the papers have for years pimped property and insane levels of personal debt. When it comes to the economy theres been zero critical thinking, instead we've had fluff pieces showing how clever Lenihan and Biffo are. Hopeless.
Today, 06:22:26
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] sarsfield
Devastating honesty !

We have waited many months for another erudite summary from Prof. Kelly, and who could disagree - an appaling vista is the only way to describe it, with the EU/IMF waiting in the wings to take over.

God save Ireland.
Today, 06:45:31
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] avatarofworlds
A tragically, depressingly realistic scenario. Usually I would rage against the government, the banks, the opposition, but when faced with such a stark and lightless tunnell into which we shall soon pass the futility of it all seems so apparent....
Today, 07:39:55
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] NAMAwinelake
"You have read enough articles by economists by now to know that it is customary at this stage for me to propose, in 30 words or fewer, a simple policy that will solve all our problems. Unfortunately, this is where I have to hold up my hands and confess that I have no solutions, simple or otherwise"

Shouldn't we at least consider the next move with respect to AIB. Should we be taking another €3.5bn from the NPRF to "invest" in that bank? Shouldn't we nationalise it as we did with Anglo, work out deals with subordinated bondholders (like 20c in the euro or less), assess any remaining shareholder value (nil, but for the shareholders the exercise should be undertaken anyway) and seek to open "amicable discussions" with the senior bondholders. And only then decide if the bank should get more "investment" from the NPRF and try to sell it as some sort of going concern to a Santander or a Deutsche Bank.

It's not a solution but it should be a component of a solution.
Today, 08:21:29
– Flag – Like – Reply – Delete – Edit – Moderate
[This user is an administrator] Fitzer
Thank you Morgan Kelly and The Irish Times for publishing.

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell, 1984--

2010-11-07T07:19:00.000-08:00

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell, 1984--

Students protest - and they are right to do so

2010-11-03T17:34:00.000-07:00

irishtimes.com - Last Updated: Wednesday, November 3, 2010, 21:24
Clashes follow Dublin protest
Gardai clash with protesters outside the Department of Finance on Merrion Row in Dublin, today. Photograph: Eric Luke/The Irish TimesGardai clash with protesters outside the Department of Finance on Merrion Row in Dublin, today. Photograph: Eric Luke/The Irish Times
Related

IRISH TIMES REPORTERS

Clashes between gardaí and protesters broke out today after tens of thousands of students held a march in Dublin city centre against increases in registration fees.

About 2,000 people gathered on Merrion Row close to the Department of Finance after the main 25,000-strong march on Leinster House.

Bricks, eggs and placards were thrown at the building and a group of about 20 protesters made it inside. Gardaí later ejected them.

Gardaí in riot gear drew their batons and mounted officers were deployed during clashes with the main body of protesters. A number of people suffered injuries during the violence.

Three people were arrested. One man was charged this evening with public order offences while another was charged with criminal damage. Both are in their twenties and will appear before Dublin District Court in the coming weeks. The third person was released without charge.

The clashes broke out at approximately 3pm and lasted until 3.45pm when the Garda riot squad, dog unit and mounted police forced the violent protesters, some carrying banners for the Socialist Workers Party and others linked to republican socialist group Eirigí, on to nearby Stephen’s Green.

Some protesters suffered cuts to the head and bloody noses during the scuffles.

At least three people were arrested.

Up to 25,000 students from colleges across the State had joined today's march and one section of the crowd held a sit-down protest at the gates of Leinster House on Kildare Street. The sit-down protest passed off peacefully.

The Union of Students of Ireland, which organised the protest, distanced itself from those who occupied the Department of Finance.

"USI is saddened by the actions of a small minority of people who staged a sit-in protest at the Dept of Finance, shortly after the USI protest march today. This anti-social behaviour was completely separate from USI’s demo," it said in a statement.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen today refused to be drawn on the possible reintroduction of third-level fees in next month’s budget.

Speaking in the Dáil, Mr Cowen said he was not in a position to divulge any discussions taking place in Cabinet on the various adjustments to be made. “We have to look at all of these issues,’’ he said.

Mr Cowen was challenged on the issue by Labour leader Eamon Gilmore in advance of today’s march.

Mr Gilmore said there was a commitment in the revised programme for government which said there would be no new scheme of student contribution for third-level education. He said that had been interpreted by the Green Party as meaning that fees would not be reintroduced by the backdoor by way of an increase in the student registration fee.

Last week, USI president Gary Redmond said a rise in the registration fee would have a major impact on students.

“I think we’re looking at a horrendous situation where parents and families are going to have to decide which, if any, of their children can go to college in future.”

As well as the registration fee, which currently stands at €1,500, Mr Redmond noted that individual colleges also charged an additional levy of between €150 and €350 for student centres and other facilities.

The Irish Times understands that both student grants and increases in registration fees are likely in this year’s budget as the Department of Education attempts to find ways to reduce its spending.

1% Walk Through Dublin

2010-11-01T14:48:00.000-07:00

http://vimeo.com/15811939

http://www.indymedia.ie/index.php

Some people planning to withdraw their money in order to crash banks

2010-11-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

Extract from
http://www.facebook.com/igholden#!/pages/NOW-is-the-time-for-an-Irish-REVOLUTION/136091976430794

NOW is the time for an Irish REVOLUTION!!!! Plan of action is to get everyone in Ireland to withdraw their money from the banks on 7th Dec 2010 along with the
citizens of France and UK. If banks do not have sufficient cash deposits they collapse. We are people and we have power.

peak-oil-debate-over

2010-10-31T11:47:00.001-07:00

http://energybulletin.net/stories/2010-10-30/peak-oil-debate-over

Peak oil alarm revealed by secret official talks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/22/peak-oil-department-energy-climate-change

Money is simply credit - Ireland could create its own credit rather than borrowing it from private international banks

2010-10-31T06:16:00.000-07:00

The debt-based monetary system is a system of modern slavery
Watch the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs0TRYnScC8&feature=related

What can we do ? We can create our own credit.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/time-for-a-new-theory-of-money

By understanding that money is simply credit, we unleash it as a powerful tool for our communities.
Document Actions

by Ellen Brown
posted Oct 28, 2010

Money, photo by Earl

Photo by Earl

The reason our financial system has routinely gotten into trouble, with periodic waves of depression like the one we’re battling now, may be due to a flawed perception not just of the roles of banking and credit but of the nature of money itself. In our economic adolescence, we have regarded money as a “thing”—something independent of the relationship it facilitates. But today there is no gold or silver backing our money. Instead, it’s created by banks when they make loans (that includes Federal Reserve Notes or dollar bills, which are created by the Federal Reserve, a privately-owned banking corporation, and lent into the economy). Virtually all money today originates as credit, or debt, which is simply a legal agreement to pay in the future.
Money as Relationship

In an illuminating dissertation called “Toward a General Theory of Credit and Money” in The Review of Austrian Economics, Mostafa Moini, Professor of Economics at Oklahoma City University, argues that money has never actually been a “commodity” or “thing.” It has always been merely a “relation,” a legal agreement, a credit/debit arrangement, an acknowledgment of a debt owed and a promise to repay.
In the payment system of ancient Sumeria, prices of major commodities were fixed by the government. Interest was also fixed and invariable, making economic life very predictable.

The concept of money-as-a-commodity can be traced back to the use of precious metal coins. Gold is widely claimed to be the oldest and most stable currency known, but this is not actually true. Money did not begin with gold coins and evolve into a sophisticated accounting system. It began as an accounting system and evolved into the use of precious metal coins. Money as a “unit of account” (a tally of sums paid and owed) predated money as a “store of value” (a commodity or thing) by two millennia; the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations using these accounting-entry payment systems lasted not just hundreds of years (as with some civilizations using gold) but thousands of years. Their bank-like ancient payment systems were public systems—operated by the government the way that courts, libraries, and post offices are operated as public services today.

In the payment system of ancient Sumeria, goods were given a value in terms of weight and were measured in these units against each other. The unit of weight was the “shekel,” something that was not originally a coin but a standardized measure. She was the word for barley, suggesting the original unit of measure was a weight of grain. This was valued against other commodities by weight: So many shekels of wheat equaled so many cows equaled so many shekels of silver, etc. Prices of major commodities were fixed by the government; Hammurabi, Babylonian king and lawmaker, has detailed tables of these. Interest was also fixed and invariable, making economic life very predictable.

Grain was stored in granaries, which served as a form of “bank.” But grain was perishable, so silver eventually became the standard tally representing sums owed. A farmer could go to market and exchange his perishable goods for a weight of silver, and come back at his leisure to redeem this market credit in other goods as needed. But it was still simply a tally of a debt owed and a right to make good on it later. Eventually, silver tallies became wooden tallies became paper tallies became electronic tallies.
The Credit Revolution

The problem with gold coins was that they could not expand to meet the needs of trade. The revolutionary advance of medieval bankers was that they succeeded in creating a flexible money supply, one that could keep pace with a vigorously expanding mercantile trade. They did this through the use of credit, something they created by allowing overdrafts in the accounts of their depositors. Under what came to be called “fractional reserve” banking, the bankers would issue paper receipts called banknotes for more gold than they actually had. Their shipping clients would sail away with their wares and return with silver or gold, settling accounts and allowing the bankers’ books to balance. The credit thus created was in high demand in the rapidly expanding economy; but because it was based on the presumption that money was a “thing” (gold), the bankers had to engage in a shell game that periodically got them into trouble. They were gambling that their customers would not all come for their gold at the same time; but when they miscalculated, or when people got suspicious for some reason, there would be a run on the banks, the financial system would collapse, and the economy would sink into depression.
Like Jimmy Stewart’s beleaguered savings and loan in It’s a Wonderful Life, the banks are “borrowing short to lend long,” and if the money market suddenly dries up, the banks will be in trouble.

Today, paper money is no longer redeemable in gold, but money is still perceived as a “thing” that has to “be there” before credit can be advanced. Banks still engage in money creation by advancing bank credit, which becomes a deposit in the borrower’s account, which becomes checkbook money. In order for their outgoing checks to clear, however, the banks have to borrow from a pool of money deposited by their customers. If they don’t have enough deposits, they have to borrow from the money market or other banks.

As British author Ann Pettifor observes: "the banking system... has failed in its primary purpose: to act as a machine for lending into the real economy. Instead the banking system has been turned on its head, and become a borrowing machine."

The banks suck up cheap money and return it as more expensive money, if they return it at all. The banks control the money spigots and can deny credit to small players, who wind up defaulting on their loans, allowing the big players with access to cheap credit to buy up the underlying assets very cheaply.

It's a Wonderful Life, screenshot

The bank run scene from It's a Wonderful Life

That’s one systemic flaw in the current scheme. Another is that the borrowed money backing the bank’s loans usually comes from shorter-term loans. Like Jimmy Stewart’s beleaguered savings and loan in It’s a Wonderful Life, the banks are “borrowing short to lend long,” and if the money market suddenly dries up, the banks will be in trouble. That is what happened in September 2008: According to Rep. Paul Kanjorski, speaking on C-Span in February 2009, there was a $550 billion run on the money markets.
Securitization: “Monetizing” Loans Not with Gold But with Homes

The money markets are part of the “shadow banking system,” where large institutional investors park their funds. The shadow banking system allows banks to get around the capital and reserve requirements now imposed on depository institutions by moving loans off their books.

Large institutional investors use the shadow banking system because the conventional banking system guarantees deposits only up to $250,000, and large institutional investors have much more than that to move around on a daily basis. The money market is very liquid, and what protects it in place of FDIC insurance is that it is “securitized,” or backed by securities of some sort. Often, the collateral consists of mortgage-backed securities (MBS), the securitized units into which American real estate has been sliced and packaged, sausage-fashion.

Like with the gold that was lent many times over in the 17th century, the same home may be pledged as “security” for several different investor groups at the same time. This is all done behind an electronic curtain called MERS (an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.), which has allowed houses to be shuffled around among multiple, rapidly changing owners while circumventing local recording laws.

Foreclosure, photo by woodley wonderworksMaking Sense of the Foreclosure Mess
Why are mortgage holders suspending foreclosures? And what will happen to homeowners?

As in the 17th century, however, the scheme has run into trouble when more than one investor group has tried to foreclose at the same time. And the securitization model has now crashed against the hard rock of hundreds of years of state real estate law, which has certain requirements that the banks have not met—and cannot meet, if they are to comply with the tax laws for mortgage-backed securities. (For more on this, see here.)

The bankers have engaged in what amounts to a massive fraud, not necessarily because they started out with criminal intent (although that cannot be ruled out), but because they have been required to in order to come up with the commodities (in this case real estate) to back their loans. It is the way our system is set up: The banks are not really creating credit and advancing it to us, counting on our future productivity to pay it off, the way they once did under the deceptive but functional façade of fractional reserve lending. Instead, they are vacuuming up our money and lending it back to us at higher rates. In the shadow banking system, they are sucking up our real estate and lending it back to our pension funds and mutual funds at compound interest. The result is a mathematically impossible pyramid scheme, which is inherently prone to systemic failure.
The Public Credit Solution
We as a community can create our own credit, without having to engage in the sort of impossible pyramid scheme in which we’re always borrowing from Peter to pay Paul at compound interest.

The flaws in the current scheme are now being exposed in the major media, and it may well be coming down. The question then is what to replace it with. What is the next logical phase in our economic evolution?

Credit needs to come first. We as a community can create our own credit, without having to engage in the sort of impossible pyramid scheme in which we’re always borrowing from Peter to pay Paul at compound interest. We can avoid the pitfalls of privately-issued credit with a public credit system, a system banking on the future productivity of its members, guaranteed not by “things” shuffled around furtively in a shell game vulnerable to exposure, but by the community itself.

The simplest public credit model is the electronic community currency system. Consider, for example, one called “Friendly Favors.” The participating Internet community does not have to begin with a fund of capital or reserves, as is now required of private banking institutions. Nor do members borrow from a pool of pre-existing money on which they pay interest to the pool’s owners. They create their own credit, simply by debiting their own accounts and crediting someone else’s. If Jane bakes cookies for Sue, Sue credits Jane’s account with 5 “favors” and debits her own with 5. They have “created” money in the same way that banks do, but the result is not inflationary. Jane’s plus-5 is balanced against Sue’s minus-5, and when Sue pays her debt by doing something for someone else, it all nets out. It is a zero-sum game.

Community currency systems can be very functional on a small scale, but because they do not trade in the national currency, they tend to be too limited for large-scale businesses and projects. If they were to grow substantially larger, they could run up against the sort of exchange rate problems afflicting small countries. They are basically barter systems, not really designed for advancing credit on a major scale.
By turning banking into a public utility, profits generated by the community can be returned to the community.

The functional equivalent of a community currency system can be achieved using the national currency, by forming a publicly owned bank. By turning banking into a public utility operated for the benefit of the community, the virtues of the expandable credit system of the medieval bankers can be retained, while avoiding the parasitic exploitation to which private banking schemes are prone. Profits generated by the community can be returned to the community.

A public bank that generates credit in the national currency could be established by a community or group of any size, but as long as we have capital and reserve requirements and other stringent banking laws, a state is the most feasible option. It can easily meet those requirements without jeopardizing the solvency of its collective owners.

NYSEThe Growing Movement for Publicly Owned Banks

State-owned banks could be a way for states to bypass Wall Street, balance their budgets, and get local economies moving.

For capital, a state bank could use some of the money stashed in a variety of public funds. This money need not be spent. It can just be shifted from the Wall Street investments where it is parked now into the state’s own bank. There is precedent establishing that a state-owned bank can be both a very sound and a very lucrative investment. The Bank of North Dakota, currently the nation’s only state-owned bank, is rated AA and recently returned a 26 percent profit to the state. A decentralized movement has been growing in the United States to explore and implement this option. [For more information, see public-banking.com.]

We have emerged from the financial crisis with new clarity: Money today is simply credit. When the credit is advanced by a bank, when the bank is owned by the community, and when the profits return to the community, the result can be a functional, efficient, and sustainable system of finance.

Ellen BrownEllen Brown wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Ellen is an attorney and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Her websites are webofdebt.com, ellenbrown.com, and public-banking.com.

Extract from David Korowitz' report 'Tipping Point'

2010-10-31T03:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.feasta.org/documents/risk_resilience/Tipping_Point.pdf

Extract from David Korowitz' report 'Tipping Point'

8. Conclusion
This report has laid out why we may be entering a near-term period of profound and abrupt change. The temptation might be to ignore it, or to carry it awhile until some august personage assures and persuades us that such concerns are quite without foundation and that the experts are indeed in control. Or we might wonder why we should stand out from our social group, initiate some actions, and risk the ridicule of those whose opinion we value. There is an abundance of psychological literature exploring the diverse ways in which we as individuals and groups maintain cohesion and keep the frightening and uncomfortable at bay67. Yet in acknowledging our fears and anxieties we are being true to ourselves. Fear evolved to warn us that action must be taken, and for many, action is the means by which we surmount our fears.
There is much we can do. Not to prevent or defer a collapse, rather to prepare to some degree ourselves and communities for some of its impacts. For example, despite the limitations of lock-in, planning for food insecurity is something in which everyone, from children to governments, has a role to play. Other jobs, from monetary system collapse and reserve communication systems planning are more specialised, but in which we all have an interest in understanding. And the reality is that this is the most important, meaningful, and potentially liberating work that we have ever had to do, and it must be done right now. Our current employment status is immaterial, employed or unemployed, we can begin from where we are.
Part of the preparation is in the acknowledgement of our predicament, that we recognise it when we see it. That as systems fail, we spend our efforts on positive change and adaption, rather than finding scapegoats or letting anger and loss drive the cannibalisation of our social fabric. Putting a wise step forward increases the chance that the next step will be wise; putting the foolish foot forward increases the chance that the next step will be foolish, or even initiates an evolving spiral of social breakdown. By acknowledging the potential stresses and the demons in our nature, we can begin to protect ourselves from our own worst enemy.
What does seem clear is that those who, through fear or avarice, try and insulate themselves from the impacts by disproportionate hoarding or land grabs for example, will imperil not only their community's security and wellbeing, but their own. This will be a time when we really will need the cooperation and support of others, and where the idea of autonomous security through wealth and the market system will be revealed as a transient illusion.
What is important is wisdom and speed. Our current political and social processes have not evolved to take quick and decisive action, in developed democracies, they have evolved to manage competing interests for the spoils of growth, and the maintenance of general stability. Constructive action must be taken at the limits of the possible, and this
49
will require individual courage and the support of those who recognise the precarious status quo.
Finally, this is a personal story. It will no doubt be a difficult time, and horrific for some. We are likely to see a major increase in mortality. But it will also be a time when many people will find a liberation in new social and personal roles; in the new friends and connections they make; in the skills and pastimes acquired; in their ability to contribute to other's welfare; in their freedom from the subtle corrosion of positional consumption; and in the pleasures gained from contributing to the most crucial of shared endeavours.

johann-hari-how-goldman-gambled-on-starvation

2010-10-31T03:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-goldman-gambled-on-starvation-2016088.html

Johann Hari: How Goldman gambled on starvation

Speculators set up a casino where the chips were the stomachs of millions. What does it say about our system that we can so casually inflict so much pain?

Friday, 2 July

By now, you probably think your opinion of Goldman Sachs and its swarm of Wall Street allies has rock-bottomed at raw loathing. You're wrong. There's more. It turns out that the most destructive of all their recent acts has barely been discussed at all. Here's the rest. This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world – Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more – have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world.

It starts with an apparent mystery. At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise, suddenly and stratospherically. Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per cent, rice by 320 per cent. In a global jolt of hunger, 200 million people – mostly children – couldn't afford to get food any more, and sank into malnutrition or starvation. There were riots in more than 30 countries, and at least one government was violently overthrown. Then, in spring 2008, prices just as mysteriously fell back to their previous level. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, calls it "a silent mass murder", entirely due to "man-made actions."
Related articles

* Goldman denies its collateral demands led to collapse of insurance giant AIG
* Search the news archive for more stories

Earlier this year I was in Ethiopia, one of the worst-hit countries, and people there remember the food crisis as if they had been struck by a tsunami. "My children stopped growing," a woman my age called Abiba Getaneh, told me. "I felt like battery acid had been poured into my stomach as I starved. I took my two daughters out of school and got into debt. If it had gone on much longer, I think my baby would have died."

Most of the explanations we were given at the time have turned out to be false. It didn't happen because supply fell: the International Grain Council says global production of wheat actually increased during that period, for example. It isn't because demand grew either: as Professor Jayati Ghosh of the Centre for Economic Studies in New Delhi has shown, demand actually fell by 3 per cent. Other factors – like the rise of biofuels, and the spike in the oil price – made a contribution, but they aren't enough on their own to explain such a violent shift.

To understand the biggest cause, you have to plough through some concepts that will make your head ache – but not half as much as they made the poor world's stomachs ache.

For over a century, farmers in wealthy countries have been able to engage in a process where they protect themselves against risk. Farmer Giles can agree in January to sell his crop to a trader in August at a fixed price. If he has a great summer, he'll lose some cash, but if there's a lousy summer or the global price collapses, he'll do well from the deal. When this process was tightly regulated and only companies with a direct interest in the field could get involved, it worked.

Then, through the 1990s, Goldman Sachs and others lobbied hard and the regulations were abolished. Suddenly, these contracts were turned into "derivatives" that could be bought and sold among traders who had nothing to do with agriculture. A market in "food speculation" was born.

So Farmer Giles still agrees to sell his crop in advance to a trader for £10,000. But now, that contract can be sold on to speculators, who treat the contract itself as an object of potential wealth. Goldman Sachs can buy it and sell it on for £20,000 to Deutsche Bank, who sell it on for £30,000 to Merrill Lynch – and on and on until it seems to bear almost no relationship to Farmer Giles's crop at all.

If this seems mystifying, it is. John Lanchester, in his superb guide to the world of finance, Whoops! Why Everybody Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay, explains: "Finance, like other forms of human behaviour, underwent a change in the 20th century, a shift equivalent to the emergence of modernism in the arts – a break with common sense, a turn towards self-referentiality and abstraction and notions that couldn't be explained in workaday English." Poetry found its break with realism when T S Eliot wrote "The Wasteland". Finance found its Wasteland moment in the 1970s, when it began to be dominated by complex financial instruments that even the people selling them didn't fully understand.

So what has this got to do with the bread on Abiba's plate? Until deregulation, the price for food was set by the forces of supply and demand for food itself. (This was already deeply imperfect: it left a billion people hungry.) But after deregulation, it was no longer just a market in food. It became, at the same time, a market in food contracts based on theoretical future crops – and the speculators drove the price through the roof.

Here's how it happened. In 2006, financial speculators like Goldmans pulled out of the collapsing US real estate market. They reckoned food prices would stay steady or rise while the rest of the economy tanked, so they switched their funds there. Suddenly, the world's frightened investors stampeded on to this ground.

So while the supply and demand of food stayed pretty much the same, the supply and demand for derivatives based on food massively rose – which meant the all-rolled-into-one price shot up, and the starvation began. The bubble only burst in March 2008 when the situation got so bad in the US that the speculators had to slash their spending to cover their losses back home.

When I asked Merrill Lynch's spokesman to comment on the charge of causing mass hunger, he said: "Huh. I didn't know about that." He later emailed to say: "I am going to decline comment." Deutsche Bank also refused to comment. Goldman Sachs were more detailed, saying they sold their index in early 2007 and pointing out that "serious analyses ... have concluded index funds did not cause a bubble in commodity futures prices", offering as evidence a statement by the OECD.

How do we know this is wrong? As Professor Ghosh points out, some vital crops are not traded on the futures markets, including millet, cassava, and potatoes. Their price rose a little during this period – but only a fraction as much as the ones affected by speculation. Her research shows that speculation was "the main cause" of the rise.

So it has come to this. The world's wealthiest speculators set up a casino where the chips were the stomachs of hundreds of millions of innocent people. They gambled on increasing starvation, and won. Their Wasteland moment created a real wasteland. What does it say about our political and economic system that we can so casually inflict so much pain?

If we don't re-regulate, it is only a matter of time before this all happens again. How many people would it kill next time? The moves to restore the pre-1990s rules on commodities trading have been stunningly sluggish. In the US, the House has passed some regulation, but there are fears that the Senate – drenched in speculator-donations – may dilute it into meaninglessness. The EU is lagging far behind even this, while in Britain, where most of this "trade" takes place, advocacy groups are worried that David Cameron's government will block reform entirely to please his own friends and donors in the City.

Only one force can stop another speculation-starvation-bubble. The decent people in developed countries need to shout louder than the lobbyists from Goldman Sachs. The World Development Movement is launching a week of pressure this summer as crucial decisions on this are taken: text WDM to 82055 to find out what you can do.

The last time I spoke to her, Abiba said: "We can't go through that another time. Please – make sure they never, never do that to us again."

j.hari@independent.co.uk

Download the QED program on debtwatch by Steve Keen

2010-10-30T07:02:00.001-07:00

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/qed/

1% Network Halloween Tour of Shrewsbury Road

2010-10-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.eirigi.org/latest/latest261010.html

Enough of the gombeen politics: it's time for a republican revolution

2010-10-29T17:39:00.000-07:00

Extract from IT

Undermined on the one hand by Ministers and on the other by clientelism, the Irish parliament is probably the weakest in the democratic world. In an extract from his new book, FINTAN O’TOOLE sets out a programme to fix the country

IRISH PEOPLE believe they live in a parliamentary democracy. Until they grasp the rather obvious fact that they don’t, they have no hope of creating a republican system of government.

The Irish parliament is probably the weakest in the democratic world. The Dáil does not make laws: it passes them. Legislation is almost never initiated by TDs. At best they get to debate the rights and wrongs of legislation proposed by government and perhaps to make some minor amendments. But even these privileges can be taken away whenever a government chooses to do so, usually at the end of a term, when it pushes through all its unfinished business.

Consider a single day’s work: that of July 1st this year, the day after it was announced that Anglo Irish Bank is officially the biggest bank failure in the world. In this one day the Dáil “debated” and “scrutinised” the ratification of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants; the report and final stages of the Central Bank Reform Bill; the report and final stages of the Planning and Development Bill; and the report and final stages of the Civil Partnership Bill.

This is, by any standards, an impressive range of work. The Stockholm Convention is a very important international environmental treaty. The Central Bank and Planning bills were the key government responses to the anarchy in banking and development that had destroyed the economy. The Civil Partnership Bill was a historic step towards full equality for gay and lesbian citizens. What kind of parliament could possibly deal with all of this momentous matter in a day? Answer: one made of rubber with a large wooden handle coming out its back and the word “Passed” carved backwards on its chest.

All of these crucial issues were debated the way that a juggernaut debates roadkill and scrutinised with the intensity that a dead man fixes on the inside of his coffin lid.

IT NEVER, EVER happens that a Minister resigns from office because of maladministration in the department that he or she theoretically heads. And yet in law (reinforced as recently as 1997) the Minister is the department. As the Ombudsman put it in 2001, legally “all acts of the Department and of its officials are the acts of the Minister”. Why does the transparent pretence that the Minister is the flesh-and-blood incarnation of the department survive its own patent absurdity? Because it suits both Ministers and civil servants. It is the perfect shield against accountability. When there is a screw-up the senior civil servants point out that it is the Minister who should answer for it to the Dáil. And the Minister explains to the Dáil that he or she could not possibly have known what was happening in the bowels of the bureaucracy and that it would be absurd to blame the Minister for somebody else’s cock-up. Hence, in fact, nobody is answerable to anyone.

There is a long history of this dodging, but it reached its zenith in 2005 with the unravelling of a particularly egregious blunder. It emerged that the State had been charging elderly people for beds in public nursing homes even though it had no legal power to do so. About €2 billion had been taken unlawfully by the State from vulnerable citizens. Who was responsible? In 2003 the minister for health, Micheál Martin (along with his special advisors and junior ministers), was given a briefing document that disclosed the scandal, but he did nothing. Why? Because, he explained, he did not read the brief.

IF THE DÁIL does not legislate and cannot hold Ministers to account, what does it do? The one remaining recognisable function of a democratic parliament is to conduct inquiries on issues of public policy and the performance of state institutions.

The Dáil (sometimes jointly with the Senate) does this, but in a pitifully weak way. Its one success, the Public Accounts Committee investigation into the evasion of Dirt tax by the Irish banks, was followed by a legal dismantling of the powers that allowed that investigation to be conducted.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that parliamentary committees could not make adverse findings against citizens. It ruled that the Dáil had “no explicit, implicit or inherent power to conduct an inquiry”.

Any self-respecting parliament would have asked the people to change the Constitution to reverse this decision. The Dáil did nothing. The vast majority of TDs seemed largely indifferent to the ruling. They probably assumed that their voters didn’t give a damn either. And they may have been right: Jim Mitchell, who chaired the successful Dirt inquiry, was rewarded by a grateful electorate with the loss of his seat in the 2002 election.

Our system, then, gives us a parliament that does not hold governments to account, does not create laws, does not have the power to conduct serious investigations and is not representative of the people in terms either of seeking to express their views or of being at all typical of them in class, age or gender. A parliamentary system that is unable to meet any one of these basic requirements is in need of radical reform. A system that fails to meet a single one of them needs to be demolished and entirely rebuilt.

CHANGE IN THE political system has to start with local democracy. But the creation of real local government opens the way to the creation of a real national parliament. It puts the parish pump back where it belongs: in the parish. That in turn forces the Oireachtas to clarify exactly what it is for.

For a start, with local issues handled at local level, the Dáil can be both smaller and more efficient. Exact numbers can be argued over, but it is hard to see why the Dáil needs more than 100 members.

This is especially so if the Senate is to be retained. In its current form, the Senate is an utterly indefensible institution. It bears no relation even to the “vocational” body that is envisaged in the Constitution, representing different professional and social groups. It is so discredited that no one seems to care that a constitutional amendment to reform it slightly by broadening the numbers of third-level educational institutions whose graduates could vote for Senators, passed by referendum in 1979, has not been implemented.

There is, nevertheless, a good case for having a second chamber that allows those other than professional politicians to contribute to the law-making process. Such a chamber should be made up partly of representatives of new local councils and partly of representatives of the social partners and civil-society groups. It should be used, quite consciously, to make politics more representative of the population by having a requirement for gender balance and by reserving places for youth groups and religious and ethnic minorities.

As for the Dáil itself, four sweeping changes are necessary. The first is in the electoral system. The single transferable vote (STV) is arguably the most sophisticated of voting systems and is relatively fair. The problem with the system, though, is that it creates intense competition within political parties. Larger parties will put up multiple candidates, especially in the larger constituencies. We know from bitter experience in Ireland that this contributes hugely to the maintenance of a clientelist culture.

One truism of Irish politics that is not mythical is that it is internal party rivalry that turns politicians into demented ward-heelers. In an Oireachtas survey, TDs themselves reported that for every extra candidate from their party in their constituency, TDs engage in higher proportions of constituency work. It is impossible to break this mentality without ditching the STV system, at least at national level.

For the Dáil the most viable alternative is probably what’s called the additional member system (AMS). The basic idea is simple enough. About half the seats in parliament are elected in a straightforward first-past-the-post system in each constituency. But the citizen has a second vote for the other half. This is a national PR election for candidates on competing (usually party) lists.

Effectively, the national-list seats balance out the disproportional effect of the first-past-the-post vote. The one serious drawback of the system is that it works against independent candidates, who are effectively forced to form groups in order to complete under the list system. (On the other hand, small parties can do well under the system: in Scotland the Greens got 2 per cent of the vote in the 2010 Scottish parliament elections and the same proportion of seats: two.) But this is surely a price worth paying for the considerable benefits of greatly reducing clientelism and creating a new category of national politicians who are not dependent on constituency work.

The second essential change is one that is much easier to implement in this new electoral system: quotas for women. Quotas are at best a necessary evil. Women politicians who have been elected without them tend to resent the idea as potentially devaluing their own achievements; of the current 23 female TDs, 14 are against a quota for female candidates, eight are in favour and one is undecided. But there is absolutely no reason to believe that the grotesque imbalance in political life is going to change of its own accord.

The best way to create quotas is not through complex legislation but through financial penalties. Most of the money on which political parties run comes directly from the State. Under a list system it is far easier for those parties to ensure that their lists (drawn up by the national organisations) are gender- balanced. Parties should get all their current state money if they have a list that is 50 per cent women. They should be docked proportionally as their number of women on the list falls below 50 per cent. Below 30 per cent and they get nothing.

The third big change that has to be made is to give Dáil and Oireachtas committees real powers to conduct inquiries. It says much about the gutlessness of so many TDs that, having gained some respect by conducting its groundbreaking inquiry into the evasion of Dirt by the banks, the Dáil has acquiesced in the impossibility of conducting such an inquiry ever again.

What needs to be established, preferably in the Constitution, is that the Oireachtas has not merely the power but also the duty to conduct inquiries for the purposes of examining the uses to which public money is being put, of holding the government of the day accountable and of scrutinising the implementation of the laws it has passed. Such inquiries by Dáil or Oireachtas committees should have the same powers and privileges as tribunals of inquiry: to compel witnesses to attend, to demand the production of all documents a committee wishes to see and to publish its findings without the risk of being sued.

The fourth crucial change is to end the charade of ministerial “responsibility”. The system whereby Ministers hide behind civil servants who hide behind Ministers and no one is personally responsible for anything is at the heart of the failure of accountability in the administrative and governmental systems.

We have to establish real transparency in the system of government, so that the name of the person who makes a decision is recorded and disclosed. Ministers should be accountable for three things: decisions they actually make, the way they follow up information they are given and the way they supervise the implementation of instructions they give to civil servants. (There are circumstances in which a Minister should be held accountable for not knowing something.) Named officials should be accountable for everything else. They should be able to defend themselves when questioned, if appropriate by pointing to a Minister’s actions or wilful inaction. And they should take the rap when they themselves have screwed up.

THESE FOUR CHANGES will not of themselves create a parliamentary democracy where none has existed before in Ireland. If voters still want gombeen politics, stroke-pullers and local messengers, they will get them in any conceivable electoral system.

Equally, no parliament will ever transcend that culture unless it has a party system that offers voters real and serious alternatives. Those alternative ideas have to be carried into parliament by people who actually believe in them and are prepared to vote in accordance with those beliefs. Radical change does not guarantee the emergence of a functioning parliamentary democracy. But its absence guarantees the survival of a dysfunctional one.
Can we fix it? Yes we can 30 key steps to take

1 Establish a genuine system of local democracy. Introduce a property tax to fund it.

2 Transfer the useful functions of quangos to local councils.

3 Bring in legally binding national standards for planning and development and give the National Spatial Strategy statutory status.

4 Implement the Kenny report of 1974, allowing councils to purchase development land for its existing value plus 25 per cent.

5 Establish “deliberative democracy” experiments in every substantial community.

6 Severely limit the ability of governments to use the guillotine mechanism to pass legislation that has not been debated in parliament.

7 End the fiction that Ministers are responsible for everything that happens in their departments. Make them responsible for decisions they take and for information they ought to know. Make senior civil servants responsible for the decisions they take.

8 Restore the right of the Oireachtas to inquire into all activities involving the use of public money.

9 Make all appointments to state and public boards open to public competition and subject to Oireachtas scrutiny.

10 Reduce the size of the Dáil to 100 members.

11 Either make the Seanad representative of civil society, social partners and the new local councils within a short time frame or abolish it.

12 Change the Dáil electoral system to the additional-member system.

13 Introduce a gender quota of at least 30 per cent, to be enforced by reducing public payments to political parties by the degree to which they fail to introduce gender balance.

14 Hand primary schools over to local and democratic ownership and control.

15 Replace GDP as the primary measure of progress with a well-being index.

16 Radically curtail tax incentives for private pensions and stop putting money into the National Pension Reserve Fund. Use the money to increase the state pension for everyone to 40 per cent of pre-retirement income.

17 Switch spending from both social-welfare rent supplements and tax breaks for landlords to the provision of decent social housing.

18 Introduce a national system of social health insurance, abolishing the two-tier health system and radically reducing the size of the Health Service Executive.

19 Switch more health spending towards community and preventive services. Implement the primary-care strategy.

20 Charge university fees to those who can afford them. Increase grants for those who are currently excluded.

21 Expand adult and continuing education. Consider the idea of individual “education funds” attaching equally to each citizen.

22 Identify children at risk of failure from an early age and intervene immediately with personal and family supports.

23 Make the pay of those at the top a fixed percentage of that of those at the bottom.

24 Bring taxes up to average European levels. Reduce tax breaks to average EU levels, saving more than €5 billion.

25 Limit to three the number of directorships of public companies that any one individual can hold at the same time.

26 Give coherent legislative protection to bona-fide whistleblowers.

27 Restore the Freedom of Information Act to its former status.

28 Create a register of lobbyists and publish records of all meetings between lobbyists, ministers and public officials.

29 Review company law to end impunity for white-collar crime.

30 Ban all significant private donations to political parties and force all registered parties to publish full annual accounts.
Enough Is Enough is published by Faber and Faber, £12.99. Fintan O’Toole will discuss the book with a panel that includes Diarmaid Ferriter, Mary Murphy, Fergus Finlay and Paul Rellis at Liberty Hall Theatre in Dublin on Thursday evening

See also 'The people must act or we will remain irrelevant'
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/1123/1224283932871.html

peak-oil-what-if-social-and-political-consequences-of-disruptive-energy-scarcity/

2010-10-29T17:00:00.001-07:00

http://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/peak-oil-what-if-social-and-political-consequences-of-disruptive-energy-scarcity/

Tuesday 26th October 2010; 16:00-17:00

The Smith School recently hosted a seminar by Dr Joerg Friedrichs (Department of International Development and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford) on the theme Peak Oil – What if? Social and Political Consequences of Disruptive Energy Scarcity.

Joerg Friedrichs Seminar Slides

Summary: Peak oil theorists predict an impending terminal decline of world oil production, with no adequate alternate resource and technology available to replace oil as the backbone resource of industrial society. Instead of endlessly debating whether peak oil theorists are right or wrong, we may ask what would happen if they were right. Based on historical case studies, Dr Friedrichs suggests that there would be different reactions in different parts of the world, ranging from predatory militarism to authoritarian retrenchment and the mobilization of local resilience. He further suggests the scope conditions for each of these different reactions to occur, and ventures a tour d’horizon of how different parts of the world might be affected during the first twenty years after a global peak in oil production.

The ideas discussed in this seminar are expanded upon in the following article:

Weekend media reports suggested that developers in NAMA may be allowed to pay themselves up to €200,000 a year.

2010-10-25T11:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1025/nama-business.html

rte.ie extract
Weekend media reports suggested that developers whose debts are being taken over by NAMA at huge cost to the taxpayer will be allowed to pay themselves up to €200,000 a year under so called 'work-out' arrangements with the agency.

A statement from the National Asset Management Agency today said that the agency is currently reviewing business plans for the largest 30 borrowers with indebtedness of €27 billion.

It said that as part of the debtor business plan process, NAMA has typically required borrowers to reduce the overheads of their businesses by between 50% and 75% from those unsustainable levels.

'These reduced overheads have to cover a broad array of expenses including salaries for relevant executives. NAMA does not specify any individuals salary,' the statement said.

remember this ...unhappy greens have the power to pull the plug on NAMA
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/unhappy-greens-have-power-to-pull-plug-on-nama-1858456.html

Good work done by the Green Party - Era of bad planning over

2010-10-24T04:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/1023/breaking21.html

AOIFE CARR

Green Party leader John Gormley said this evening he was confident the era of bad planning had come to an end.

Speaking in Downpatrick at the AGM of the Northern Ireland Greens, Mr Gormley said he had “noted with interest” the announcement yesterday evening that corruption charges were being brought against four former Dublin City councillors.

"I am reminded of the episode where one of those charged, former councillor and senator Don Lydon, put my colleague Trevor Sargent into a headlock in the chamber of Dublin County Council, as Trevor highlighted payments to politicians involving land zoning,” he said.

“Then as now, the Green Party was a solitary voice against bad and reckless planning, while councillors from Fianna Fáil , Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Féin – at the behest of developers – rezoned as much of our countryside as they possibly could.”

Mr Gormley said his party had cleaned up the planning system in the country with the introduction of the Planning Act this year.

He added that it was thanks to his party that development would now be focused on creating sustainable communities and not ghost estates.

"I am encouraged that the wheels of justice are beginning to move against white collar crime,” he said.

green achievements listed here

http://www.greenparty.ie/government/achievements_in_government/rolling_list_of_achievements

FG, FF & Lab Councillors in full swing promoting inappropriate zoning, against the advice of Planners, have a watch...running till mid November!

2010-10-24T03:41:00.000-07:00

If you want to watch FG, FF & Lab Councillors in full swing promoting inappropriate zoning, against the advice of Planners, have a watch...running till mid November!
eg
13/10/2010 1 hr 34mins

http://www.fingalcoco.public-i.tv/core/