Prepare to welcome your new IMF overlords

You know how they claim the Ardagh Chalice and The Book Of Kells are both priceless heirlooms? Maybe nows the time to find out exactly what they’re worth?

That was a cracker alright

My prediction:
Bailout put in place. We dont draw it down initially at least. The national pension fund bails us out for another few months. Yields come in a bit and we solider on manfully in the hopes that things pick up before we go back to the market in maybe november

I don’t follow. If Ireland gets a sovereign bailout it won’t be going back to the market for at least three years. Ireland as the government has been blue in the face claiming is funded to next summer so why would Ireland only be going back to the markets next November?

Anyway Ireland will be getting a sovereign bailout and we won’t be going back to the markets. The rates will not come down anyway - I fancy they’ll be at 10% in a week.

I don’t think there is anything - anything at all - that this government can do to turn the tide because they are regarded as nothing more than a circus act.

The government are nothing but lying bastards. When the IMF and European Central Bank come over in the next few days I wonder how many land mines they are going to find hidden away in cupboard. I think things are worse than what the government is saying and come next expect a land mine to go off everyday. Things are going to get a lot worse.

Any chance of that riot?

I’m saying the package will be put in place for us for when we need it. We wont draw it down initially and the guarantee of the bailout might be enough to bring our yields down to sustainable levels that we might never have to touch it.

“It’s always worse than they say it is”.

ALWAYS.

They have as much crediility and standing with the markets and with Europe as a paedophile ring.

Not a great comparison considering Brussels is in Belgium.

I don’t think that will provide much certainty.

There’s two key factors. Fianna Fail and the banks. Both of these factors have to be eliminated before anybody would touch Ireland in the markets again.

:lol:

While I agree with the anti-FF sentiment the reality is that the markets and foreign investors will have absolutely no confidence in any of the alternatives and would rather see FF in there probably. This is the party that has defended the bondholders’ rights (above everyone else’s) until now, why would they want that changed?

Some infuriating lines from Lenihan this morning about the bailout for bank debt and not sovreign debt. As Áine Lawlor put it to him - “you’re the one who tied the two up together so it’s a bit much to start separating them again.”

A new government might have more credibility in the short term at least and the utterly poisonous mood in this country at the moment would be lessened somewhat. While few people take Enda Kenny seriously I think people will be willing to get behind a FG/Labour coalition in the short term anyway purely because they are so fucked off with this government. There might be a vague sense that Ireland has some sort of coherent plan. Could that transmit to the bond markets? Probably not - more chance than with FF, but I don’t think it would make much difference to be honest, there will be a sovereign bailout.

What happens with the banks is the big question.

Lenihan doesn’t know his arse from his elbow with all the lies that he has told over the last 2 years and is now tying himself up in knots. Cowen doesn’t have a clue, he never has had a clue and I don’t understand why people thought he was great. In any ministry he ever held he never did anything, the only thing that people can remember him doing before Finance is calling the health server Angola.

FF need to go simple as that for any confidence to installed back in the country. BTW has anyone seen or heard anything from the Greens? Have they already abandoned the good ship Ireland?

A strong majority for the government would reassure the markets imo - this by election in Donegal is a farce, there should have been a general election before the 4 year budget and then go from there. We dont need a long drawn out general election campaign plus Xmas is a perfect time for one.

Listened to that Constantin Gurdiev or whatever his name is the other day. he likened this bailout to giving a person with huge debt another credit card. I agree with him - Ireland needs to get its house in order - forget about the euro, EU etc - for this country to survive proper reform is going to have to happen asap. We need to reform the public service, invest in our SME’s, invest in a fibre broadband programme, extend the Dart to the airport etc. The country pulled together when that foot and mouth crisis happened not too long ago, the rugby was called off. I think that would also be a positive move.

I think the following needs to happen

  1. a general election needs to be called pronto - a government with a 10% approval rating does not have the legitimate right to be making 4 year budget plans, fuck the markets, fuck the EU, fuck everyone - if we start showing some backbone it might pay dividends as the opposite approach has not worked for the past 2 years.

  2. merge BOI and AIB and nationalise the new super bank - if the books are as fucked as bad as is being hinted even post NAMA then whack out another load of bad debt from the joint entity - we simply have to a functioning bank not the current bullshit

  3. since we seem to have no other option - lump INBS and Anglo into NAMA, it is time to stop fucking good money after bad, save what can be saved, liquidate what can be liquidated and knock the rest.

  4. stress to the EU that part of the banking crisis is their fault, push strongly for an EU wide structural reform of the bonds market - the euro as a currency and the EU as an entity is fucked if this doesnt happen - anyone seen the debt figures for Italy for example. The bondholders simply have to be negotiated with - strange as when a Danish bank fell lately the bondholders were rightly burned but now it seems the EU as a whole are slaves to them

I was thinking just that this morning. Where have the Greens gone? Time was when the Chief Whip would convince some chump like Eamon Ryan to go out and make a fool of himself on Vincent, but no more. That said when you see the way Ahern and Dempsey were made liars of over the weekend it’s clear that the government is a two man junta now.

God save our gracious Queen…

Brits to the rescue as they’ve realised they are balls deep in Ireland.
We’ll call it the famine reparations.

So the soldiers of destiny have led us back into the hands of the Brits.
I will be leading a high level delegation to London this weekend to voice my protest at such happening.

But the problem is it’s hard to take a softer stance on the banks than FF have taken. And whether we like it or not, that’s the stance that the rest of the EU and the bondholders want us to take.

I don’t think we should be doing that and while we may have had to endure higher bond prices from defaulting on corporate bank bonds, the marginal interest payable on those bonds would be dwarfed by the capital we’ve stumped up.

Pretty much agree with every word of that.

I have a fear of a general election but that’s half for irrelevant reasons and half because while it’s hard to imagine a more incompetent leader than Cowen, there may just be one in Enda Kenny.

This country isn’t going to improve without radical action. This crap about 2,000 new jobs created by Iceland that was all over the media last week is exactly what we’ve become as a country - fucking slaves to foreign investors and begging at the feet of our former rulers. Why the fuck would we want Iceland coming in and “creating” 2,000 jobs. Are there really going to be 2,000 more people employed in Irish food retail as a result of that move or is it not just that Iceland are going to buy existing stores and drive other stores out with their scale.

We don’t do manufacturing, we don’t do value-added apart from trivial call-centre work and we don’t do agriculture particularly well anymore. We’re a plaything for multinationals and an EU experiment gone wrong. All this shite about Europe getitng jealous of our low Corporation Tax rates. Those rates weren’t there for Irish companies. They were to attract investment into the EU and to allow other European companies to route profits through Ireland. We were used and abused and we played lapdogs and now we’re fucked.

Agree with those reforms suggested above. IT, renewables, a functioning public service - that’s the way forward.