Irish slaves yeah yeah yeah.
Brian Cowen denies any bailout talks
Updated: 11:58, Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Taoiseach Brian Cowen has again insisted that there is no question of the Government being involved in discussions on a bailout from the EU or IMF.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen has again insisted that there is no question of the Government being involved in discussions on a bailout from the European Union or International Monetary Fund.
Brian Cowen told the Dáil that such pejorative terms did not help the situation.
He said Ireland was working with its European partners on issues that were affecting the euro area and Ireland.
:lol: 
:guns: :wacko: :wub:
Well said. All this bullcrap with Cowen opening stores for Tesco and isn’t it great that Tesco are going to create 300 jobs. How many Irish retail workers lose their jobs when Tesco create 300 jobs?
This is getting bizarre.
It really is Comical Ali stuff at this stage.
[quote=“Fagan O, post: 518634”]
I don’t know.
George Osborne in 2006:
[indent]A generation ago, the very idea that a British politician would go to Ireland to see how to run an economy would have been laughable… Today things are different. Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking, and that is why I am in Dublin: to listen and to learn.
In Britain, the Left have us stuck debating a false choice. They suggest you have to choose between lower taxes and public services. Yet in Ireland they have doubled spending on public services in the past decade while reducing taxes and shrinking the State’s share of national income.[/indent]
Germany’s unspoken plan: A smaller euro zone
CARL MORTISHED
LONDON— Special to Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 7:14AM EST
There are two puzzles in the current euro zone drama. Why is tiny Ireland, a nation of fewer than five million people creating a crisis that, as Herman Van Rompuy said on Tuesday morning, threatens the survival of the euro zone and, he suggested, the EU as well. The second question is why Germany continues to frighten investors with the threat of managed defaults and “haircuts”, even as Ireland’s euro zone partners urge it to swallow the European Central Bank’s medicinal rescue loan.
EU finance ministers meet The first question is relatively easy to answer and it has to do with the big lie that underpins the euro and the behaviour of a gaggle of stupid bankers. Unlike Greece, the Irish government did not run riot, rather it was the lenders, Anglo Irish and Nationwide which stretched their balance sheets with reckless lending to homebuyers and property developers.
They were able to do this in part because of lax supervision but mainly because of the lie: that the EU can run a single economy with a single interest rate but without co-ordination of tax and spending. Inevitably, the euro zone gave Ireland the wrong interest rate. The Irish were able to borrow at the sort of low rates suitable for Germany, a slow-moving mature industrial economy where people save rather than spend. The Irish binged on cheap euros, bought loads of fancy frocks, German sports cars and ugly bungalows. The country’s banks are stuffed with bad loans and the Irish government has been forced to stage an unaffordable bank rescue.
Irish banks are now living off a drip-feed of cash from the European Central Bank’s short-term lending window. They are borrowing colossal sums, up to €130-billion, equal to 80 per cent of the entire Irish economy, because they are almost shut out of the interbank lending markets. The banks are still lending cheaply to shore up the property market which is on the verge of utter collapse. Ireland now accounts for a quarter of ECB lending, but continued reliance on short-term support could lead to a banking crisis which would infect other fragile euro zone states, such as Portugal.
Ireland has lost the EU race for independent survival, even if Brian Cowen hopes to avoid the ignominy of being the Taioseach that handed over Ireland to Brussels after less than a century of freedom. Over the next few days or weeks a rescue package will be put in place and scores of European Commission beancounters will pack their bags for a long secondment in Dublin.
That sounds like an endgame, but in Berlin they know it is just the beginning of the end. That is why Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, continues to frighten markets with ambiguous talk of bond investors sharing the pain with taxpayers. Ms. Merkel insists that she is talking about a new default mechanism for sovereigns that will only come into place in 2013, but the Germans are being disingenuous.
It is clear that at the current market yields on their bonds, Greece, Ireland and Portugal cannot finance themselves without a dramatic economic recovery and bumper tax revenues. No one expects anything but pedestrian economic growth, which begs the question how Greece will raise funds in 2013 when their rescue funds mature. If Ireland takes the ECB money, how will it pay it back three years from now?
If Germany insists that investors in sovereign euro zone bonds share the pain in the future, why would these investors buy such risky bonds? Why lend to Greece, Ireland or Portugal when those sovereigns come back to the market in 2013, begging for cash like homeless drunks? The answer is that bond investors will not lend, except at unaffordable interest rates. Germany’s strategy has only one outcome, the eventual ejection of the prodigal states from the euro zone. It is Berlin’s strategy, unspoken but plain for all to see.
Will Hutton from the Observer was on the News At One just now and said that any attempt to keep the 12.5% Corporate Tax rate would be “a farce” and that there was no way it would be allowed to stay.
That’s an excellent article Sid.
Christ thats fucking depressing reading Sid, horrifying to see it in print. Where’s our miracle?
As far as I know the banks are borrowing from the ECB at only 1%. But however they dress all this bailout stuff up it’s just masses of new debt piled on top of old debt.
A quote I heard from an Economist “If it looks like a Duck, walks like a Duck and Quacks like Duck, it’s a Bailout!”
Yours etc,
GSH.
Its not a bail out though, you don’t pay back a bail out. This is a ridiculously large loan, with massive interest that will cripple us for a long time.
Its clear there is a new wave of extreme German nationalism is on the way.
So Britain have now said they are ready to bail us out. I wonder if this could start a bidding war between the old foes Germany and Britain, about which can give us the best bail out deal?
we might have to start learning a new national anthem with the way things are going.
Maybe some American investor will come in and buy us.
The assaassination of FF (Franz Ferdinand) caused World War I
Will FF’s assassination of the European economy cause World War III, beginning 2014? 
Whats Donald trump up to these days?
On a slight aside, surely Michael Jordan could afford us? I wouldn’t mind us being owned by Jordan.
Maybe Bono was right in the 80’s when he said to end Irelands financial problems we should attack America, they will retaliate and beat us but then they will invest to help rebuild the country. Its looking like a good option now, we could become another star on the American flag? 
I could handle the Nike swoosh through the tri-colour.