Why the fuck couldn’t the Brian Brothers have come out at the weekend and said exactly what Honahan has said above?
Whatever about before but now the people of the country have no idea what to believe.
This bullshit window dressing of the IMF only being here for a chat and to offer us a bit of advice is crazy. Cowen was still on with it up to last night. He is looking a bigger retard by the minute.
Cowen is mixing his pints of Guinness with strong doses of Lenihan’s chemotherapy drugs, prozac and valium in a giant cocktail. It’s the drugs talking.
Just reading the BBC website and came across this piece which is worrying
The latest discussions in Dublin follow a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday of European finance ministers.
The ministers said they had not held detailed discussions on a potential bail-out for the Irish Republic - because the Irish government had not requested financial help.
Without such a request, no assistance can be given, despite the wishes of some fellow eurozone countries, such as Portugal and Spain, who would like the issue to be settled in order to stop disorder on the financial markets.
The Irish government has stressed it does not need to borrow money for public spending until into next year.
But it has a gaping budget deficit and will shortly announce another severe round of spending cuts and possible tax rises to plug the gap.
And the country’s banks have recently become heavily dependent on loans from the ECB.
So basically, because Brian & Brian think that we don’t need help, we could fuck up an entire continents market? Are they too proud to make the request or are they just stupid?
Well I can see their point in this regard. Why should we take on a MASSIVE billion € loan just to make things easier for Portugal and Spain?
Didn’t take long-
RTE journalist on News at One saying one of his colleagues rang the Department of Finanace for information on what was happening. “Ring the IMF” was the answer. :lol:
Good piece from Fintan O’Toole that may have been posted already:
Bailout worth nought without political reform
The key issue regarding the financial rescue of this State is not whether it will happen, but on what terms, writes FINTAN O’TOOLE
THE BAILING out of Ireland, whenever it happens, is not just a turning point in our history. It is also a defining moment for the European Union itself.
The way the EU handles this delinquent little State will be the great test of whether the EU is still a social and political project, built on the legacy of the second World War, or whether it is just another vehicle for the narrow interests of the rich.
Whatever the Government says (and who can believe anything from that source?), the key question in relation to the bailout is not whether it will happen, but on what terms. What is the interest rate? How long does Ireland have to pay back the money and reach the mythical target of a 3 per cent budget deficit?
These may look like technical fiscal questions. They are in fact political and moral ones. They cut to the heart of the European project. The EU exists because of a lesson learned in the most horrific way, through the rise of barbarism and the most destructive conflict in world history. That lesson is simply stated: the national interest of every European country is bound up with the wellbeing of every other European country. Or to put it even more simply, it is in no one’s interest to see a neighbour implode.
The country that knows this best is the one that now holds our fate in its hands: Germany. The Germans had two sharply contrasting experiences of what happens after you behave disgracefully.
At the end of the first World War, the decision was that they should be punished and taught a lesson. Everybody knows the result: a demented and dangerous Germany. So, at the end of the second World War, when Germany had behaved even more hideously, the temptation was to punish it even more severely. The initial impulse was to hammer Germany into the ground – a perfectly justifiable response. But memory and wisdom prevailed. Germany was, instead, helped back on its feet.
We’re too fragile to be smacked. We don’t need to be punished – we need to be helped. And Germany itself isn’t entirely without sin. The crisis is undoubtedly the fault of our own indigenous idiocies. But it was German banks who were the most enthusiastic lenders to us in the boom years. And Angela Merkel could have saved us a lot of trouble if she had said in September 2008 what she said last week about bondholders sharing the pain. Germany’s discovery of the folly of blanket bank rescues comes just a little late for us.
The basic question, though, goes far beyond the specifics of blame and into the essential rationale for the EU itself.
Its bedrock principles of enlightened self-interest, solidarity, equality and justice, are at stake. Punishing the Irish people – and especially the most vulnerable, who will be hardest hit by the destruction of public services – would be economically stupid. But it would also undermine the EU’s claims to have moral, rather than just pragmatic, foundations.
Equally important, however, is the other side to the deal. There is no point in us being bailed out if the only effect is to keep in place the systems and political culture that created the mess. The EU could wipe all our debts right now and we’d end up in another crisis in 10 years. To put it brutally, we are incapable of governing ourselves with our current institutions and attitudes.
So the other side of a fair and rational bailout, with low interest rates and a 10-year time frame, is a revolution in our political institutions, public morality and systems of governance.
A German taxpayer would be right to conclude that if you rescue people who have learned nothing from the consequences of their own actions, they will assume they can get away with it over and over again.
So this is the other question the EU has to ask: are we bailing out a country, or are we bailing out a clapped-out system of cronyism, ineptitude and machine politics?
If it’s the former, the EU will have passed a key test. If it’s the latter, the Germans would be wise to keep their money in their pockets.
Was just coming in here to post that! It was Brian Dowling. Christ on a bike…
Don’t know how to post this as an image…
Was at a thing last week with a few boys from the World Bank and IMF at it. They were telling us there’s been a deal in place for Ireland for at least six months and it was just a question of when they’d activate it. Can’t believe the Brians were claiming they were just here for a chat. I suppose they’re finding it hard to accept the place they’ve secured for themselves in Irish history.
Was great (and unexpected) to see something like this in the Irish Times.
By contrast the Indo was describing the role of the IMF as “peering over our shoulders” :lol:
Yeah right. Additionally they mourned the impending loss of our “sacrosanct corporation tax”. Our national sovereignty doesn’t make the cut.
Ya 99 million in Anglo can you imagine their exposure to AIB & BOI?
The Daily Mail and their readers are creaming themselves over this - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1330218/Irelands-debt-crisis-kill-EU-stone-dead-warns-Herman-Van-Rompuy.html
Comments are brilliant.
Ireland are heading for a far worse state than they were in during the potato famine, we British will not stand aside and see them perish. we will help them even if Europe wants them to perish.
- Eddie, Liverpool, 17/11/2010 10:02
Good man Eddie.
And to think, all of this was caused by those public sector cunts getting a half day for Christmas shopping.
Ireland are heading for a far worse state than they were in during the potato famine, we British will not stand aside and see them perish. we will help them even if Europe wants them to perish.
- Eddie, Liverpool, 17/11/2010 10:02
And so, too, will your American cousins help. We have a lot on our plates, just now, and the wrong man in the White House, but we will do what we can. To my friends in Ireland, John and Kathryn Selman, in Ardagh, Co. Limerick: Hi, from Uncle Fweddy.
- Uncle Fweddy, Wilmington, IL, 18/11/2010 03:47
Fweddy is fow weal.
Reminds me of Sean Quirkes quote during the opening of Croke Park debate about leaving your neighbours outside in the cold after their house had burned down.
Bevare. Ze IMF are not all sunshine und smiles
:lol:
Bono and Geldof
Present
THE CRAIC
A Concert in Aid of Ireland
Featuring The Nolans, The Pogues, The Dubliners, Westlife, James Galway, Máirtín O’Connor, Sinead O’Connor, Patsy Touhey, Liam O’Flynn, Barney McKenna, Jerry Fish & The Mudbug Club, Barley Bree, Flogging Molly. The Middlewich Paddies, Bad Haggis, The Radiators From Space, Skid Row
and Beamed Live from their Tax Base in Holland U2.
A big thanks [url=“http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/user/DocMolotov”]DocMolotov[/url] to for the previous post