The Crash of Ireland

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DUBLIN (AP) -- Ireland unveiled the harshest budget measures in its history Wednesday, a four-year plan to slash deficits euro15 billion ($20 billion) so it can get a massive bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

The plan seeks to cut euro10 billion ($13.3 billion) from spending and raise euro5 billion ($6.7 billion) in extra taxes from 2011 to 2014. It axes thousands of state jobs, welfare benefits, and pension payments while raising university fees and taxes, forcing even Prime Minister Brian Cowen to concede it will hurt the living standard of everyone in the nation.

Analysts, meanwhile, feared that the size of the EU-IMF bailout -- estimated at euro85 billion ($115 billion) -- will be too little to save Ireland from an eventual default.

And bank shares plummeted for a third straight day on the Irish Stock Exchange in growing expectation that investors would be wiped out if the government is forced to seize total control of the country's two dominant banks, Allied Irish and Bank of Ireland.

"The government is completely in denial about the amount of money they'll have to borrow," said Constantin Gurdgiev, a finance lecturer at Trinity College Dublin and an economics adviser to IBM in Europe

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Irish-unveil-harshest-cuts-apf-2828838349.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=

Wow, so the government being "responsible" about a year ago and working on their debt has not worked out so well for them. A year ago everyone was cheering how responsible they were, going further than anyone else to do what the private sector money men wanted them to do.

I have a vivid memory of several years ago, when seemingly everywhere I looked I saw the trumping up of how great Ireland was, about their booming economy, and about how advanced its government was to understand its own worthlessness and get decide to get out of the way of the free market capitalists, how every country would be like Ireland if we were smart enough to do what was good for us......Ya, maybe Capitalists PR machine got the story wrong.

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@hawkeye10,

Can't wait for the U.S. government to start all that crap with us; but what is the choice??? They want to turn their currancy to trash and then take it out of the people... Capitalism demoralizes the people and debases the currency... What recommends it other than the handful of rich it makes...

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What we need now is another Jonathan Swift.

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.
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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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/opinion/26krugman.html?hp

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@hawkeye10,

Agreed.

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@hawkeye10,

Connaly (sp)(the one they wheeled out, and shot in his wheel chair for his part in the Easter Rebellion) said they could raise the green flag over Ireland tomorrow, and that England would still rule them through their banks and counting houses -was correct...

Capitalism is international, and it ties the ruling classes in any country together with the ruling classes in other lands, and they join in loading debt on their people which they then proceed to bleed out of them... Ireland does not much have any hope beside an economic power house like England... We could take our land back and tell England, China and Japan; and all those who own us through debt to come and collect, and throw our ruling class into the ocean and tell them to swim to their friends... If Capitalism worked the Euroland would be a monster of an economy... There is no getting around the fact, that once people have the wealth sucked out of them the economy folds up and dies...

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The Crash of Ireland

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