Ireland - ECB - IMF

What an EU bailout for Ireland could mean for Britain! - At a time when the UK Cameron lead coalition government is hitting the population with cuts to bring the country back under control after 13 years of "spendaholic" populism politics from Labour.

The cuts to UK services & defence to make the country more competitive in an ever more competitive world it is then crazy that the government continues to send more money to the EU as part of an un-agreed budget increase & not forgetting the Accounts for the EU havent been signed off for more than a decade! Can you imagine if HSBC didnt sign of its accounts for 10 years or BP?

The UK government should have cut its contributions to the budget to the EU by the same criteria it has used for domestic spending & told them to lump it. Cuts should have been acrcoss all expenditures not least the contributions to the biggest Quango of the lot, the EU!

To top of the farce of increased spending to the EU to finance PAY RISES! On top of this the #UK is not & will not be a party to that crazy club the #Eurozone! however it is yet again being asked to empty its pockets to the tune of the value of the first wave of cuts to once again prop up the #Euro

Part of the Irish bailout will require a UK contribution of more than £7 Billion! Now I'm not one to say Ireland shouldn't be bailed out, it should, but it should be bailed out by the ECB which is responsible for fiscal governance within the Eurozone.

The EU should have raised lending rates to Ireland 10 years ago to slow down the economy and stop the crazy goings on from the Ahern McCreavey period. A bank doesnt lend to every customer at the same rates regardless of circumstances. Ireland was borrowing free money & they couldnt spend the money fast enough & instead of creaming profits everything was piled into the next even bigger project with nothing put aside for the storms ahead.

The Ahern lead government were only too quick to roll over & let the Unions tickle their tummies as the agreed yet another set of pay rises for both the public & private sectors increasing the costs to the running of the nation & maintaining inflation well ahead of their counterparts within the Eurozone.

Ireland is a micro economy compared with the likes of Germany, France, Italy & Spain. The ECB could solve Ireland problems simply with Quantitive Easing without effecting the strength of the Euro & keeping the country out of the media damaging the "Good Name" of the Euro.

€70 Billion (£60 Billion) of printed liquidity would get Ireland back into the ring & would have two effects. Knowing that the money was there the bind holders wouldnt be charging so much to lend funds as they know their funding would be safe. A new bank could be created fore the high street with strong funding & Anglo could be liquidated with immediate effect & their speculating bond holders can be left spitting feathers once the Govt is in a position to withdraw the bank guarantee scheme.

View from the Telegraph http://t.co/95M03U1

Irish Economy

The Irish government continues to tight walk along the edge of a precipice with little or no control of its destination. Independence in all walk of life is increasingly being taken over by its new master in Brussels & Strasbourg.

The financial crisis is without a doubt the result of a reckless level of borrowing precipitated by the ECB lending rates which provided a torrent of ready cash at a time when interest rates should have been rising substantially to slow down the construction bubble which caused the financial bomb to go off.

Under capitalised Irish banks suddenly found that they were involved in little more than a massive pyramid scheme style swindle of passing their own money around to fool the regulators. One week the money it would be with Anglo, the next with Irish nationwide & so on until the chain was snapped.

The likes of Sean Quinn & many others in the “golden Circle” bought Anglo Shares with money borrowed from that same said organisation to increase its share price artificially to make substantial paper profits.

The share price rose steadily over the years to reach a peak at the point of the bubble bursting in mid 2007 of almost €16.50 & then as the mess unfolded the value depreciated steadily one again reaching €2.25 (http://bit.ly/9Hx5tX) in October 2008 the point at which they fell through the floor at 21 cent and were no longer trading.

Sean Quinn lost between €2.5 & €3 Billion buying the share with his own money as well as borrowed money at the near peak only to see in true “Wall Street” style watch in horror as his empire fizzled away. In a matter of months he had lost what he had spent decades building up.

This happened in many other companies & individuals which were being given very bad information by their bankers & rather than retaining profits these & more were being encouraged to invest in the next big cash cow but when the cow stopped being fed with near free money it vast swathes of business in Ireland died.

Who is responsible for this “new famine”? For sure The government & in particularly Bertie Ahern has to put his hand up and take the blame, he along with McCreavey & Cowen blew the revenue that poured into the coffers without ever giving a concern for the future. They sailed along in much the same way as the businesses of Ireland, oblivious to the inevitable & paying what the Unions wanted every time thus ensuring that not only when the train hit the buffers the workforce was uncompetitive against almost every labour source in the European Union.

Bertie Ahern should have sold the ESB & invested the receipts from the sale of that into infrastructure. He should have sold each of the airports held by the DAA & used the receipt from that to build good rail links between the ports & the airports & each of the major cities.

Bertie Ahern should have privatised the water utility companies at a time when every one was feeling rich & got them used to paying for their water services instead of leaving it until people were so broke they cannot afford to pay. In addition the duties imposed on new houses should have been reduced with a property tax which would be ongoing. Again if this had been introduced in the good years at a low level we would now be used to it as it is people simply cannot afford any additional hit in taxation. Ireland is losing vast revenues through tobacco due to the excessive duties imposed. Many people are now making east Europeans rich buying them at half price while the government loses out. Official Cigarette sales may be down but consumption isn’t, this is proof again that excessive taxation leads to a reduction in the actual tax take.

Cities like Dublin turned their noses up at tourists with money in their pockets using the likes of Temple Bar for boozy Stag & Hen weekends. The money spent here by money laden tourists flying in on their £10 tickets was colossal. Snobbery has driven this traffic to Eastern Europe traffic that won’t come back, the Temple Bar policy & treatment from door staff have ensured this leaving a few tourists with different aspirations & much shorter pockets are all that’s left.

The bad governance of the Ministers in Dáil Eirean leaves nothing though to the poor governance of the ECB which is responsible for the lending policies in the eurozone. It alone was responsible for the rates that money was being loaned to Ireland & it must now step in sooner rather than later with a long term plan to restructure the countries debt & allow it to trade back into growth. One glove fits all policy is wrong the ECB should treat each member state on its own basis & lend accordingly to ensure that never again does an economy run away because of EU policy towards the likes of Germany.

The Irish government should dimply default and start again either that or Mr Trichet should pay a visit to Dublin & set out a policy to restructure Irish debt and assume control of NAMA which is after all a creation brought about because of the folly of ECB lending policies.

Free movement between member states needs to be looked at again. New migrants should not be allowed to benefit from the social systems of their new places of residence until they have paid into society for at least 5 years. This will at a stroke stop “migration for benefits” The proof of this couldn’t be shown more than during the Icelandic volcano.

When aviation was effected by flights there was a substantial reduction in benefit claims. Families were unable to collect child benefit because they couldn’t fly in from Eastern Europe which brings us nicely on to Child Benefit. If you have a child its your child you brought it into the world you should feed, cloth & educate it. It is not my responsibility to do so nor is it the responsibility of the state to do so. Infant Education & second level education should be free at source. Third level should be paid for by the student either by obtaining a loan of part time working to fun the education. We all know students can afford to drink & smoke.

Ireland is a small country with a limited income it cannot fund wind farms & dump these costs onto the country with higher utility bills. Wind farms are the most expensive & heavily subsidised provider of electricity. They make the greens feel good but they generate low amounts of energy for the cost of installing them & even when they do make electricity which maybe isn’t even needed it is still guaranteed a payment for it to make it more viable. The only way wind is viable is by taxing conventional generating systems excessively to pay for them and on top of all this coal & gas power stations have to be kept running in case the wind drops so we have to pay for double generation! Now you know why Irish Utility Bills are so high!

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