Fiscal Advice for the Irish Government

In today’s Irish Times, Patrick Honohan advises that the government focus on establishing a path towards a sustainable level of public spending and taxation, rather than chasing a particular overall deficit target for 2009: the article is here.

4 replies on “Fiscal Advice for the Irish Government”

“A particular deficit target for the current year is not what should be driving this exercise…”

Sorry mate, but politically that is exactly what is driving this exercise on April 7 next. And if the deficit fails to meet the 9.5% target promised to the EU, then the game will be definitely up for us.

I note that the headline to the piece, besides being entirely tautologous, is woefully misrepresentative of its content.

I guess you need to balance what is good for Ireland vs what is good for appeasing the EU and the two are not matched in this instance, I would wager that any soft approach won’t bide well with bond investors either and that would be a mistake as we still have large tranches of debt to raise in order to finance 09′. That would lead me to believe that we are not in for a happily ever after ending in this budget.

The first cut is the deepest!

Why don’t we wheel out a crooked politician who is taking millions from Irish businessmen and more from Saudi would-be-citizens and even more from the SIS, and get him to tell us to “tighten our belts”?

That is because our paunch will be disappearing and our pants will fall down as there will be less food on the table…. Also a tight belt helps with hunger pangs, from stories from the 1840’s.

That should work. More taxes, especially on illicit drugs as there seems to be no difficulty in buying them, and say more taxes? And then, more taxes?
Shift civil servants into Revenue? They can recover the taxes owed and evaded. Nah, don’t bite the hand that feeds the pollies….

I know, yet more taxes! Bring back Red Ritchie! 77% income tax rate? Hard times breed hard measures……

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