Ireland: The Inside Story

Cormac O’Grada provides an analysis of the Irish economy here (and advertises this blog!).

I liked this insight:

“But no economy is an island, even an island economy.”

3 replies on “Ireland: The Inside Story”

nationalisation, what a great idea if pandering to the will of ‘the people’ was the aim. What any kind of ‘take over’ would do in the current environment would be to ruin Ireland’s financial institutions as a viable option for investors, and that would play through to the rest of the country too.

Are there any capitalists left? Are we all becoming Socialists as well as Keynesians?

As a shareholder I’ll only be burned by any given bank bank once, Anglo won’t ever get another investment penny from me so the argument of ‘we’ll give them back when the good times come’ just doesn’t wash.

protecting the taxpayer isn’t the point, ensuring our banking system survives in a meaningful manner is, and unfortunately the two are not synchronised, Bacon got it right, he’s not a ‘moralist’.

@Karl Deeter “nationalisation, what a great idea if pandering to the will of ‘the people’ was the aim.”

Don’t we have this sort of like democracy thing? Vox populi, vox dei.

“protecting the taxpayer isn’t the point, ensuring our banking system survives in a meaningful manner is,”

Sez who? I mean, there are more taxpayers than there are banking systems. And given the present banking system, I’m not sure that I want to preserve it. We can always get banks from elsewhere, or grow our own.

As a non-shareholder, I won’t in that capacity be burned by Anglo or any other bank, so as a taxpayer I don’t see why I should give Anglo or any otber bank a long-term opportunity to burn me. Avoiding having to shoulder the losses of bank shareholders or property speculators seems to me to be a free-market position, if not that of a capitalist.

bjg

Comments are closed.