Fiscal Targets

fyi

Sinn Fein 2014 budget proposals here

http://www.sinnfein.ie/

Text from Blind Biddy in Beirut: Fully support the proposal for ‘implants’ for 200 profoundly deaf children.

@Non consultant hospital doctors

In solidarity.

@Tull
I listened to Pearse Doherty on radio this morning; he came through as fully in command of his brief. Impressive.

@ DO’D: I beg to differ on PD. That critter still thinks this state is flush with surplus cash. What he should have said (but has not the political testicles to do so) is that we have to move to a balanced budget ASAP. That means significant reductions in non-essential services (ie. TD’s salaries and pensions – OMG!) and a hike in taxes, accompanied by a complete withdrawal of all ‘incentives’ and such scams. We pay income tax on our grosses! And, all citizens must file an annual statement of income! OMG x 2!!

Now how many lost First Preferences does that equal to? Just remember who votes early – and always! That’s the problem for our National Socialist Party. Where to get those extra FPs. They’re working on it!

BW,
We all know where SF are going to get the extra scratches. They are going to become FF. Worked in the north. They stole the SDLP clothes.
bTW, I wonder does DOD still believe in Santa?

@ David O’Donnell / Brian Woods Snr

Both of you are right.

Unsustainable debt that will depend on forgiveness from others and a day to day operational structure that is not supported by the wealth that can be created by the productive sectors of the economy.

The per capita consumption level is in line with Italy’s and that level is supported by borrowings.

Half the population is on welfare; farmers are dependent on public subsidies for over 80% of average household income; what sector is not drawing from the State?

GDP growth in Q2 was dependent on accounting transactions at a few multinationals.

What’s really going to change?

There has been some improvement in the jobs situation but at end Sept, there were 500,000 on the Live Register (414,000) and in publicly-funded activation programs (86,000 – – about 50,000 of this number is counted as employed).

@ DO’D: “Sea of Debt”

Actually I’d sub in slurry for sea! And rem: Its the ripple that drowns you!

I’m not going to go keyboard-to-keyboard with you on the proper metric to measure aggregate economic output (either +pos or -neg). But G*P is sure not one of them. And the heresy is; you have to subtract any increase in annual debt overburden since its actually a charge on any future income. Now why did I not learn that in ECON 10010? .

“If people believe, however reluctantly, that there is no alternative but to repay ‘our’ debts …”

Ah! Yes. That TINA again!. Now if this were not a polite site I would use some very strong and forthright terms about this. There ARE alternatives. But folk like to promote stuff which support their biases. Explaining these alternatives is a right royal pain in the ass – hence its not done.

Marx? Is he not somewhat out-of-date (rather than irrelevant)? We have turned our (developed) economies from ‘productive’ to ‘financialized’. That’s a whole different ball-of-wax. Even our best and brightest have not kopped on yet.

Seriously, we will not ‘exit’ this debt thingy. That’s not Plan A. Plan A is about the infinite (or very long-term) sustainability of borrowing – and only paying interest (f*** the principle!). That way our pismire politicians get to stay where they are – and all us other little folk get the bill put on our credit cards. That’s nice, that is – well, for some anyways.

Bye-the-bye. Did you read that Donovan Op in the sat IT? Is there an agenda here?

@ Tull: FF v SF. Premier or Third Div? The six beyond the frontier are not exactly ‘normal’ – if you get my drift! But it will be mighty interesting!

“There are many antagonists involved in the writing of the history of the banking guarantee. Most recently, ex-International Monetary Fund (IMF) official Donal Donovan has argued in this newspaper that the guarantee was the least worst option available at the time. Most, if not all, of the politicians who were even vaguely associated with the decision defend it in similar terms. Professor Karl Whelan of UCD has been a leading critic of government policies before, during and after that fateful night five years ago and has consistently argued that much better options were on the table.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/financial-services/bank-guarantee-time-to-apply-the-simple-truth-1.1553895

I’m with the ‘lolly’ professor on this one.

Donovan piece here:
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland/bank-guarantee-almost-universally-slated-but-was-the-least-worst-solution-1.1550698

Yes – there is an agenda. Easily discernable from his early ramblings in the IT – the serfs pay all …. secondary agenda here is to sell ‘de buke’ … spose a nomination to the Senate might also be gleaned …. I’ve had more than enough of Donovan’s arrogant pontifications at this stage.

@ DO’D: “p.s. hope you do not consider the 26 on this side ‘normal’!!”

Well, now that you mention it!

What sort of ‘sh*te’ is this? From the Johns IT piece.

“The mechanism, the basic structure, is as it has been for years, and it has been ruthlessly applied in the US, which now has a pristine banking system.”

Pristine? Jesus wept!

” … banks deemed to be shaky will have to go shareholders first, then bondholders and, if they are in bad enough shape, depositors and taxpayers: it’s a familiar chain.”

Modern banking – is not banking, its legalized looting! Now will someone remind me about the Bruton bros. who held forth that certain pensions were untouchable – cf: Art 42. * etc. But us little folk just have to bend over the table, clamp the lollipop stick between teeth and … …

Donovan’s piece is so crass that adjectives fail me. He attempts to displace (that’s a psychology term) causality for our financial mess on prior ‘policy errors and misjudgements’, not the actual decision to grant the guarantee. In my opinion (and I’m open to argument here) that guarantee was an act of unparalleled, sovereign treachery. No debate. Not alternatives. Stick the citizens with the bill. They can just suck it up!

It just gets worse. He asserts that this policy (of a sovereign guarantee) was ‘unambiguous policy’ and there was a ‘firm conviction’ that no Irish bank would go the Lehman route. Again, this treachery was simply assumed: by whom? When? Why? Well, he actually provided the answer to the ‘why’: bank failures result in violence and deaths – in Argentina and Indonesia no less! [When was the last violent fatality in a Dublin street demonstration?] Now where have we heard or read this sort of incendiary commentary before – Ah! Yes. Those nice folk at 700 19th St. Washington DC! Ding! Ding! Mr D.

Basically, no one knew what was really happening. Our politicians were clueless. The regulator asleep. The bank executives lied. Donovan admits this – “[the] authorities held the mistakenly fatal view …”. Some fatal mistake! This mendacious commentator then delivers his coup – “[the] guarantee was indeed the least worst option. What might have happened in its absence will always be a matter of conjecture”. Can you believe this rubbish? Where were the alternatives? There were none. It was TINA all the way! But whose TINA was it? Well, we kinda know now.

Let the looting continue!

One man with no neck & one man with… Never mind

@Kerchav

Very interesting – explains the problem. It looks as though the “country of origin” data is only available on an annual basis. I don’t know why they bother with “country of consignment” statistics at all. I would suggest to Ms Markert that they actually annotate their tables so that it is clear what underlying data is being used in each case.

So although it is falling there is still a significant German trade surplus with the rest of the EZ, which has to be funded by the deficit countries incurring more debt.

Why is there an overspend in the DoH when the exchequer figures for the first 9 months of the year show everything is bang on target?

@ Brian Woods Snr

Could you – or any other poster – suggest what alternatives to the guarantee were available on the night in question? There are acres of print on the evils of the guarantee but I can’t recall any less harmful alternative being put forward.

@ BPB: Good morning! Note your query. Since we are not familiar I shall, before attempting to answer, make the assumption that you are as informed as myself on the nature and extent of our current economic and financial mess. That said, I allow that you are not posing an appropriate question. Think God: one cannot prove He exists, nor can one prove He does not exist. A maddening conundrum.

Try this. The Gov (who were individually and collectively clueless) should have informed the Irish ‘banks’ – being private commercial entities incorporated in this state, that they should immediately seek court protection from their creditors – until the issues were clearer to all. Now, recall, those Irish ‘banks’ were very badly run – which is hardly a moot point.

Our ‘banks’ had gone into the wholesale money market to borrow from commercial ‘banks’ which gave the Irish ‘banks’ an extraordinary, and historically massive, line of credit. Why did the commercial ‘banks provide that line-of-credit? What were these commercial lenders demanding as risk-collateral? In other words, what were the warranties and representations made by the Irish ‘banks’ to their commercial lenders? Furthermore, what was the nature of the mortgage lending practices being used by the Irish ‘banks’? Now, again I am assuming, a court appointed Examiner might have been able to get answers to these vexing questions – ‘or else!’. We really need those answers, else we cannot have a meaningful intellectual engagement with the matter. A music hall ‘shouting match’ perhaps. Which is what we have.

The process of examinership would have taken some time (weeks?) and it would have provided considerable space to absorb the nature and extent of the problems within the Irish ‘banks’. And no, the global banking system would NOT have collapsed – nor any dire catastrophe which was being deliberately hyped (by the usual mendacious suspects) to shock and frighten folk. Shocked folk make rash decisions. Or have decisions ‘forced’ upon them. The hype worked as predicted! We got a guarantee based on, and I quote Donal Donovan here – “a fatal (as in dead!) error”.

Part of your query relates to what alternatives were actually proposed, or discussed? Well, there were actually none. Or if there were, there is one hell of a pregnant silence about those alternatives from those who made their decision based on that “fatal error”.

So what we have is a single-minded, ideologically driven, determined – and so far successful strategy, to displace attention away from the “fatal error” and castigate those of us who bitterly – and correctly (that’s my opinion) oppose the guarantee. Just read Donovan’s IT Op piece. He’s ex-IMF. Look for mentions of ‘shock’ (bad outcomes). Look for mentions of a pre-existing strategy (bank failures are absolutely prohibited!). [This non-negotiable matter is even posted on the DoF website!!] Donovan closes his piece by asserting that opponents of the guarantee did not engage in, “[an] analytical assessment and feasibility and implications of the alternatives available at the time.” This is truly maddening, since alternatives were neither presented nor considered! He must be a fan of Joseph Heller!

I cannot recall the matter of a mandatory, non-failure policy being raised by the FF govs and then being put to the Dáil for discussion. Do you? Does anyone? After all, the Irish government is constitutionally obliged to present an annual tax and spending budget to the Dáil. Mind you, the government will ‘ram’ the budget through anyways. But in the case of the ‘bank’ guarantee – which is effectively the imposition of a significant financial and social burden on us citizens – it was made in private, using deeply flawed data and with the expressed threat of ‘dire outcomes’ if the guarantee was not given. It was the only ‘permitted’ decision. It was, as I have said on several occasions on this site, an act of sovereign treachery – a betrayal of the citizens of this state.

Milton Friedman’s credo – later expressed in the Washington Consensus – demands, dictates and impels that the State should stand aside from interfering in the Free Market. Fine. So lets have boxing without the Marquis of Queensbury. And all manly (and womanly) team sports without referees. Even the Roman Gladiators had to have ‘Arbiters’ to oversee each contest. Now I wonder why? But! But! – I hear you say. Our government (aka: the state) stepped in to guarantee private entities which were operated in a quite disgraceful way. That’s OK then? Well it most assuredly is not OK!

[You might also like to wonder why our sky did not fall in when we had a 10 week bank strike a while back.]

Hope this provides, some, enlightenment. Its patchy, I know. But you can always get back to me. Thanks again for your thoughtful query.

@ BPB: Thanks for your reply.

First off, the horse has bolted and all you and I can do is ‘wonder’. Secondly, our domestic ‘banks’ (at least from 2002 onwards) were, in respect of mortgage lending, operated in a truly disgraceful manner, possibly fraudulently. Third off, those ‘banks’ had (I hope) some un-incumbered (non-liquid) assets available for seizure. Fourthly, focusing on value claims (better, worse, etc) is a poor basis for decision making. What we needed (and still do) is accurate information – which can be verified as either true or not true. Fifth off, invoking the rhetoric of ‘shock’ – “Sky will fall in” – “Riots on streets” – “Global collapse” – “There will be a catastrophic run” – “The ATMs will run out of cash” and similar sh*te is the classical hallmark of ideological demagogs who want to subvert a problem situation to their own ends – they win, we lose!

My bottom line. Our domestic banks deserved to have been ‘shut’ – at a very minimum for several months, until we could get the truth out of the executives who effectively had ruined these companies. After all, we demand the closure of badly operated nursing homes, creches and restaurants – yes? We sure do! And with very good reason. But not ‘banks’? Now I wonder why.

Recently, the bros Bruton were a tad incensed about a proposal to reduce? some public service pensions. Allowed as how those pensions were ‘private property’ and all! Art 42 says touchee! But my savings(deposited) in my bank for safekeeping are ‘lootable’ on demand! Indeed!

Our state was never really vulnerable – but it was immediately after that guarantee was given. That was the cunning plan! As I said above, our horse has bolted, and all we can do now is shovel the manure.

Have you read Gretta Krippner -‘Capitalizing on Crisis’? Will explain the genesis of the absolute, fail-safe financial bail-in guarantee. Not pleasant reading.

Thanks again for the reply.