Author: Kevin O’Rourke

Quote of the day

“When we were faced with a similar situation after coming into government, we agreed with the ECB and we held back from burden sharing with senior bond holders and we didn’t proceed down that road.”

Michael Noonan, reported here.

It wouldn’t be altogether surprising, I suppose, if the most conservative party in the State agreed with the ECB when it came to the distribution of bank losses as between ordinary taxpayers and financial institutions. But this isn’t the story we have been told to date.

So: does Fine Gael — and Labour — agree with the ECB regarding burden sharing with bondholders?

Update: Michael Noonan has said that Anglo and Irish Nationwide senior bondholders should face losses.

Monetary policy in the eurozone

Here is a picture worth a thousand words.

Update: further to my post yesterday, here is another piece on the fate of the eurozone by someone who has had a PIGS eye view of the crisis.

Roubini on the eurozone

Nouriel Roubini’s post is a useful complement to the piece by Wolfgang Münchau that John linked to earlier. In truth, I don’t think anyone really knows what is going to happen to the eurozone, and Wolfgang is admirably frank about the fact that he is just describing one possible scenario. But an increasing number of people are now arguing that eurozone politicians aren’t going to be able to fudge the unfudgeable forever. If that is the case, the Irish people may have some momentous choices to make in the not-too-distant future.

Good news from Iceland

Here.

Credibility

Paul Krugman points to the gap between Icelandic and Irish CDS spreads here.