Saturday 23 April 2011

Sovereignty

Slí Eile: Today's Irish Times reports that, according to former Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan, Ireland was 'forced' to take the IMF-EU bailout. OK. but what about the guarantee? check out the Nyberg report.

7 comments:

Martin O'Dea said...

People keep telling me that Mr Linehan is intelligent; I am assuming that as a barrister he appreciates the potential legal ramififcations of a minister for finance signing the accepeted as the most significant document since the treay in trems of its impact on Irish people in the states history, under durress.

How many more kicks they we need to walk away from this deal, ask david McWilliams if it is in any way at all possible!!

Paul Hunt said...

Not long more to go. The sovereign bond market is finally flagging that there's no way out for Greece other than some restructuring. Ireland is next in the queue. Far better the market does it than for Ireland to do it unilaterally - though I expect some here would disagree.

Hua Ria said...

Paul Hunt is quite right. The 10-year bond rate at 10.5% today shows we're well and truly banjaxed - the Irish "narrative" [that's the one about how we've fixed the banks with our clear and decisive decisions] is not believed by the lenders who take our paper and who might give us a few bob in the normal way if the plan were working.

I wonder what's going to happen when the IMF/EU cash runs out in a couple of years? I hope somebody's thinking about this!

Lenny's story is a bit odd.

It was clear from the spring on last year that the same was also the case, that is, the bond markets did not want to take Irish paper and were pushing yields higher and higher.

At the same time, the unreformed and probably unreformable Irish banking system was becoming more and more reliant on the ECB for special funding - eventually Ireland was absorbing a huge proportion of ECB assistance for the EZ baning system.

It had to end and it did.

Lenny's line is cracked. It's like an alcoholic saying "I was on one bottle of whiskey a day. I know I was starting into the second bottle at 6.00pm every day, but I can assure you that, if the doctor hadn't suddenly put me into rehab without formal proper notice, I would have got over it".

We're not important enough for the ECB to treat us in any other way. If they wanted to put us into financial rehab, that's that.

Martin you're wrong - Lenny is an awful ejit. Just when Micky from Cork and the rest of the FandF-ers might have thought they could get on with being the main opposition, up pops the bold Lenny to remind the punters that the whole thing was his and his party's fault.

If the new Government has any brains, they'll start a full inquiry lasting years to ram home the point.

As his performance over the last 2 years showed, Lenny doesn't do strategy. He may not do tactics either.

Slí Eile said...

Richard Portes has written 'If the excess of the interest rate over the growth rate were 6%, the required primary surplus would be 7%, a tax and expenditure shift totalling a further 16% of GDP. Even if feasible, that would just stabilise the debt at 120% of GDP!'. He also writes: 'Unlike some countries, Ireland did not get into its present situation because of public sector overborrowing.'
see http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/6380

FD said...

Hua Ria,
People keep telling me Mr Linehan is intelligent!

FD said...

Hua Ria,
People keep telling me Mr Linehan is intelligent

FD said...

Sorry,
Hua Ria,
People keep telling me Mr Linehan is intelligent
Martin O'Dea
Name not coming up for some reason