Heroic Ireland can do no more, it is up to Europe now

[Beet]

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[Wonkish1]

Good article.

Very good at making the case that Ireland should have said F*** You when the Eurozone demanded that they bail out their banking system. Instead they should have just came in and backstopped their depositors and let the remaining creditors get defaulted on and shove the firms into bankruptcy. Lehman's are necessary folks.

[Beet]

In any case, the peripheral countries are nearing their breaking point. Now is not the time to be demanding massive new austerity measures- more reasonable are labor market reforms in places like Spain. But overall, even if one sees inflation as an evil, some of it may be necessary.

[Wonkish1]

In any case, the peripheral countries are nearing their breaking point. Now is not the time to be demanding massive new austerity measures- more reasonable are labor market reforms in places like Spain. But overall, even if one sees inflation as an evil, some of it may be necessary.

Actually it looks like Ireland has been doing fine with its *mostly spending side* austerity in comparison to the remaining countries with their *mostly tax side* austerity.


The problem is that the ECB will use its printing prowess to try save the financial system. If you add the current sovereign situation to it your looking at a ton of printing.

As I said before you can't print wealth and give it to somebody. You can transfer wealth through the printing process, but you can't create it.


Face it the bill is due. There isn't much you can do to avoid it. Its checkmate. Hard defaults are coming among sovereigns and insolvency among the banking sector(and while Ireland did better than its peers they've run out of time and they didn't do enough). A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money, there will be massive write downs, there will still be a lot more government austerity, but the debt burden will drop and once that happens growth will return.

[opebo]

As I said before you can't print wealth and give it to somebody. You can transfer wealth through the printing process, but you can't create it.

But surely you realize that transferring wealth is precisely what we want to do. 

Besides, there is an aspect of printing - namely prevention of deflation - which does in a sense 'create' wealth: by causing production not to be halted.  Another way to put this is printing, by preventing the inevitable downward spiral effect of your neo-liberalism upon prices and demand, creates the conditions in which wealth can be produced.

[Wonkish1]

I wonder if Opebo actually realizes that printing money in this case means: transferring wealth from the population to sovereign creditors and in the case of the banking industry, from the population to the banking sector. Which in both cases is largely the same group of people.

Its kind of funny that Opebo didn't realize this. Goes to show you how I could probably get him to run around in circles advocating for the benefit of practically anybody I wanted.

[Jacobtm]

Ireland should have said F*** You when the Eurozone demanded that they bail out their banking system.

Should've been the whole world's response when banks went under, instead redirecting all bailout funds towards workers.

Making private losses public is why so many sovereigns are in danger of default right now.

[Wonkish1]

Ireland should have said F*** You when the Eurozone demanded that they bail out their banking system.

Should've been the whole world's response when banks went under, instead redirecting all bailout funds towards workers.

Making private losses public is why so many sovereigns are in danger of default right now.

The bolded part is about the only thing true about your comment. The Europeans sovereigns are at risk of default right now because they have spent to much and/or run to large of deficits.

[Beet]

Ireland should have said F*** You when the Eurozone demanded that they bail out their banking system.

Should've been the whole world's response when banks went under, instead redirecting all bailout funds towards workers.

Making private losses public is why so many sovereigns are in danger of default right now.

Hi Jacobtm, nice to see a fresh face commenting around here.