While not to be morbid about death or drowning - imagine 13 or 14, maybe even 20 people, all on a cruise ship and as a consequence of their intransigence on a number of issues, they watch as their ship hits a floating island, ruptures the hull and sinks, leaving the 13-20 people floating and bobbing about on the sea. Each person connected to the others by a lifeline, each buoyed by a life preserver thrown to them by people on the passing island as it floated away. Then imagine watching as the first person loses consciousness, while the others fight to take his life preserver off the limp body, watching as the body, half conscious and half lost to a possibility of being saved, sinks beneath the waves, engulfed by the darkness and quickly swallowed up by the abyss below. Watching as the first person pulled under, slowly begins pulling the next person under, while the remaining bobbing bodies argue about life preservers and how best to use them in the sea.
They cannot cut the line for any such severance ends for all time their precious European Union, so they remain tied to each other despite calls by several German financiers to do just that - sever ties to the sinking states, let them go under.
Greece is one example. A state that is in so many ways beyond redemption - it depends on the handouts from other EU states, but the other EU states are having their own share of economic woes only made worse by the billions loaned to Greece. Greece has gone under. Under the conditions of the bailout Greece received (or handout) certain requirements were enacted and signed off on - requirements to do and not do certain things. Greece has just admitted it sort of didn't do what was required by the EU bailout.
Greece has gone under and unlikely Germany will be willing to dump more billions into a black hole. Following Greece is Ireland - on the verge of sinking beneath the waves, swallowed up by the darkness ...
But the fun doesn't end there - Portugal (in my example of the survivors floating about on the sea) is tied to Ireland and is signalling it is about ready to surrender to the darkness. Spain is tied to Portugal.
I've got that sinking feeling ....
Oh oh that sinking feeling
that EU sinking feeling ...
Contagion hits Portugal as Ireland dithers on Rescue
The EU authorities have begun to vent their fury against Ireland over its refusal to accept a financial rescue, fearing that the crisis will engulf Portugal and Spain unless confidence is restored immediately to eurozone bond markets
November 15, 2010
The Telegraph
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Spain's central bank governor, Miguel Angel Ordonez, lashed out at Dublin on Monday, calling on the Irish government to halt the panic and take the "proper decision" of activating the EU-IMF bail-out mechanism.
"The situation in the markets has been very negative due to the lack of a final decision by Ireland. It is up to Ireland to take that decision, and I hope it does," he said.
The outburst reflected suspicion at the European Central Bank that Dublin is holding the eurozone to ransom, allowing the crisis to fester until it extracts a pledge from EU officials that it will not suffer a loss of economic sovereignty or be forced to give up its 12.5pc corporate tax rate under any deal.
Confused reports continued to swirl as Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan prepared to meet eurozone colleagues over dinner in Brussels on Tuesday night. Dublin has so far admitted to holding talks over "market conditions" with EU partners but insists that it is fully-funded until June and hopes to calm nerves with €6bn (£5.1bn )of budget cuts in early December.
Simon Derrick from the Bank of New York Mellon said the negotiations over Ireland's bail-out have been astonishing. "The creditors say please take the money, and the debtor says 'we don't want it'. It's very odd."
"Still, the EU is doing the right thing to try to create a fire-wall as quickly as possible. They learned from Greece that once bond yields reach this level they have 10 trading days left to avoid a self-feeding crisis. They cannot allow this to spread to a large country because at that point contagion would become uncontainable," he said.
Contagion has already pushed Portugal to the brink, pushing yields on 10-year bonds to the danger level above 6.5pc. Finance minister Fernado Teixeira dos Santos said the country was at the mercy of global forces and may be forced to call for help.
"The risk is high because we are not only facing a national or country problem. It is the problems of Greece, Portugal, and Ireland. Markets look at these economies because we are all in this together in the eurozone. Suppose we were not in the eurozone, the risk of contagion could be lower," he told the Financial Times.
Mr Teixeira made a thinly veiled attack on Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicolas Sarkozy, who precipitated the latest crisis by opening the door to sovereign defaults and bondholder "haircuts" for eurozone states in trouble.
"We were like the soccer player running to the goal and ready to kick for the goal, and then someone fouls us, but this time there was no penalty."
A simultaneous bail-out for both Ireland and Portugal might run to €200bn, depleting much of the EU rescue line. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) can raise up to €440bn on the bond markets but only two thirds of this would be available. The IMF is expected to loan a further €3 for every €8 from the EU under the bail-out formula.
The great concern is that the crisis could spread to Spain, which has a far bigger economy that Greece, Portugal, and Ireland combined. Foreign banks have €850bn of exposure to Spanish debt.
David Schautz, credit strategist at Commerzbank, said the EU bail-out fund would come under "severe strain" if Spain needed a rescue. Yet this remains a serious risk since Spain must roll over or raise €175bn of debt next year.
Mr Schautz said funds would become wary if yields on 10-year Spanish bonds rise much above 5pc, compared to 4.5pc at the moment. "Investors are nervous and panic can break out fast," he said.
Jose Manuel Campa, Spain's economy secretary, said his country is "neither Greece, nor Ireland, and never will be". Spain's economy has stalled again but public debt is still just 66pc of GDP, and both budget and current account deficits are falling fast.
The same cannot be said of Greece, where the debt crisis is going from bad to worse despite its €110bn rescue in April. Eurostat has revised Greece's debt from 115pc to 127pc of GDP last year, while the deficit was even worse than thought at 15.4pc. The debt will jump to 144pc of GDP this year, risking a debt-compound trap.
Premier George Papandreou said the country may ask for an extension of its debt repayment schedule, a move interpreted by investors as the start of a slippery slope towards default.
He accused Germany of pushing weaker EMU states over the edge by pressing for bondholder haircuts, saying Mrs Merkel's proposals had "created a spiral of higher interest rates for the countries in a difficult position. This could create a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is like saying to someone, 'since you have a difficulty, I will put an even higher burden on your back.' This could force economies towards bankruptcy," he said.
For Ireland, recourse to the EU or IMF would be traumatic, an unanswerable verdict on a Fianna Fail government that was still basking in glory of the Celtic Tiger just three years ago.
Mr Lenihan appears determined to dress up any rescue as a bail-out for banks rather than for the Irish sovereign state. This may not be easy. The ECB's vice president, Vitor Constancio, said the EFSF "cannot lend directly to banks: the facility lends to governments."
EU
Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts
Monday, November 15, 2010
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Ireland: The Beginning of the End (about to follow Greece down the rabbit hole)
Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal ...
As more sink, the ship will capsize and many other euro states will also sink - Italy will go, as will Sweden ...
Ireland's young flee abroad as economic meltdown looms
Many young people are seeking to emigrate rather than face a life of hardship as the republic lurches towards financial collapse
David Sharrock in Dublin
The Observer
Sunday 14 November 2010
Student Niamh Buffini works hard and plays hard. As Ireland's No 1 taekwondo martial arts practitioner – she is rated 12th in the world – her ambitions include winning Olympic gold for Ireland.
But by the end of this month her future will have been decided by forces not just beyond her control but seemingly those of her government also. Ireland is on the cusp of insolvency. Some economists argue that it already is.
Buffini will soon learn if her fees at the Institute of Technology in Tallaght, south Dublin, have climbed beyond her means. Her father is a self-employed builder, which has recently become a euphemism for "unemployed".
"My class size will have dropped by 50% by next year," Buffini said. "Even lecturers took part in the recent student protests over fees because society here is going to be left with very few educated people. My best friends have already left – they're doing bar work in Spain and Australia."
Last week was not a good week for Ireland. Speculation about a European Union-backed bailout pushed its borrowing costs to unprecedented heights.
At Buffini's college on Friday, the day began with a protest by construction workers who were supposed to have been working on a new wing. Their paymaster Michael McNamara – the country's premier construction firm – had been put into receivership under the weight of debts of €1.5bn (£1.27bn), leaving them jobless and out of pocket for work they had already completed.
So far the workers' demonstrations have remained largely peaceful. Indeed, many Tallaght students seemed shocked by the violence they witnessed in TV reports from London involving their British counterparts. But that may change.
Economists are sought-after celebrities in Ireland at the moment and none is more famous than Morgan Kelly. His doom-laden words are lapped up by a nation addicted to Celtic melancholy.
Kelly, of University College Dublin, was laughed at, scorned and even threatened when he correctly predicted, as long ago as 2007, that Ireland's property bubble was heading for a spectacular explosion.
Now he is forecasting mass mortgage defaults and an ugly popular uprising. The first stirrings are already visible, he says, with "anxiety giving way to the first upwellings of an inchoate rage and despair that will transform Irish politics along the lines of the Tea Party in America", giving rise to a new "hard-right, anti-Europe, anti-traveller party".
The fact that Kelly got it right last time means that his dire warnings are now being given serious consideration this time around, but so far there is no evidence that the Irish are turning into racist extremists.
Polish immigrants, whose arrival in Ireland less than a decade ago increased the workforce by an astonishing 20%, have left in orderly fashion and with no complaints about their treatment. More worrying is the trend for the young Irish to follow them abroad.
Mark Ward, president of Tallaght's student union, says that 1,250 students are leaving Ireland every month. One in five graduates is seeking work outside the country. The Union of Students in Ireland believes that 150,000 students will emigrate in the next five years.
Ward, a 26-year-old marketing graduate, said: "The government's to blame for bankrolling the banks who were lending to their property developer friends. They all thought the party would never end.
"Students shouldn't have to pay for the mistakes of the government and their developer pals. It's going to take years to sort this mess out and it won't be just my generation which will be blighted big time."
Is the social fabric of Ireland beginning to unravel? The Kingdom, one of the country's much-loved local papers, recently reported that nearly 200 Gaelic footballers and hurlers have left Kerry to play in Britain, Australia and the US in the first seven months of this year. The true figure is probably double that.
The charity Barnardo's said that children were asking it for food because there was not enough for them to eat at home. "Some of our services are being asked by children if they can take food home for later because there just isn't enough," said Carmel O'Donovan, a project co-ordinator with Barnardo's.
And it's not just the most vulnerable who are feeling the pinch. Greystones is a wealthy Wicklow seaside town whose most famous resident is Sean FitzPatrick, the former chairman of nationalised Anglo Irish Bank. Emer O'Brien, an interior designer, and her architect husband Killian are struggling to repay their mortgage.
"It is awful, a bit like waiting for a bomb to explode but simply not knowing when," she said. "I don't think anybody has any faith in any of the politicians to fix this problem. Over 70% of education and health spending goes on pay and pensions, so all the cuts in those departments are coming from front-line services.
"I hope I don't get sick in the coming months because there'll be nobody to tend to you in the hospitals. Of course, a lot of people would be heading across the Irish Sea or the Atlantic if only they could sell their houses, but we can't do that either. So basically we're stuck on the Titanic as it goes down."
Next month the government will deliver its latest austerity budget with the aim of slashing a further €15bn from public spending on top of the €14.5bn it has already been forced to cut. But Kelly has argued that the public sector cuts are "an exercise in futility" when compared with the €70bn bill for Ireland's bad banks. "What is the point of rearranging the spending deckchairs, when the iceberg of bank losses is going to sink us anyway?" he asked in the Irish Times last week.
Put at its starkest, for the next six to seven years, every cent of income tax paid by Irish citizens will go to cover the banks' losses.
At the Capuchin Friary in Smithfield sausage breakfasts are being served to Dublin's growing band of homeless and needy people. "There's new faces arriving every day. At first they're embarrassed to be here but we put them at their ease," one of the volunteers said.
Gerry Larkin, the drop-in centre's security manager, has noticed that occupants of the many neighbouring apartment blocks which were supposed to regenerate the city's down-at-heel north side are now taking their places in the queue for food parcels.
He said: "Some of them have got into trouble with their mortgages and they're asking me at the door: 'Any chance of coming in, can you give me even a bit of food for the kids?'
"We've gone from 150 breakfasts during the boom years to 450 now and another 700 coming in for lunch."
Five nights a week Niamh Buffini trains in her local martial arts club, nurturing her dream of winning gold for Ireland. "I'm always upbeat, but with my friends the chat about how bad things are is never ending.
"I'm an optimist by nature and I hope we can get out of this. The best I could say is I couldn't see it getting any worse."
Ireland
As more sink, the ship will capsize and many other euro states will also sink - Italy will go, as will Sweden ...
Ireland's young flee abroad as economic meltdown looms
Many young people are seeking to emigrate rather than face a life of hardship as the republic lurches towards financial collapse
David Sharrock in Dublin
The Observer
Sunday 14 November 2010
Student Niamh Buffini works hard and plays hard. As Ireland's No 1 taekwondo martial arts practitioner – she is rated 12th in the world – her ambitions include winning Olympic gold for Ireland.
But by the end of this month her future will have been decided by forces not just beyond her control but seemingly those of her government also. Ireland is on the cusp of insolvency. Some economists argue that it already is.
Buffini will soon learn if her fees at the Institute of Technology in Tallaght, south Dublin, have climbed beyond her means. Her father is a self-employed builder, which has recently become a euphemism for "unemployed".
"My class size will have dropped by 50% by next year," Buffini said. "Even lecturers took part in the recent student protests over fees because society here is going to be left with very few educated people. My best friends have already left – they're doing bar work in Spain and Australia."
Last week was not a good week for Ireland. Speculation about a European Union-backed bailout pushed its borrowing costs to unprecedented heights.
At Buffini's college on Friday, the day began with a protest by construction workers who were supposed to have been working on a new wing. Their paymaster Michael McNamara – the country's premier construction firm – had been put into receivership under the weight of debts of €1.5bn (£1.27bn), leaving them jobless and out of pocket for work they had already completed.
So far the workers' demonstrations have remained largely peaceful. Indeed, many Tallaght students seemed shocked by the violence they witnessed in TV reports from London involving their British counterparts. But that may change.
Economists are sought-after celebrities in Ireland at the moment and none is more famous than Morgan Kelly. His doom-laden words are lapped up by a nation addicted to Celtic melancholy.
Kelly, of University College Dublin, was laughed at, scorned and even threatened when he correctly predicted, as long ago as 2007, that Ireland's property bubble was heading for a spectacular explosion.
Now he is forecasting mass mortgage defaults and an ugly popular uprising. The first stirrings are already visible, he says, with "anxiety giving way to the first upwellings of an inchoate rage and despair that will transform Irish politics along the lines of the Tea Party in America", giving rise to a new "hard-right, anti-Europe, anti-traveller party".
The fact that Kelly got it right last time means that his dire warnings are now being given serious consideration this time around, but so far there is no evidence that the Irish are turning into racist extremists.
Polish immigrants, whose arrival in Ireland less than a decade ago increased the workforce by an astonishing 20%, have left in orderly fashion and with no complaints about their treatment. More worrying is the trend for the young Irish to follow them abroad.
Mark Ward, president of Tallaght's student union, says that 1,250 students are leaving Ireland every month. One in five graduates is seeking work outside the country. The Union of Students in Ireland believes that 150,000 students will emigrate in the next five years.
Ward, a 26-year-old marketing graduate, said: "The government's to blame for bankrolling the banks who were lending to their property developer friends. They all thought the party would never end.
"Students shouldn't have to pay for the mistakes of the government and their developer pals. It's going to take years to sort this mess out and it won't be just my generation which will be blighted big time."
Is the social fabric of Ireland beginning to unravel? The Kingdom, one of the country's much-loved local papers, recently reported that nearly 200 Gaelic footballers and hurlers have left Kerry to play in Britain, Australia and the US in the first seven months of this year. The true figure is probably double that.
The charity Barnardo's said that children were asking it for food because there was not enough for them to eat at home. "Some of our services are being asked by children if they can take food home for later because there just isn't enough," said Carmel O'Donovan, a project co-ordinator with Barnardo's.
And it's not just the most vulnerable who are feeling the pinch. Greystones is a wealthy Wicklow seaside town whose most famous resident is Sean FitzPatrick, the former chairman of nationalised Anglo Irish Bank. Emer O'Brien, an interior designer, and her architect husband Killian are struggling to repay their mortgage.
"It is awful, a bit like waiting for a bomb to explode but simply not knowing when," she said. "I don't think anybody has any faith in any of the politicians to fix this problem. Over 70% of education and health spending goes on pay and pensions, so all the cuts in those departments are coming from front-line services.
"I hope I don't get sick in the coming months because there'll be nobody to tend to you in the hospitals. Of course, a lot of people would be heading across the Irish Sea or the Atlantic if only they could sell their houses, but we can't do that either. So basically we're stuck on the Titanic as it goes down."
Next month the government will deliver its latest austerity budget with the aim of slashing a further €15bn from public spending on top of the €14.5bn it has already been forced to cut. But Kelly has argued that the public sector cuts are "an exercise in futility" when compared with the €70bn bill for Ireland's bad banks. "What is the point of rearranging the spending deckchairs, when the iceberg of bank losses is going to sink us anyway?" he asked in the Irish Times last week.
Put at its starkest, for the next six to seven years, every cent of income tax paid by Irish citizens will go to cover the banks' losses.
At the Capuchin Friary in Smithfield sausage breakfasts are being served to Dublin's growing band of homeless and needy people. "There's new faces arriving every day. At first they're embarrassed to be here but we put them at their ease," one of the volunteers said.
Gerry Larkin, the drop-in centre's security manager, has noticed that occupants of the many neighbouring apartment blocks which were supposed to regenerate the city's down-at-heel north side are now taking their places in the queue for food parcels.
He said: "Some of them have got into trouble with their mortgages and they're asking me at the door: 'Any chance of coming in, can you give me even a bit of food for the kids?'
"We've gone from 150 breakfasts during the boom years to 450 now and another 700 coming in for lunch."
Five nights a week Niamh Buffini trains in her local martial arts club, nurturing her dream of winning gold for Ireland. "I'm always upbeat, but with my friends the chat about how bad things are is never ending.
"I'm an optimist by nature and I hope we can get out of this. The best I could say is I couldn't see it getting any worse."
Ireland
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Ryanair: Stand up on the plane to fly cheaper.
Fly standing up? Imagine a crash landing, or for that matter, turbulence! Forget the actual crash - you may as well bite down on the cyanide pill.
Ryanair to sell £5 tickets for standing-room only flights
By Laura Roberts
01 Jul 2010
The Telegraph
Ryanair is planning to run flights where passengers stand during the journey at a cost of just £5 per ticket.
Ryanair to make passengers standHe said that charging customers £1 to make use of facilities would encourage travellers on one hour flights to use lavatories at the airport instead of on the aircraft.
The Irishman said he intended to introduce coin-operated loos and added: "The other change we've been looking at is taking out the last 10 rows of seats so we will have 15 rows of seats and the equivalent of 10 rows of standing area."
A Ryanair spokesman said that Boeing had been consulted over refitting the fleet with "vertical seats" which would allow passengers to be strapped in while standing up, which would cost between £4 and £8 per person.
Safety testing will be carried out next year.
However, a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority said the plans would struggle to meet safety requirements.
He said: "It's aviation law that people have to have a seat-belt on from take-off and landing so they would have to be in a seat. I don't know how Mr O'Leary would get around that one. During turbulence passengers also have to have a seat-belt on."
Mr O'Leary was interviewed for ITV's How to Beat the Budget Airlines which airs on Thursday night at 7.30pm.
euros
Ryanair to sell £5 tickets for standing-room only flights
By Laura Roberts
01 Jul 2010
The Telegraph
Ryanair is planning to run flights where passengers stand during the journey at a cost of just £5 per ticket.
Ryanair to make passengers standHe said that charging customers £1 to make use of facilities would encourage travellers on one hour flights to use lavatories at the airport instead of on the aircraft.
The Irishman said he intended to introduce coin-operated loos and added: "The other change we've been looking at is taking out the last 10 rows of seats so we will have 15 rows of seats and the equivalent of 10 rows of standing area."
A Ryanair spokesman said that Boeing had been consulted over refitting the fleet with "vertical seats" which would allow passengers to be strapped in while standing up, which would cost between £4 and £8 per person.
Safety testing will be carried out next year.
However, a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority said the plans would struggle to meet safety requirements.
He said: "It's aviation law that people have to have a seat-belt on from take-off and landing so they would have to be in a seat. I don't know how Mr O'Leary would get around that one. During turbulence passengers also have to have a seat-belt on."
Mr O'Leary was interviewed for ITV's How to Beat the Budget Airlines which airs on Thursday night at 7.30pm.
euros
Friday, June 13, 2008
It Lost - Ireland
Human nature, human behavior, and the ultimate tribal influences!!
Returns show Ireland votes 'no' on EU treaty
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
The Associated Press
2008-06-13 14:13:04
DUBLIN, Ireland - Substantial election returns showed Friday that Ireland's voters have rejected the European Union reform treaty, a blueprint for modernizing the 27-nation bloc that cannot become law without Irish approval.
Several senior Irish government figures conceded defeat for the treaty, which would be a major blow to the EU.
An EU constitution failed after French and Dutch voters rejected it in 2005. Ireland was the only member that subjected its would-be successor, the Lisbon Treaty, to a national vote. The Irish constitution requires all EU treaties to be ratified by referendum.
*****************************************
The other countries are now chiding ireland for even having given their citizens the right to decide. See how much easier it is when you are not free to decide, when government decides for you, and when politicians talk about inevitablity.
Irish
Returns show Ireland votes 'no' on EU treaty
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
The Associated Press
2008-06-13 14:13:04
DUBLIN, Ireland - Substantial election returns showed Friday that Ireland's voters have rejected the European Union reform treaty, a blueprint for modernizing the 27-nation bloc that cannot become law without Irish approval.
Several senior Irish government figures conceded defeat for the treaty, which would be a major blow to the EU.
An EU constitution failed after French and Dutch voters rejected it in 2005. Ireland was the only member that subjected its would-be successor, the Lisbon Treaty, to a national vote. The Irish constitution requires all EU treaties to be ratified by referendum.
*****************************************
The other countries are now chiding ireland for even having given their citizens the right to decide. See how much easier it is when you are not free to decide, when government decides for you, and when politicians talk about inevitablity.
Irish
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