Back during the Beef Tribunal Fintan O Toole put a lot of effort into decoding the shenanigans at Dublin Castle which helped shed light on what was going on, hopefully we will get a similar level of coverage of this story….

Apologies Colm, keep up the good work!

Seems like an Irish journalist has finally gotten around to reading Mondays Financial Times on Thursday evening.

The re-design of a culture

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4489f006-a45d-11dd-8104-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

“The Irish government has bowed to pressure from its two biggest banks and dropped an insistence that the industry as a whole help to pay the costs involved in settling the debts of any insolvent bank.

To minimise the cost to Irish taxpayers, the original plan envisaged that where the guarantee is called upon, and the creditors repaid, any cost not recovered from the bank in trouble would be recouped from the other covered institutions “over time in a manner consistent with their long-term viability and sustainability”.

Can anyone clarify if this article is in fact true? and if so why there isn’t a word about it on the news here, its 500,000,000,000 i.e. 5000 times more important than the medical cards

Succinctly put by Sue. Deco is like a biblical prophet. He has enunciated the cold reality of the Irish dilemma all too well.
The current crisis is a death sentence for a political party in hock to too many vested interests and powerful unions. It all comes back now to haunt them now,-their venality & corruption,at a singularly unique moment in time.
Not that their counterparts represent any form of hope. Mr Gilmore has recently refused to break the link with the semi state unions and create a party which could be a real alternative to the two mirror image fraudsters- Fianna Fail & Fine Gael.
The RADICAL plan to allow first-time buyers to purchase new houses with a mortgage part financed by the State,as recently unveiled in the Budget, appears to be nothing more than a naked attempt to prop up prices for the Fianna Fail coterie of developers whose half finished building sites now lie abandoned countrywide:
“Open, unto the fields and to the sky”
This latest rescue plan will (should the young people of Ireland fall for it) allow new buyers who are now struggling to meet strict and proper conditions imposed by banks and building societies, circumvent these limitations. It will lay a double yoke around their necks. 1. the bank loan for re-payment during their own lifetime; and 2. the state loan, to be eventually paid off by their descendents.!
“Woe unto you,politicians, for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.”
Fianna Fail´s last desperate throw of the property market dice strikes me as very similar to Mary Hearneys “claw back from the dead” scheme for recovering funds from the estates of the small number of old folk who will need-but cannot afford- private sheltered accommodation during their last years on Earth.
The ends this government will go to, in order to prevent the property market reaching a more normal level are truly incredible.
The biggest developers have now withdrawn from the schemes which offered them free sites in superb city locations (O´Devaney Gardens etc.), on condition that they would provide a small amount of social housing cost free for the poorest in our society.
The fire sale of building machinery currently taking place is an indicator that the builders have little faith in any new schemes to use taxpayers funds to prop up a corpse. They have already packed their suitcases and moved on and-deservedly- left the banks with the debris from the whole debacle on their hands, to dispose of at their leisure.
The current share prices of the banks indicate that they may not have as much time left to do so..as they think.
Will our Fenian dead be removed next, from the finest building site in Ireland´s capital city,one wonders, to make way for the JCB´s ? Is Glasnevin Cemetery itself safe from the predations of the Soldiers of Destiny.?
Unthinkable you say-but why not.? Impositions, claw backs, and U-turns, on the old, the sick, and the handicapped reveals that we are truly at the pitiless mercy of a government of ghouls.

Unfortunately, there’s scant evidence of economic philosophy in the Dail at the moment. It’s what that other famous moral philosopher Sir Alex Ferguson called “squeaky bum time” but without the promise of a cup at the other end.

I think the Irish don’t trust either the state (I don’t) or each other (I’m not sure) and in the end act out of fear. Get on the property ladder before your neighbours price you off it. Get a secure job so that when it all crashes down (as everyone knew in his heart it would) at least you won’t be the worst off. I think that’s why the medical card issue touched a nerve. It’s like the lights being switched off and the big fear is that when they come on again you’ll be among those left holding nothing. It will take a leap of faith and imagination to change that centuries-old mindset to one that can accept that wealth can be fairly generated for the good of everyone and not at the expense of others. I was just talking generally with a colleague who, before I said anything, told me that the problem with this country is that it is carved up by vested interests all the way through. Where we disagreed was that he thinks this is human nature and the case throughout the world.

This is why people they have voted the way they have – to maintain a relative advantage – the losers could just emigrate. I’m not talking about the inner Golden Circles here but your ordinary Paddy. At the lower end of the scale there was only so much you could do and families were split with many emigrating, but those were the rules of the game – you pulled whatever strings were available and used whatever influence or cunning you had. That’s why so much of the rhetoric fails to convince, eg the unions’ talk of workers’ rights (even if individuals may take it at face value at a group level the reality is different) as their raison d’etre, in Ireland that is, is exclusively to protect their own members’ rights.

Years ago as a teenager over here on holiday I once got a lift into Ballaghaderreen and for a whole half an hour the driver listed off an endless list of people he knew. At the time I thought this was extremely odd but not now. Have you ever seen the Irish together abroad, say at an airport when something unusual happens – while others try to reason out what to do the Irish all immediately look around to see what the others are doing.