Irish State to invest in Banks?
As France’s pint-sized President raps Ireland on the knuckles for precipitating a flow of UK funds to Irish accounts, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan has hinted that a move to invest capital in Irish banks might be on the cards at a later stage. However, Lenihan stressed that caution must be exercised with regard to the state capitalisation of banks and quoted the head of the British Bankers’ Association as saying that the UK may have “gone too far” in its capitalisation of some of the country’s banks and that there was “a balance to be struck in these areas”. Meanwhile, the Iseq tumbled 6.5% today, shedding 188 points.
Will there be any money left after the millionaire property developers are bailed out? Pension fund next to go?
… pint-sized President
Is that not a bit ad hominem? Anyway, he’d be more of a demi-litre, don’t you think?
The French midget is correct to observe that competition means that the consumers will go with whoever offers them the best deal. So, well done to Sarkozy for grasping the obvious. This anti-competitive, protectionist mentality is why the EU is so keen on tax harmonisation and a common policy on FDI. Member states currently compete with each other by offering lower taxes to foreign companies as a means of attracting FDI. This competition keeps tax rates low among member states. If one member state raises taxes too much, then international companies can simply relocate to another member state with lower tax rates. If tax rates are harmonised, then this competition will be removed and the EU will be able to raise taxes to fund its ever-increasing regulation fetish.
Sarkozy scores an own goal here. He condemns the Irish government for giving a state guarantee to the Irish banks and he also condemns the EU for not acting quickly enough to do what the Irish did. Clearly he believes that the Irish government did the right thing, but he as EU President is annoyed that the Irish refused to be hamstringed by inaction of the useless bunch of tossers in the EU.
The expansionist monetary policies of the EU’s ECB were designed to promote public spending in the single market by proffering cheap credit as a means of artificially stimulating economic activity its slow-growth economy. They held interest rates too low for too long, and encouraged the public to borrow as much money as possible, thereby exposing their own banks to the inevitable bust phase of their boom-and-bust monetary policy. As the Irish government transferred sovereignty over its monetary policy to the ECB, it’s economy became a victim of the monetary policies of the EU. Ireland cannot use the tools of interest rates and inflation to control its economy. Irish economists could see that prolonged low interest rates set by the EU a full 4% below the needs of the Irish economy were causing rapid house price inflation, credit card borrowing, etc, and that such rampant consumer spending was not sustained by wealth-creation within the Irish economy but the Irish government could do nothing about and they didn’t want to see the problem because that would have meant that their decision to surrender sovereignty over Irish monetary policy to the EU was an utterly disastrous one. Now that we actually need to set interest rates at a low rate (perhaps as low as 1% or even at zero for a year or two) we are unable to do so because we are no longer sovereign.
This government realised that it had to act ‘illegally’ in order to protect its national interests. The question they should be asked is why did they grant sovereignty to third parties thereby making their action illegal in the first place? Because they are Europhiles who believe in full integration with the EU. That’s the plain and simple reason.
Anyway, Lenihan knows full well that we are now in recession and heading for depression as a result of the EU’s expansionist monetary policies, Recession means job losses, which means debts on credit cards exposure for the banks and exposure on commercial loans as businesses sustained by cheap credit fail, etc. No one knows how bad this will get but one thing is certain, Ireland is now at the mercy of the ‘wisdom’ of the tossers in the EU who got us into this mess, as it doesn’t have sovereignty in the areas where it is now most needed.
As for the French midget’s comment that he and others would “work on a road map to see how we can deal with the Irish problem”. Isn’t it time that we told this self-important nobody to go fuck himself with the business end of a ripe pineapple?
more Sarkozy running at the mouth:
Nicolas Sarkozy’s kneejerk gestures are prolonging the French farce
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/gabriele_marcotti/article4974530.ece
Sarkozy threatens suit over voodoo doll
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/10/22/sarkozy-voodoo.html
Correct Horseman.
A Pint is a full 568 millilitres.
Paddy lost me at the third word of his very first sentence!
It must be a very enlightening experience for ‘racists’, ‘homophobes’, ‘fundies’, etc, etc, etc to hear liberals mock someone’s height. So much for all the talk about acceptance, broad-mindedness and equality. What a bunch of hypocites!
If there is such a thing as Ageism and Sexism, surely there must also exist the offence of Heightism.