Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Smartass pleb defiance, or just the usual positioning for a buttfuck? You decide...

Yer man Carolan O'Marx (the da) observes somewhere that the Irish often get the chance to prove just how far a people can go to debase themselves. Of course, the good doctor was thinking of the then recently passed great and glorious famine.

Much since has troubled and tasked those verdant superstition-cursed but matchlessly-eloquent islanders. The latest hammering seems to include an extra-special dose of nasty: a banker bedlam turned servile sovereign bailout, and one so wild it may well be without parallel on the planet.

After the Irish lot bubble burst, at a level well beyond the American regional standard -- on the order of 50% from the top of the market to the bottom! -- the economy contracted monstrously. Unemployment soared. Pay packets were slashed. Misery saddled up its dark horse and galloped throughout the land. I'll let global visionary and indignant half-twit Simon Johnson take up the telling here, in an essay with the disquieting title, "Could the US become another Ireland?":

"Ireland's three main banks built up 2.5 times the GDP in loans and investments by 2008;... The banks got the upside and then came the global crash... Today roughly 1/3 of the loans on the balance sheets of banks are non-performing or “under surveillance”; that’s an astonishing 80 percent of GDP, in terms of potentially bad debts.

The government responded... They guaranteed all the liabilities of banks and then began injecting government funds. The government is now starting a new phase – it is planning to buy the most worthless assets from banks and pay them government bonds in return. Ministers have also promised to recapitalize banks than need more capital. The ultimate result of this exercise is obvious: one way or another, the government will have converted the liabilities of private banks into debts of the sovereign (i.e., Irish taxpayers)."

"Ireland, until 2009, seemed like a fiscally prudent nation. Successive governments had paid down the national debt to such an extent that total debt to GDP was only 25% at end 2008 – among industrialized countries, this was one of the lowest.

But the Irish state was also carrying a large off-balance sheet liability, in the form of three huge banks that were seriously out of control.

When the crash came, the scale and nature of the bank bailouts meant that all this changed....The government has cut takehome pay of public sector workers by roughly 20% since 2008 through lower wages, higher taxes, and increased pension payments...Even with their now famous public wage cuts, the government budget deficit will be an eye-popping 12.5% of GDP in 2010...they still plan further major expenditure cutting and revenue increasing measures each year until 2013, in order to bring the deficit back to 3% of GDP by that date. The latest round of bank bailouts (swapping bad debts for government bonds) dramatically exacerbates the fiscal problem. The government will in essence be issuing 1/3 of GDP in government debts for distressed bank assets which may have no intrinsic value. The government debt/GDP ratio of Ireland will be over 100% by end 2011 once we include this debt."

"Ireland had more prudent choices. They could have avoided taking on private bank debts..."

But comes now one Johnny Corrigan with this bold Celtic cuff line:

"You have to talk the talk and walk the walk,... send a clear message to the market about how you are going to correct the problem and then deliver."

Oh lord above, please, I beg you, help the long-suffering people of Ireland, that Red Sox among the nations. Stretch forth thy mighty hand and stir them up to rebellion. Turn 'em into Vikings. Strengthen them to spit back these crooked obligations their gubmint has forced 'em to swallow. Visit thy wrath and indignation upon their gubmint for underwriting all these failed plunderings of their very own pirate pack of Shylock fraudsters, whilst at one and the same time slashing everything in sight. Yea verily, they do out-Hoover Hoover!

Ahh now, calm down Owen me lad, calm down. After all don't it just go to show ya an antique Emerald truth: when a "sovereign" lobby owns an Irish gubmint, it really owns 'em, all the way down to their heels. The buy is never partial or renegotiable. An Irish gombeen gummint can be trusted to walk the walk, as the man sez -- right off the plank.