[lbo-talk] any irish lbo-talkers out there?

Yann Morvan ymorvan at cs.tcd.ie
Tue Nov 9 04:00:31 PST 2010


SA wrote:
> It seems to me that Ireland, like most of the peripheral countries,
> has no real way out except to exit the euro.

I don't understand where you are coming from. The main reason why Ireland is in a fiscal pickle is its bailing out of the people who lent to its banks. (The collapse of the construction industry doesn't help, but Ireland's productivity and exports are ok by EU standards.)

Morgan Kelly writes in the article ( http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/1108/1224282865400.html?via=mr ) :

"September marked Ireland’s point of no return in the banking crisis. During that month, €55 billion of bank bonds (held mainly by UK, German, and French banks) matured and were repaid, mostly by borrowing from the European Central Bank."

So if Ireland ends up owing around 60 billion (Kelly's estimate of the bailout cost) to the ECB, denominated in Euros, wouldn't that mean that leaving the euro in order to devalue its currency puts it in even worse pickle? I am not an economist, this is a genuine question.

If that is the case, I think the right thing to do now is to negotiate a default with the ECB, being careful to publicly advocate for it to pass the losses on to the EU investor class and not the EU taxpayer. Of course this is an impossible demand from the point of view of euro capital so it would either have to exert retribution on Ireland (likely kicking it out of the euro anyway), or tell the EU working class to lump it and pay up. But the core issue would be laid bare for struggling Europeans to ponder on.

As Wendy says, Kelly is no left-winger so he pretends to believe that attempting to make capital pay can't happen:

"With the €55 billion repaid, the possibility of resolving the bank crisis by sharing costs with the bondholders is now water under the bridge."

(I don't recall him calling for a wipe-out of Irish banks debt holders except in this article where he now conveniently says it is not possible anymore.)

Then he descends into Tea Party fear mongering... yes it really looks like that trope knows no borders and will prevail everywhere, including in countries like Ireland where the far right is non existent. I'm moving to Nottingham after 8 years here and friends have been reminding me how nice a place Dublin is to be a communist :)

Yann



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