peterms

No, it would be better for Ireland to refuse point blank to bail out any of the banks, but make it clear that it will not default on sovereign debt; withdraw from the euro; and launch immediate measures to create employment domestically, using its new-found powers and its suddenly unencumbered spending power to do so. It would also help to have some criminal prosecutions of several high-placed bankers to boot.

The combination of the text about watching out for thieves and fraudsters, and the half-face photo like she's looking from around a wall, make me feel she's watching me. Am I feeling guilty about something I have yet to confess? On the post about using credit cards to open locked doors, in my view this is much exaggerated. They are just too small for many locks. What works better is to cut a longer length of more flexible plastic, like cut up one of those 2-pint plastic milk bottles. Ooh, sorry, didn't mean to get into that.

If I had to put money on it, I'd say that it will survive, but with some countries leaving - so a slimmed-down version. A smaller grouping of countries whose economies are more similar than the present spread might allow closer union, which some appear to want. An inner zone of more closely aligned countries with a common currency, and an outer zone of trading partners with their own currencies, some political integration as now, but no intention to commit to economic integration?

Survive, but in a different form?

It makes a difference to the policy tools available to you to address problems, though.

Well, I don't think the euro is the future, so perhaps I shouldn't be answering, but I didn't detect much analysis, to be honest. Mostly knockabout stuff and namecalling. The others look like they want to slap him.

Well, at the risk of randomly quoting the media despite not living there, I read here that Fine Gael have received assurances that the budget details are not seen by the EU as binding on them. Having sought and received that specific assurance, and publicised it, it would be very hard to disclaim responsibility for whatever budget exists should they win the election. The thing is, they accept the same view as the current lot, and the discussion appears to be about detail rather than the bigger questions about default, withdrawal from the euro, whether the banks should be baled out and so on. And if that's the case, then the differences between the main policy positions which will be placed before the electorate will be trivial. Other arguments are being made, for example on Tonight with Vincent Brown (Sorry! More random quoting!), but they don't appear to be reflected in what the main parties are saying. Pity.

I see there's some doubt among members of the government about whether this will last:

Yes, I agree there's a degree of blame that people must accept. However, it's on the level of being too ready to accept what they were being told, not looking a gift horse in the mouth, and in hindsight many people will feel they have been gullible, greedy, or both. They were deceived, but they were willing to be deceived, perhaps. I think that's an entirely different level of responsibility than the banks, a wholly different order of magnitude. I don't think the Irish people are completely blameless, but in comparison to the banks, their degree of responsibility is so small that the very idea of them accepting hardship to bale out the banks is ludicrous.

Weren't there over 100,000 people protesting on the streets of Dublin some 20 months ago? And surely more demonstrations are being planned right now, eg Parnell Square in a week's time? Not sure who you mean by "we" when you say we caused it ourselves. If it's the banks, I agree. If you mean the Irish people, I disagree.

Our Irish readers may appreciate the references in this one.

I hear there is growing interest in Ireland in the proposal that the country should wash its hands of private bank debt while making it clear it will not default on sovereign debt. Let the owners of the banks address their own problems, rather than volunteer an unwilling population to do it for them. Any views from Irish VT'ers on that one?

I think you'd have to be a bit more removed from wider society not to be affected. Maybe if you have a smallholding and are self-sufficient for food and energy that might be a start. Pretty well everyone is going to be affected by not just the direct effects, but the impact on the wider economy for many years to come.

Do you think the analysis in your first para might shed some light on the event mentioned in your second para? :idea:

Early reactions

The Irish loan is an(other) indirect bailout to our banks. If we are not going to let some of our banks go bust then the loan is absolutely necessary to maintain the stability of our banking sector. Loaning money to Forgemasters is not a critical issue to national stability, is it? Perhaps we should let banks go bust. An argument from the right would be that the market can't function properly if the possibility of failure and loss is removed; from the left, that we should not socialise losses while allowing profits to be privately retained. Given that the collapse of banks would create massive disruption, there is clearly an issue about how the situation could be managed, and unavoidably the state would need to step in to control the situation. Having stepped in, as we have already done, the issue is whether we should sweep up the mess, resupply the bankers with more of our resources and let the party resume, or clean out the incompetence and corruption, and establish institutions which do what banks are supposed to do like mediate savers and investors, not gamble like halfwits in a casino using someone else's chips. The whole edifice looks beyond salvation without further massive disruption. It's a shell, like a plywood theatre set masquerading as a castle. In other news, the FBI are investigating possible corrupt insider dealing among hedge funds and other players in the farce.

I think there are some clear problems caused by having a common currency without political union. The economies of the different countries will grow at different speeds, but the common mechanism for dealing with that, devaluation, doesn't apply, so tensions between member states will grow. Those countries who have joined the euro have signed up to some conditions which are increasingly hard to meet, so they are being fudged and misrepresented, eg ratio of govt debt to gdp. They have given up their own currency, and so have lost one very significant way of tackling demand deficit, which I've bored people with in previous posts. Maybe the thinking was that people would see the half way house doesn't work, and proceed to full union. Of course the conclusion they draw could equally be to retreat, rather than proceed further.

Philosophy/motivation is irrelevant. You have an equal amount of choice in either case: work or don't get paid. No. You have for example a choice of how many hours, and some choice over what you do. You have a choice of how long you do it, the choice to drop out and drop back in (because it's a right, not a sanction). You have the wider choices that integration with proper skills training gives you. Because, and this point doesn't seem to be getting across, is that one approach is about right, empowerment and choice, and the other is about imposing what is conceived as a sanction against a group of people who are assumed not to want to work. The philosophy behind the scheme is very far from unimportant; on the contrary, it will inform the entire way it works. Mitchell's proposals are that the scheme incorporates proper health and safety, employment rights, choice and so on. It is quite possible to think of a scheme being implemented by, say, Norman Tebbit, which lacks these features. But that would hardly discredit Mitchell's proposals. In the case on India and SA, do you think the jobs on offer vary considerably from most jobs in those countries, and if so, in what respects?

And while they pay themselves multi-million bonuses for doing the most appallingly poor job, they are making people homeless to recover debts of £600. The OFT says a number of banks are unfairly using 'charging orders' to force homeowners to sell their properties to cover debts of as little as £600

As discussed it is compensated: the jobless benefit (which doesn't exist in a job guarantee as it's not needed) is the compensation for doing a month of labour for the state. The end result is the same, ignoring the differences in motivation (or how it's being justified to one party's base). It seems you are taking one factor (that people would be required to do it) and ignoring all others (pay, conditions, philosophy, rights, choice, for example) in order to reach your conclusion.

is it ... have you not ever helped out in your community out of a sense of well community , i know i have Are you not aware of the scheme which for the last 30+ years has been entitled "community service", established as an alternative to custody, usually used as the last sentence in the tariff before custody? I think it's pretty clear I'm referring to that, not a much looser interpretation of the phrase; and the reason why they are similar is the element of compulsion, wholly distinct from volunteering. I actually think the opposite ..doing something worthwhile no matter what I think can give you a sense of purpose I'm easily the worlds worse DIY man but every now and then I'll have a stab at things , the sense of achievement once you complete a task is quite rewarding. A task that ordinarily i'd have had to pay someone to do , and i did it myself , and it didn't fall off the wall and take half the wallpaper with it .. it makes you feel good and it also makes you think "right what next " .. as a long term solution , maybe not , but as a sense of worth and getting back on the ladder I don't see how it would cause despair Excellent! Pm me. I have a few things which need doing and which I just don't get round to. We'll both feel good. As far as I'm concerned, almost certainly, though other opinions are available...

No, I don't think so. The JG is proposed as a means of avoiding anything other than frictional unemployment, in order to avoid the impact of unemployment being anything like as great as now. The proposal is to create a right to employment at minimum wage, either full or part time according to individual choice, and with some choice about the work undertaken. There's an extract below from a longer piece here which briefly summarises these points, and the full link, and related pages, goes into more detail. Our government seems to be proposing no right to work but entitlement to benefits being dependent on undertaking short-term unpaid work which is being frankly discussed by ministers as a "sanction" to underpin their lie that unemployment is a result of individual choice rather than lack of demand. The philosophy is about as far removed as you can get from a right to work. The JG also aims to inhibit employers from trying to use the existence of surplus labour as a means of exercising power over labour; again, our government's interest lies in the exact opposite.

Not wanting to entrust his wealth to a bank deposit box, AWOL decides to keep his bullion about him at all times.

Apparently they have already written off lots of this debt. Also, with the complex web of cross-lending that goes on, I suspect it's far from straightforward to see exactly who would lose what in the event of a default. There's also the point that what's happened is that the currency is worth 80% of what it was. Merkel and others have apparently said that bondholders must recognise that their investment has taken a hit, but they won't have it; they want to keep any profits they have made, but they want us to cover any losses they should make. The big question, and it won't go away, is why we should pay in unemployment and cuts so that bondholders can escape completely. Of course the answer is, well, we shouldn't. Good article here on this.

This article is a good statement of the situation, and explains why the "there is no alternative" line is just a political position, not an objective truth.