Ireland Throws Crooked Bankster Government Out

Not that the new crooks will be any better than the old crooks, but it's good to see SOMEBODY pay for the mess the banks and the hedge fund criminals made in Ireland.

Unfortunately it wasn't the banksters and hedge fund criminals:

LONDON — Ireland ousted its discredited government on Saturday, electing new leaders who pledged to restore faith in the country after the trauma of a calamitous economic collapse.

With most of the votes counted after the general election on Friday, a coalition government of the center-right Fine Gael and the Labour Party was on track to win a comfortable majority in Parliament.

...

Fianna Fail, which has run the government for 14 years, suffered its worst showing in its more than 80-year history. It won 78 seats in 2007; this time, it was on course to win as few as 25. Of the 47 parliamentary seats in Dublin, only the seat held by Brian Lenihan, who served in the government as finance minister, was set to go to Fianna Fail.

...

Fianna Fail has been blamed for presiding over an economy that spiraled out of control and then, unregulated and unmanageable, came crashing down. In 2008, when Ireland’s spectacular building boom collapsed, and the Irish banks that had fueled it threatened to collapse, too, the government, led by Prime Minister Brian Cowen, tried to solve the crisis by pledging to guarantee the banks’ debts.

That move has proved to be a huge drain on the nation’s finances, with the government pumping tens of billions of dollars into the banks to keep them afloat. In November, Ireland reluctantly accepted an international loan worth about $93 billion; in return, it pledged to adhere to a brutal four-year austerity program and to repay much of the money at onerous interest rates.

The terms of the loan humiliated Ireland, and many economists say they are worried that the country will be unable to keep up with even the interest payments.

Mr. Cowen, whose resignation as party leader last month led to the election, said in a television interview that his government had nothing to be ashamed of. He said he had explained his decisions fully and repeatedly.

“Everything I did, I did for the good of this country as I saw it; I did it conscientiously,” he told the state broadcasting network RTE.

You want to know what Cowen and the ruling bankster party did for the country?

This:

Unemployment is up to 13.8 percent (it was as low as 4.2 percent as recently as 2005); public spending has been savagely and repeatedly cut since 2008; the deficit has risen to 14.3 percent; and current predictions suggest that 100,000 people will emigrate in the next several years, from a population of 4.3 million. The bill from the struggling banks may, in the end, total upward of $135 billion 100 billion euros, in an economy with a G.D.P. of $220 billion 160 billion euros.

Heckuva job, Mr. Cowen.

Heckuva job.

And how's that austerity thing going?

Not so well, I think.

Which is why thousands are sailing again:



Can't wait to see what austerity does here.

The Irish People Get Up Their Irish

Peaceful protest against the banksters and hedge fund managers:

DUBLIN — After a week that brought Ireland a pledge of a $114 billion international rescue package and the toughest austerity program of any country in Europe, thousands of demonstrators took to Dublin’s streets on Saturday to protest wide cuts in the country’s welfare programs and in public-sector jobs.

The protests centered on a milelong march along the banks of the River Liffey in central Dublin to the General Post Office building on O’Connell Street, site of the battle between Irish republican rebels and British troops in the Easter Uprising in 1916 — an iconic event that many in Ireland regard as the tipping point in Ireland’s long struggle for independence.

The choice of venue for the protests by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, coordinating the march through the city, reflected the mood of anger, dismay and recrimination in the wake of the economic shocks of the past 10 days. Those shocks have been the culmination of two years in which the Irish economy has shrunk by about 15 percent, faster than any other European economy.

Before that, Ireland enjoyed more than a decade of unprecedented prosperity, so the rescue package being worked out by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union and the austerity program the Dublin government has been forced to adopt to secure the bailout loans have come as a deep jolt.

Among other things, the austerity package will involve the loss of about 25,000 public-sector jobs, equivalent to 10 percent of the government work force, as well as a four-year, $20 billion program of tax increases and spending cuts like sharp reductions in state pensions and the minimum wage. One Dublin newspaper, the Irish Independent, estimated that the cost of the measures for a typical middle-class family earning $67,000 a year would be about $5,800 a year.

Corporate shill John Burns in the NY Times writes that the protest was smaller than expected, so therefore not all that successful.

But for the people who are getting screwed by this deal so that the banksters can be bailed out and the corporate scum like Bill Gates and Microsoft can keep their 12.5% tax rate, it was very important to have their voices heard:

Organizers had called for a “family friendly” demonstration, and that appeared to be what they got. With a police helicopter hovering overhead, speeches at the post office building drew cheers and shouts of support, and the detonation of some fireworks, but there were no reports of arrests. Protesters waved banners that depicted the austerity measures as an attack on the country’s poor, and told reporters that they feared for their futures, and the country’s.

“Everything’s collapsing,” one woman said.

“We can’t afford it,” a father with a young child said of the spending cuts. “I don’t know how we’re ever going to come out of it.”

The anger of many speakers, and among the protesters, appeared to fall about equally on the Cowen government and on the international financial institutions working out the details of the rescue package. Officials in Brussels, where European finance ministers were meeting on Saturday to discuss the package, said it could be confirmed with an announcement on Sunday.

One of the O’Connell Street speakers, typical of others, urged the country “not to allow a government with no mandate, bowing to people in Europe who are not elected, to determine our future.”

Horrific, just horrific.

That the criminals who created this mess have gotten away largely unscathed makes me angry beyond belief.

The same goes for here in the U.S.

I have said it before, I will say it again: until the Masters of the Universe at Goldman Sachs and other financial institutions and the hedge fund criminals like Whitey Tilson are made to pay for treating the world's economies like one giant, rigged casino, they will continue to steal more and more money and blame it on working and middle class people, the unions, the public schools, government workers, pensions, Social Security and the like.

But the fact is, these criminals have gobbled up 80% of the wealth in the United States and they're coming for more.

They won't be happy until they have ALL of it.

Until they are made to fear their criminality and the people they're stealing from, they're going to keep doing this.

The Banksters Eat Ireland

Krugman's column:

The Irish story began with a genuine economic miracle. But eventually this gave way to a speculative frenzy driven by runaway banks and real estate developers, all in a cozy relationship with leading politicians. The frenzy was financed with huge borrowing on the part of Irish banks, largely from banks in other European nations.

Then the bubble burst, and those banks faced huge losses. You might have expected those who lent money to the banks to share in the losses. After all, they were consenting adults, and if they failed to understand the risks they were taking that was nobody’s fault but their own. But, no, the Irish government stepped in to guarantee the banks’ debt, turning private losses into public obligations.

Before the bank bust, Ireland had little public debt. But with taxpayers suddenly on the hook for gigantic bank losses, even as revenues plunged, the nation’s creditworthiness was put in doubt. So Ireland tried to reassure the markets with a harsh program of spending cuts.

Step back for a minute and think about that. These debts were incurred, not to pay for public programs, but by private wheeler-dealers seeking nothing but their own profit. Yet ordinary Irish citizens are now bearing the burden of those debts.

Or to be more accurate, they’re bearing a burden much larger than the debt — because those spending cuts have caused a severe recession so that in addition to taking on the banks’ debts, the Irish are suffering from plunging incomes and high unemployment.

But there is no alternative, say the serious people: all of this is necessary to restore confidence.

Strange to say, however, confidence is not improving. On the contrary: investors have noticed that all those austerity measures are depressing the Irish economy — and are fleeing Irish debt because of that economic weakness.

Accountability is for the little people, not the banskters.

Pain is also for the little people, not the banksters.

Until we start imposing accountability and pain on the banksters themselves. they're going to keep doing this.

Ireland Cuts Minimum Wage Instead Of Corporate Tax Rate

This is exactly the kind of world hedge fund criminals like Whitney Tilson want:

The Fianna Fail government in Ireland has released the austerity plan it promised in response for the big bank bailout the rest of Europe forced on it.

There’s a lot that’s awful in it: big cuts in pension, huge increases in tuition costs, and a ludicrous claim that this austerity plan will help Ireland’s economy grow.

But I think the most telling aspect of it is that it lowers minimum wage from 8.65 euro to 7.65, a cut of 11.5%. But it retains Ireland’s controversial 12.5% corporate tax.

This is also the kind of state incoming governor/Mussolini acolyte Andrew Cuomo wants to bring to New York - little to no taxes for corporations and rich people, pensions slashes to the bone for government retirees, wages for middle and working class people cut, unions gutted and destroyed, and school budgets cut in half so the hedge fund criminal class can get some more tax breaks.

Until we make clear to the hedge fund criminals like Whitney Tilson that it is not acceptable for the top 15% to own 80% of the wealth in this country and until we make hedge fund criminals like Whitney Tilson fear the anger and wrath of the bottom 80%, hedge fund criminals like Whitney Tilson (and the politicians they buy with their criminal money) are going to continue to grab more and more of the wealth and power and declare it "reform."

Ireland To Receive $137 Billion Dollar Bailout

The Celtic Tiger has officially died:

EL AVIV (MarketWatch) — After weeks of insisting that it needed no bailout, Ireland conceded Sunday that it will need a financial rescue package from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, according to media reports.

Ireland’s finance minister, Brian Lenihan, declined to specify a figure except to say that it would be less than 100 billion euros ($136.7 billion), the reports say.

The Sunday Times of London had reported earlier that Ireland would seek a package valued at as much as 120 billion euros.

Lenihan said Ireland was running a deficit of $26 billion and could not finance that amount at current market rates, the reports say.

Lenihan also said Irish officials also were seeking backing for Ireland’s debt-burdened banks.

As a result of this bailout package, Ireland has agreed to raise property taxes on every household in Ireland by 500 euros a year and to slash government programs

But guess what won't go up?

Corporate taxes.

Ireland has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in Europe - 12.5%.

But they refuse to raise taxes on corporations.

They say it will hurt the economy.

I'm not kidding.

That's what they say.

So the corporate tax rate will stay the same but everybody else will undergo the "austerity measures."

We really do live in feudal times once again - only this time the lords of the manor are the corporations.

Next up on the bailout docket are Portugal and Spain.

It's good to know all the financial geniuses and business wizards who brought us the Tech Bubble, the Housing Bubble, securitization, the credit crisis and the financial collapse of '08 are paying for their misdeeds.

Oh, wait - they're not.