The game is up

40yo business man

from reading these and other posts on this site it seems 95% of irish have just thrown in the towel and given up and just want to bitch, and point the finger etc, etc,
If this energy was put into trying to come up with some constructive ideas saving or generating money back into the economy then we would have a hope.

Tesco :- Ireland the biggest profit margin country in their group only behind Korea i think it was.at what cost? our local shops/butchers/milkmen/bakeries etc, which if people check are no more expensive.

Uk:- new proposal to deport foreigners who are convicted of crimes (mabye small crimes which dont warrant a sentance, chuck them out, and more serious crimes make them serve shorter sentances and then chuck them out???) €77,222 average to keep prisoner in Jail for a year let alone legal costs before. If we fecked around in the states we would be fecked out quick enough. If we did before we went there we would not be let in.
God we are a soft touch.

And no im not racist in any way, ive some good foreign friends. Lot of irish should be fecked out as well but we would never get away with that.

Uk:- Private number plates on cars, big business (vat/profits for the government)

Uk:- if you build your private house you can claim (as a private person) the vat back on the materials you use. Surely that would stimulate the building somewhat or get a few off the dole.

Its frustrating to listen to some people bitching so much and also then stupidly do the best they can to send as much of their money out of the country as they can. How much money goes out of the country every year in cars alone?? i know i know, we must look after out motor trade, but at what cost? send out hundreds of millions to save tens of.

sorry for the rant people but we have changed (a lot of irish) into a horrible race of people who think they are entitled to a lot. Wake up, we are entitled to nothing. So get proactive and do your bit.

df1985

Might be a stupid question but are savings in the banks safe?? specifically BOI and irish nationwide??

bleg

df1985 wrote: »

Might be a stupid question but are savings in the banks safe?? specifically BOI and irish nationwide??

Yes.

Trevor451

what happens if the IMF come in? are we all ****ed?

Degsy

scientific1982 wrote: »

The public sector made this country uncompetative.

Not the construction and banking sector,no?
STFU.

topper75

Sizzler wrote: »

Germans will be taking their ball and going home very soon, make no mistake.

The Germans will stay with us, as long as we do 3 tough budgets in a row.

Don't underestimate the tie between the currency and the political project, nor underestimate the Germans' commitment to the political project.

skyhighflyer

th3 s1aught3r wrote: »

With the bond yields at record highs today, despite the proposed cuts, if the government does not tear up the Croke Park agreement that ring fences the public sector from pay cuts, the IMF will be here very soon imo.
I dont think think we can deal with the unions any longer. They are still arguing about people losing their "bank time" to collect cheques ffs :mad:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1103/ntma-business.html

The only hope now is if the FF led government falls soon and a new govt takes the necessessary steps

I think you and I have discussed this before, OP.

First off, the fact that yields are 7.5 per cent today is of no immediate relevance. We're not having another bond auction until February, after the budget.

Secondly, people in Ireland seem to bandy around the notion of the IMF with very little knowledge of what they do or what that would entail for us. People seem to envisage a bunch of foreign civil servants coming in, shutting down our hospitals and eating our babies. That isn't going to happen.

There are two options come February (when we will probably need outside assistance from either the EU or the IMF):

1. We seek assistance from the EFSF. This isn't a bailout or free money. The EFSF is a special purpose vehicle incorporated in Luxembourg (I think) funded by the 27 EU member states. They are able to issue bonds to fund loans to countries like us that are in financial difficulty. We'll get a loan from them at around 5-5.5%. That isn't exactly a free lunch: it's a credit line from the EU that we can draw on if we need to.

2. We borrow from the IMF at around 3%. This is cheaper than the EFSF but likely to come with stricter conditions attached. However, the conditionality of a loan from the IMF usually leaves the choice of spending cuts to the state, so we wouldn't be significantly worse off than we will be this Christmas when we're staring down the barrel of €6bn worth of cuts.

We also have to remember that the ECB itself isn't blameless as far as our current economic situation goes. When we committed to the euro we transferred a lot of our economic sovereignty to the EU. This included losing control of our interest rates. The ECB then set artificially low interest rates to appease Germany and France whose economies were sluggish at the time. These low rates were totally inappropriate for an economy like ours that was growing at 7 or 8 per cent. a year. This had the effect of flooding Ireland with cheap money, creating an asset price (housing) bubble, and we all know what happened then.

I find it disingenuous in the extreme that the countries complaining most vociferously (read Germany and France) about the prospect of an Irish bailout are the ones who benefited the most from the ECB's 'one size fits all' economic policy in during the last decade.

Also, the reason for the spike in the bond markets in the past week was a recent meeting of EU member state heads where it was decided that bondholders would have to pay some of the price for the cost of state bailouts. Despite the fact that Merkel and Sarkozy were warned by the head of the ECB that this would cause a short-term increase in borrowing costs for the smaller EU member states they decided to go ahead with this plan anyway. So they are hardly in a position to complain when Ireland has to draw on the ECB credit line because borrowing costs have become unsustainable, partly because of the very reforms they pursued

Next, the Public Service is not the reason for this crisis. We're not in this mess because we pay our nurses too much. We're in it because Anglo Irish blew a gaping €35bn hole in our public finances that the Irish taxpayer has been called on to fill. Anyone who believes the Public Sector are the cause for this crisis is either economically illiterate or gullible enough to fall for FF's attempt to draw attention away from the government-sponsored criminality that led us into this position.

df1985

bleg wrote: »

Yes.

even over the 100k guarantee?

skyhighflyer

th3 s1aught3r wrote: »

There was a trader on the radio who knows a lot about the bond market and he said that the markets cannot understand why the Irish government are protecting the public sector with the Croke Park agreement at this stage in the crisis. And they have no intention of lending money to Ireland while this government remain in power

I know a lot about the bond market and you can be sure that what the bond market is actually afraid of is that the governement isn't going to be around in a year's time. Therefore they can pursue whatever ill-advised policies they want without political repercussion. They're not worried about the PS.

Wertz

Degsy wrote: »

Not the construction and banking sector,no?
STFU.

I think it was a combination of all those factors....unions, private individuals, business in general. In an effort for everyone to keep pace with everyone else (public sector included) salaries rose, as did consumer prices and house prices....all a self sustaining reaction until the stream of money was abruptly cut off.
We've all generally made ourselves uncomptetive...government policy doesn't help though, because while high cost of doing business was somewhat sustainable while the money was flowing, it simply isn't now and the inertia of that policy (which includes high salaries or overstaffing in many sectors of the public services) is in fact hindering private business and the possiblity of outside investment.

40yo businessman makes some good points, particulalry on high value imports such as cars...millions flow out of the country every week so a few hundred grand can be taken in in various taxes on their sale. Efforts are made to take older cars off the road and replace them with shiny new ones...that would be fine if we were actually making the damn things rather than sending all the money to Germany and Japan.

skyhighflyer

Trevor451 wrote: »

what happens if the IMF come in? are we all ****ed?

Nope. They'll force the same cuts through as the government is trying to do, but with the benefit of not being politically accountable, meaning that they stand a chance of actually being able to get the job done.

Sizzler

Degsy wrote: »

Not the construction and banking sector,no?
STFU.

And who was "regulating" said sectors....the public service.

topper75 wrote: »

The Germans will stay with us, as long as we do 3 tough budgets in a row.

Don't underestimate the tie between the currency and the political project, nor underestimate the Germans' commitment to the political project.

FYP.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100008461/ireland-is-running-out-of-time/

mox54

We have 1.8 million working population in Ireland, we have over 300,000 working public servants so that's a huge paybill every week to pay from reduced govt finances, the public sector is a huge drain on our resources, if we can reduce the public sector by 10% we'll save €1bn every year, the figures speak for themselves, jobs for favours has come back to haunt us!!!

skyhighflyer

mox54 wrote: »

We have 1.8 million working population in Ireland, we have over 300,000 working public servants so that's a huge paybill every week to pay from reduced govt finances, the public sector is a huge drain on our resources, if we can reduce the public sector by 10% we'll save €1bn every year, the figures speak for themselves, jobs for favours has come back to haunt us!!!

Ah yeah, sure at €1bn a year we'll pay off the Anglo bill in 35 years! And it'll only cost thousands of PS workers and their families their homes and livelihoods! Does this seem a fair deal to you?

tommy21

40yo business man wrote: »

Tesco :- Ireland the biggest profit margin country in their group only behind Korea i think it was.at what cost? our local shops/butchers/milkmen/bakeries etc, which if people check are no more expensive.

QUOTE]

Why is it so that every street corner shop I go into prices milk and bread with generally a 100% mark-up compared to Dunnes or Tesco or Lidl or Aldi? I can't afford to pay that personally. Butchers tend to be better or as good value sometimes I admit and of better quality so we would get more from our local butcher than from the big supermarkets. But for domestic goods etc small shops are just too expensive. Whether its greed or simply they need the markup to survive (i.e. can't bulk buy to same extent), its too expensive!

Degsy

Sizzler wrote: »

And who was "regulating" said sectors....the public service.

Really??I thought it was the government headed by Fianna fail and supported by t hier cronies.

Turns out it was the nurses and the teachers and the firemen :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

mloc

There's a few things we could do to reduce the public spending bill:

a) Reduce the public service by 25% - If the job isn't needed, get rid of it. An unneeded public service job is essentially just an expensive social welfare payout.

b) Cut social welfare - it's far too high. It's meant to keep you able to look for a job, not keep you living a comfortable life.

c) Cut the minimum wage - it's also far too high and major impediment to job creation

d) Re-introduce 3rd level fees - Badly needed as colleges are underfunded. It's been shown time and again free fees have little or no bearing on the socially disadvantaged entering 3rd level. If we don't have well funded colleges, how do we created competitive graduates? Having lots of graduates is pointless unless they are good degrees.

e) Remove the seanad and reduce TD numbers - a leaner, more effective government would be a major saver

That would certainly be a good starting point, all overdue in my opinion.

Sizzler

Degsy wrote: »

Really??I thought it was the government headed by Fianna fail and supported by t hier cronies.

Turns out it was the nurses and the teachers and the firemen :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

LOL. How childish a response, come on Degsy.

Lets break it down, you know it dont you....come on.

The so called financial regulator....is...wait for it.....a public servant.

The Biffo / Bertie / Lenihan and all the other utterly clueless / incompetant clowns in Leinster street are also public servants.

You dont need me to spell it out that doctors etc are not responsible FFS.

Degsy

Sizzler wrote: »

.

The Biffo / Bertie / Lenihan and all the other utterly clueless / incompetant clowns in Leinster street are also public servants.
.

They're the government..the public servants are the people who work for the government.