Who Failed To Predict This? Who Do We Blame?

Sesshoumaru

Just following some of Later10's thread and it struck me that the question being asked wasn't very useful. Since we don't have a time machine, our resources would be better utilised in finding out who failed to do their job, as opposed to those who got it right. Barring the possibility of being able to change the past (time travel), making sure it doesn't happen again in the future would be better use of our time.

So my questions are:

1. Who failed to predict this?
2. Who holds responsibility for that failure?

For me at least, FF were elected to run this country during the period the crisis was developing and during the period when the crisis ultimately came to fruition. So they at least in my mind are responsible, the buck stops with the leader. I'm not sure if they should have predicted it though, I mean is there even one economist TD within FF? or someone with relevant experience... maybe a successful businessman?(not related to housing)

Sand

Ultimately, (and I stress ultimately...) Ireland is a democracy and the buck stops with the electorate. Fianna Fail were a wildly successful and intensely popular political party which has been put into power by the people of this country for the majority of the states existence. That wasnt by accident, and the Irish people knew exactly who Fianna Fail were.

Galway tent, blatant vote buying exercises like decentralisation, Bertie's dubious digouts, stuffing state positions with political allies with no competence, junkets around the world: Fianna Fail werent exactly secret about their corruption, but it didnt bother the Irish electorate too much.

The common denominator for all the Irish political parties, which are all seen as dissapointing ("shure theyre all the same"), is the Irish electorate. If corruption, political patronage, waste or inefficiency within the government and public sector was a major issue for the Irish electorate then they could have forced the govenment and public sector to heel. They didnt. Fianna Fail wasnt interested in ensuring the proper governance of the country because the electorate wasnt interested in it - there was no votes there to be won, only lost should they anger or alienate a trade union or other vested interests.

I think its important to stress that now (even though it will enrage some posters), because the Irish people will be going to the polls shortly again and theyll need to decide what their priorities are when it comes to the governance of this country. The buck ultimately stops with them.

That said: The Irish electoral system puts county councillors, teachers and publicans with no real qualifications into positions of national power. Idiots like Mary Coughlan gets to craft policies in areas with real life and death implications - Health for example. Lousy amateurish policymaking in that area contributes to creating a broken health system and people literally dying.

The expertise is supposed to be provided by the permament government of civil servants. They are supposed to advise and guide policymaking to limit the damage some fool whose best skill is pulling pints can do. When Fianna Fail say they followed the best advice on the banking guarantee, theyre not exactly lying. Theyre not experts. They have only one skill - winning elections. Thats not a qualification to craft complex national, economic or fiscal policies.

When a lot of smart looking men in nice suits tell them Option A is the smart thing to do, and they can barely follow what hes talking about (Frank Fahey for example couldnt even explain NAMA and continued to believe it was funded by the ECB....) theyll go with Option A. It would be much worse for them if it emerged they went against the expert advice. Even Brian Lenihan, who did a passable imitation of being vaguely competent for quite a while, has been shown up for being totally foolish.

The people who failed to do their jobs were the civil servants tasked with monitoring the risks to the economy, particularly the banks.

In some cases, they were unable to identify the risks (unable to do their job), in others they were pathologically unwilling to acknowledge the risks - (captured by vested interests), and in some cases, they were able to identify the risks and warned about them but held their loyalty to their minister to be higher than their loyalty to the citizens of the state. When they found a hostile welcome from the the elected politicians, they decided not to push it despite their supposed neutrality.

For a variety of reasons, the civil service structure which was supposed to provide the non-political expertise a modern nation-state requires failed to do so despite being paid incredible amounts of money. Thats not to inspire a witch-hunt, its just a statement that the system was broken and failed to deliver the results required.

Changing parties wont change anything in and of itself: the permament government must be reformed drastically in how policy is made.

Mr. Loverman

People who voted Fianna Fail
Fianna Fail
The opposition politicians
Brendan Burgess
The financial regulator
The Bank's management

Average_Joe

Europe has to take blame too. They are only making matters worse. We would do better on our own. They IMF will be the death of this country.

A Dub in Glasgo

Sand, I disagree with a lot of what you say on other matters but your post above is absolutely spot on

Japer

Mr. Loverman wrote: »

People who voted Fianna Fail
Fianna Fail
The opposition politicians
Brendan Burgess
The financial regulator
The Bank's management

Plus most of the media, who regurgitated the property industries ( auctioneers etc ) prediction of there being no downturn / crash. Prices were to return to stability / single digit levels of growth / a soft landing. "We were only catching up with the rest of the world etc"

djpbarry

Average_Joe wrote: »

Europe has to take blame too.

For what exactly?

Mr. Loverman

djpbarry wrote: »

For what exactly?

Because they lent us the money...!

It's people's latest attempt at avoiding personal responsibility for their poor decisions.

yosemite_sam

Mr. Loverman wrote: »

Because they lent us the money...!

It's people's latest attempt at avoiding personal responsibility for their poor decisions.

But we said we would pay it back, that is how the world works no good crying about it

ardmacha

As noted by a poster on IrishEconomy.ie the ECB didn't exactly sound the warning bells, it is not as if the irish government entirely acted against their analysis.

http://www.ecb.eu/press/key/date/2007/html/sp071120.en.html

"public debt, public expenditure and budget deficits have all been significantly lower in Ireland than in the rest of the euro area"

"The Irish example shows that it is possible to prosper in the monetary union while having a higher potential growth rate than the rest of the union. This does not need to be “paid” in terms of divergent or explosive inflationary outcomes and / or in unsustainable competitiveness for the country."

It is frequently said (now) that Irish voters, unions etc should have identified the problems, but when the technocrats (public and private) were saying this sort of thing, it is difficult to ague that the ordinary punter should have been expected to come up with an alternative analysis.

later12

ardmacha wrote: »

http://www.ecb.eu/press/key/date/2007/html/sp071120.en.html

"public debt, public expenditure and budget deficits have all been significantly lower in Ireland than in the rest of the euro area"

But they were quite correct in saying that. Our deficit and our public service were quite reasonable actually, until the wider economy began to sink. The Irish collapse was not in itself a sovereign collapse to begin with. That is why many people, myself included, tend to get frustrated when we hear this rubbish coming out of Europe on the urgent necessity of repairing public debt problems to prevent this crisis occuring again. It's nonsense, in most cases the cause of the debt crisis was private commercial debt.

Irish people should admit that a healthier public sector is preferable and that any significant level of public debt is not. However, we should be intelligent enough to realise that this simply places us in a slightly better condition to deal with crises, it doesn't in itself prevent this sort of crisis from happening again in itself.

Bits_n_Bobs

Irish Banks - heads have rolled
Central Bank - heads have rolled
Regulator - heads have rolled
Minister of Finance/Politiciansd - (eventually) heads have (almost) rolled

Dept of Finance - a report was commissioned (I think about a year ago?), no-one has been held to account. Personally I think the dept of finance had as much if not more responsibility, than the rest of the muppets put together. Naturally as a core element of the civil service nothing happens when they make an utter mess of their central role. Not one single solitary resignation.

I dearly hope whoever the next government is goes into that place and rips the guts out of the organisation. Not fit for purpose.

Maj Malfunction

We are now three years into suffering through this crisis. I think the time for blaming people is over and we need to move on and focus on the solutions, that's not withstanding those who committed white collar crime should be serving prison sentences by now and not swaggering around the world as if it wasn't their fault.

Jaysoose

Maj Malfunction wrote: »

We are now three years into suffering through this crisis. I think the time for blaming people is over and we need to move on and focus on the solutions, that's not withstanding those who committed white collar crime should be serving prison sentences by now and not swaggering around the world as if it wasn't their fault.

I think that your completely wrong we are entitled to know who is responsible and they should face the appropriate punishment. I for one am sick of hearing about the like of Patrick neary/Bertie ahern/Brian cowen etc etc getting exorbinate payoffs and pensions. If these men were culpable in all of this then the money they are "entitled" to should be clawed back they are directly responsible for undue suffering of families in this state and should not be rewarded for gross incompetence.

Fratton Fred

I wouldn't sat Merrill Lynch are to blame, but their sacking of an analyst who highlighted the problems early on and their subsequent reporting stating the banks were fundamentally sound (which, I believe, lead to the blanket guarantee) says to me that they are getting off very very lightly.

If I was an incoming finance minister, I would want them investigated.