Solution to Ireland's Financial Crisis.

UrbanMonkey

The first thing we need to do is to tackle the banks.
I think we should close down every little petty bank in the country until we are left with our two strongest ones. What's the point having like 5 or 6 banks that are all fighting for customers, each getting little income, when we could divert ALL these people to two solid banks!

The reason for having two banks, instead of one, is for security. People in business like to have one bank for their personal account and another bank for their business. Otherwise, a bank will have too much information on the one person and this can be dangerous/risky.

I think we are doing well in our exports at the moment, but, we can definately do better. We need to completely devote ourselves to food exportation if we want to stand a chance in the very competitive food industry.


I wouldn't touch taxes, interest rates, etc. They don't need to be touched. They are grand the way they are, if not a bit too high.

We should be cutting down on more obvious things like, paying idiots that drop out of secondary school to go to "Youth Reach".
Unfortunately, I know about 5 people that attend this shambles of a "school" and all they do is get high, mess around and learn absolutely nothing. And at the end of the week they get a wage!....?
A typical 17 year old gets 50 euro a week. But if you're over 18 and doing your Leaving Certificate in Youth Reach, you supposedly get above 200 euro a week. Absolute madness.

Now, another thing we should do is get some of those old fools out of the Dail. Some of them are actually intelligent, and deserve to be there, but there are some old men there just because they're popular. I know we can do nothing to stop popular candidates being voted in, but please, vote in your "local legend" if you must, but make sure he/she is at least mildly intelligent.
We should have a Dail full of young, fresh minds. We should have lads straight out of Universities with economic degrees.

And why does our Minister for Finance have Financial Advisers?

I'm not attacking our Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, because he was probably the smartest and most sane person in the Dail, and may he rest in peace.

I'm just referring to the position of "Minister of finance".
We vote someone in for that position, but then when he/she gets there, they have a few people to tell them what to do..?

This country just needs to stop and have a good look at itself.

Please comment below if you agree, disagree or whatever!

marinerecon44

First off, Ireland has no control over their interest rates, the EU does. The only tool they have to control their economy is fiscal policy, taxes and public spending. Taxes range from 10% all the way to the negatives, the average tax rate in the EU is 20%. They are far below the expected rate, they also have no property tax (WTF), and tons of tax credits. That system is super ****ed.

Leading up to 2007 they ran a, albeit small, surplus in their spending.

Yes, banks ****ed up, but the government was in a terrible position. Furthermore they were screwed over by the EU increasing the interest rate to save Germany.

Banks should be regulated.

Do some ****ing research before you post your horse ****.

AhSureTisGrand

I'd love to see the mess we'd been in if there had been a banking duopoly like you wish for. Then we'd have really got rode. Reducing competition makes it every bit easier for the banks to squeeze people. This would manifest itself in many ways. Banking would become more expensive (bank charges, loan interest etc...). You could expect less generous returns on your saving account (or the flipside of this: great returns but when the shit hits the fan the money is gone).

And as for too big to fall... If we have several small banks then one goes bust, hopefully people can deal with it. But if one bank is half of your banking system and it collapses? Well then the government "must intervene" to save the day by socialising all the bank's debts. This only makes it easier for the cronies, the fat cats, to be irresponsible, screw up, and get away with no losses.

Edit: oh, zombie thread

The Outside Agency

Cheap Hydrocarbon Energy like Coal, Oil, Gas...would solve almost all our problems.

Ireland has gas and oil but production costs are expensive.

Consider it takes < $1 for barrel of oil in libya, iraq, iran or saudi arabia but $100 for offshore..maybe $100 is extreme case but i'd guess irish oil extraction probably isn't far off those costs.

thebman

Half our problem seemed to be collusion by the financial industry, regulation and the government.

Two massive banks just makes that easy and ensures we end up back here. It also really means too big to fail.

We would be better off breaking up our big banks so that we have lots of smaller ones and the demise of one bank cannot take down the whole financial system in the country.

Then leave them at it knowing the taxpayer won't be bailing them out if they put themselves at risk. Have all the banks pay into a fund to bail out failing banks to cover deposits as an insurance and your sorted.

If a bank does go down, its loan book will be sold to other banks who won't take on any of the crazy loans that ended up taking down the bank so the bank that lent that bank money for crazy loans will have to realise its losses and the state doesn't have to setup crazy loan management agencies.