Taoiseach blames crisis on 'mad borrowing' and greed

raymon

Taoiseach blames crisis on 'mad borrowing' and greed

Why didn't he blame the real culprits , Fianna Fail?

thebman

They broke that particular record already maybe :P

efb

Fianna Fail assumed power in a Coup? And werent re-elected 3 times...???

Jenroche

What happened to "It's not your fault"?

Davidth88

I do think that EK is showing that he has two faces , one for the domestic ( voting ) public , and one for people abroad .

This may go some way to explain why his gvmt has backed down paying money back to unsecured bond holders etc.

However , what I will say , I sort of partly agree with him. On a smaller scale how many people borrowed to buy second / holiday homes . I know when I moved to Ireland in 2001 I was shocked/surprised how many people owned a second property. The other thing that surprised me was people materialism, when buying a new house they borrowed enough to fit solid wood floors ( because you HAVE to have solid oak ) , fancy new furniture etc, even new cars all when they were purchasing a house !

When I purchased my first property in the UK , I begged borrowed and ' stole ' furniture and used that for many years until I was able to replace it with money I had saved. This was normal , and the accepted way of doing things.

Also , when I got my mortgage here ( Ireland ) in 2002 , the bank was trying to foist MORE money on me, telling me to buy bigger , telling me to borrow more. I was not tempted but I can see that some people would have been.

But those people HAVE to realise they were responsible for their own actions.

Now of course , this is all small scale stuff , but it was sort of indicative of what was happening.

raymon

efb wrote: »

Fianna Fail assumed power in a Coup? And werent re-elected 3 times...???

I never voted for them , I always felt that they were too corrupt .

I didn't go mad borrowing .

I wasn't greedy , how am I to blame.

Enda should retract his statement

number10a

raymon wrote: »

I never voted for them , I always felt that they were too corrupt .

I didn't go mad borrowing .

I wasn't greedy , how am I to blame.

Enda should retract his statement

So if you didn't borrow beyond your means, and aren't greedy, you shouldn't feel at all offended.

He is right though. I'm no economist by any means, but it's clear to anyone that the reckless borrowing at all levels of society were big contributors to the current mess. What proportion of the mess was caused by borrowing, I don't know, but definitely enough.

Dr Galen

Already a thread on this in the Irish Economy Forum

Cheers

DrG