Ireland: A dubious speculation

realitykeeper

In Ireland, we pride ourselves in being the best boys in the bailout class. Instead, perhaps we should take a moment to look around and observe the fact that we are all pigs in this class. We got here by living beyond our means and still the conventional "wisdom" is that we must return to the bond markets.
When we had money we hiked public sector pay instead of paying off our legacy debt. Now Enda Kenny wants debt forgiveness for that same legacy debt - we don`t deserve debt forgiveness so why should we get it.
Why is our government so eager to borrow from the bond markets or anyone else for that matter? The idea of a bond is to raise money for investment. Any pea brain could tell them you should never borrow to invest. Would Enda Kenny personally borrow to gamble on the bond markets? If not, why is he hell bent on doing so with our money or rather with loan shark money which will saddle us with even more debt. Its not as if he had inside knowledge on the next Microsoft, Facebook or Apple. Enda plans to invest this borrowed money in a far more dubious prospect - Ireland, an insolvent country. When we get this money, what profitable activity will we spend it on so we can pay it back with interest? Well, there is our highly paid/under worked public sector paybill with their Rolls Royce pensions to keep up - thats bound to be a nice little earner - eh Enda?

bbam

Do you know what we need?


Not another anti public sector thread.

99% of PS workers had no input into the benchmarking process. They were given more pay because the government, elected by ALL the country, decided it was the right thing to do.

I'm not saying that some more adjustment in PS pay isn't merited. But pay has been reduced substantially already.

I'm not a public sector worker, but the constant moaning about PS pay is just lamentable.

How many posts do we see about the self employed who unscrupulously gouge their way out of paying tax?

ardmacha

When we had money we hiked public sector pay instead of paying off our legacy debt.

This is an especially inaccurate and pointless thread, even for this forum. The burden of government "legacy" debt was greatly reduced in the boom period. The problem was not PS pay, nor the government not reducing their debt, it was that individuals who knew greater prosperity then greatly increased their individual debt rather than reducing it.

Now Enda Kenny wants debt forgiveness for that same legacy debt

He doesn't want anything whatsoever to be done with long term government debt. The "legacy" referred to here is that money paid into the banks resulting from the fact that individuals and the private sector are not paying back the banks the money they borrowed from them. This has nothing whatsoever so to do with debt from the before the boom, so this thread is waste of space.

RichardAnd

What is this "we" to which you refer?

hfallada

realitykeeper wrote: »

In Ireland, we pride ourselves in being the best boys in the bailout class. Instead, perhaps we should take a moment to look around and observe the fact that we are all pigs in this class. We got here by living beyond our means and still the conventional "wisdom" is that we must return to the bond markets.
When we had money we hiked public sector pay instead of paying off our legacy debt. Now Enda Kenny wants debt forgiveness for that same legacy debt - we don`t deserve debt forgiveness so why should we get it.
Why is our government so eager to borrow from the bond markets or anyone else for that matter? The idea of a bond is to raise money for investment. Any pea brain could tell them you should never borrow to invest. Would Enda Kenny personally borrow to gamble on the bond markets? If not, why is he hell bent on doing so with our money or rather with loan shark money which will saddle us with even more debt. Its not as if he had inside knowledge on the next Microsoft, Facebook or Apple. Enda plans to invest this borrowed money in a far more dubious prospect - Ireland, an insolvent country. When we get this money, what profitable activity will we spend it on so we can pay it back with interest? Well, there is our highly paid/under worked public sector paybill with their Rolls Royce pensions to keep up - thats bound to be a nice little earner - eh Enda?

Actually we did pay off a huge amount of our national debt to the stage that was only like 25% of GDP which is nothing for a county. Everyone were they like to admit it or not benefit from the boom. Now people just have to live with the hangover from the massive party that was the boom

Scofflaw

hfallada wrote: »

Actually we did pay off a huge amount of our national debt to the stage that was only like 25% of GDP which is nothing for a county. Everyone were they like to admit it or not benefit from the boom. Now people just have to live with the hangover from the massive party that was the boom

No, in fact we didn't pay down the capital at all - GDP growth just made it relatively small.

And, yes, this seems a particularly pointless thread, with a blog-post OP.

moderately,
Scofflaw