Recession predictions

It is complete garbage to continue to pump it out there that the massive increase in Irish Government Debt is solely due to the Bank bailouts.

The net cost of the Banking bailout is circa €42 billion.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/was-it-worth-paying-41-7bn-to-bail-out-irish-banks-1.4036792

Irish Government debt sat at €50bn in 2008. It is €219 billion today, an increase of almost €170bn.

https://tradingeconomics.com/ireland/government-debt

https://commodity.com/data/ireland/debt-clock/


€170bn - €42bn = €128bn of deficit spending in 13 years, not related to the bank bailout, but laughably called 'austerity'.

We borrowed from the IMF because the breakup of the Euro and thus the likelihood of the debt not being repaid, was real, leaving the IMF as the only willing choice.

Now, a decade later and endless QE programs later, there is zero question on whether or not government bonds get repaid - short of an asteroid smashing into the country.

All countries, throughout all of history, have a long-term persistently increasing Public Debt - despite the ups and downs in debt levels during economic cycles.

Even the insane people like Larry Summers and Rogoff are now calling out the virtues of deficit spending - when they were some of the main austerians before.

It's not 2010 anymore. The Euro isn't about to implode anymore. The ECB isn't constrained in its ability to flood arseloads of money into the economy anymore. So lets stop pretending like we're back in the fucking Gold Standard from 100 years ago, where money was tied to a scarce physical resource.

Whether short-term debt levels have ups and downs, or ups and pauses - it's the same thing long-term: All countries, throughout all of history, have a long-term persistently increasing Public Debt.

salonfire wrote:

Thanks for proving my point !!

And what point is that?

salonfire wrote: »

Oh there you are. Any chance of you gracing us with your answer to my question?

yes, im extremely busy at the moment, would you like me to change my priorities just for you? i ll get back to you when i get the chance

salonfire wrote:

You still haven't answered the question. You repeated the cause when I explicitly told you I wasn't asking about the cause.

What's the cause?

salonfire wrote:

.. if we should just keep adding to the debt, why did we have to resort to the IMF? If piling on to the debt mountain is not a bad thing, why were investors not rushing to buy Government Bonds?

Again, you're posing the correct question, why was the imf called in, and austerity imposed, when the roots of the problem were clearly based in private sector financial institutions, and how the hell was imposing these measures in the public sector gonna truly resolve these primarily private sector based issues? I'd imagine investors weren't rushing in due to the lack of confidence, we really have to get over this rising deficit myth, 08 once again showed us, private debt is the far more dangerous of the two, and what is our government currently trying to do, once again, but encouraging the borrowing of private debt, ffs!

Public and private debt are both critical components of the money supply, but we currently have an over reliance on private debt to do the heavy lifting, when it's clearly obvious, that it is extremely dangerous to do so, but we 're not accepting these dangers! This is one of the main reasons why I advocate for public banking systems, it gives us the ability to partially self finance our critical needs, and some sort of democratic control over our money supply.

Arthur Daley wrote:

€170bn - €42bn = €128bn of deficit spending in 13 years, not related to the bank bailout, but laughably called 'austerity'.

...as above! Even some folk in the imf realise now how wrong imposing austerity was, we should have done the complete opposite, and not only that, we signalled to the global financial system, carry on folks, you're doing a great job! What could possibly go wrong!

Timing belt wrote:

We may have a public sector that is just about functioning but it is far from efficient and one could argue that the resources could be used more effectively to deliver better results. That is not to say that there are not sections of the public sector that are not efficient but there is a lot of wasted resources that could be used elsewhere. Just look at the stats on the no of admin per soldiers in the Irish army or the government paying private landlord HAP when there are better alternatives that would resolve the issues in the long term. Instead tax payers money is wasted by putting a patch on the problem rather than fixing it.

Yes of course there are inefficiencies in the public sector , and unfortunately there probably will always be, due to its complexities, but we must also accept the shortcomings of the private sector to, and it's inefficiencies. It's not a competition between the two, both are in fact needed, in order to have some sort of functioning society, but it's also important to realise both sectors shortcomings. The relation between both is in fact symbiotic, both are in fact equally needed, but this is currently a highly dysfunctional relation, the public sector is currently used as a back stop, for when the private sector fails, or when the private sector is simply unable to provide what's needed. This dysfunction is leading us towards continual patch work fixes, which ultimately does indeed cost us more in the long run, and not just financially either.

ExMachina1000 wrote: »

Fun fact.

Our chief justice of the supreme court gets paid 20k a year more than the chief justice of the court of the United states of America. The world's wealthiest country.

Leo gets 60k a year more than UK PM Boris Johnson
Our TDs get 7k a year (basic) more than UK ministers.

Compare the size of the economies of the US and UK vs Ireland

Any recession is only for the poor

ah shur both the uk and the us have become train wrecks, largely due to rising inequalities, and the disturbing part is, we re following them down the same road in terms of economic and political ideologies

ExMachina1000 wrote: »

Starts at the top. Those payments for top level officials is beyond ridiculous when compared to the like of the US and UK.

oh god, this crap, its a hell of a lot more complex than just pay rates at the top, theres astonishing levels of complexities involved in our economic and social issues

ExMachina1000 wrote: »

What "crap"?

If you can justify the comparisons I made above I'd be interested to hear it.

Your posting style leaves a lot to be desired so if you cannot reply politely then dont bother

great!

you re overly simplifying something that is in fact highly complex, we ve all gone down the road of whats called neoliberal/free market ideologies, its failing, and we ve decided the best thing to do is ignore it, and carry on.....

ExMachina1000 wrote: »

I'm raising comparing pay levels between our neighbors and the United states with our lot.

That's all .

But to take up your point. What would be the alternative to neoliberal/free market ideologies?

its fair enough comparing pay levels, but the reality is, its a hell of a lot more complex than just that, to the point, its probably irrelevant, i also think we may also never truly fully understand these complexities

we probably dont know what is better than our current form of capitalism, but the reality is, we still havent truly accepted, its a major failure. i personally like the use of the term 'progressive capitalism', but we dont even truly know what that means either, but first things first, actually accepting, we ve gone down the wrong road in regards capitalism

ExMachina1000 wrote: »

I hope you don't mind me saying so but that is a politicians answer if I heard one!
Lots of words but no question answered or real alternative offered

so what would you like me to say? what dont you understand with what i said?

ExMachina1000 wrote: »

I want to to offer a viable clear alternative.

I understand what you wrote but it didn't mean anything.

it probably doesnt exist, we have to simply create it, just like we created all the other forms of capitalism, including our current most predominate one, free market etc

does it make sense now?

Generally the capitalist policies that came before NeoLiberalism (the Post-WWII 'golden age of capitalism' era in the US/UK/Europe), are much closer to the ideal that people are calling for today.

That's not the same as turning back time and the last 50 years of economic development with it, though.

That's what Corbyn/Sanders and similar progressives represent - a modernized version of the Post-WWII style 'golden age' Keynesianism - with modern Post-Keynesian advances in our understanding of how monetary/fiscal policy work, which aught to be coupled with a Job Guarantee and climate-change-fighting jobs program - among a lot more.

KyussB wrote: »

If you want to have a debate about the definition of the word Communism, then have it with someone else. I don't think anyone who isn't shit stirring would define Joseph McCarthy era US, and the war against Communism from the Post-WWII US/UK/European West - as itself being Communist.

The use of Job Guarantee and Corbyn/Sanders automatically makes me think communism. Just to be clear I'm not looking for a debate on communism just looking for clear answers instead of waffle.