Should Ireland pull out of the Euro once public spending is balanced?

daltonmd wrote: »

I don't think it's possible that our spending will be balanced - I can't see how this will happen.

I wish we would pull out of the Euro - I think everything we achieved during entry to the EU has been wiped out, I think the devastation will last for many years.

We are no longer an independant country - I read this recently:



"that the single currency could not accommodate both industrial powerhouses such as Germany and smaller countries such as Greece. Germany,would be phobic about inflation, while the euro would prove fatal to the poorer countries because it would “devastate their inefficient economies”.

Said over 20 years ago my Maggie Thatcher.

I think she's been proven absolutely correct.

I think she's been proven entirely wrong. The euro didn't devastate our inefficient economy at all - what happened was that we allowed, or rather encouraged, a property bubble based on low global interest rates. Other than that, and the government then choosing to balance the tax take on that bubble, our problems all related to our economy doing very well.

daltonmd wrote: »

I remember the furore when the UK refused to join the Euro - it would ruin their economy, obliterate trade - well it survived, we survived breaking away from sterling in 1979.

Er, in order to go into the ESM. The UK has done neither worse nor better than us, really - they also had a property bubble, if less ferocious than ours because their government didn't actively set out to inflate it, they've also had a series of bank collapses, and they're also in recession again, despite their quantitative easing.

In order to attribute all our problems to the euro, it's necessary to complete ignore the fact that places outside the euro have had almost identical problems - the UK and Iceland, for example. Somehow, people seem to be able to point to what those countries have done since the crisis as "if only we weren't in the euro" while apparently remaining entirely oblivious to the point that those countries are also in crisis despite not being in the euro.

Not only that, but people also ignore entirely the reason we're not likely to go the way of Japan as a result of our property bubble bursting - our currency cannot suffer deflation past a certain point, because it is not only our currency. Outside the euro, it would be possible for us to enter exactly the same kind of deflationary spiral Japan went into, and hasn't really yet come out of 20 years later.

cordially,
Scofflaw

No, we should not pull out of the Euro, anymore than a relapsing alcoholic should check out of rehab.

We need the opposite - we need to ensure our government must answer to a higher power. The only time we've ever experienced economic stability in this country is when we've had to answer to a higher power, in the form of preparing for EU entry etc.

battle_hardend wrote: »

i find your total lack of confidence in your own country deeply depressing

Let's see - we've had a series of grotesque economic misadventures since the birth of the state. We've had two booms, one larger than the other, and managed to have asset bubbles each time. We had a genuine and impressive growth in prosperity in the tightly disciplined run-up to euro entry, and then blew it spectacularly once we were in, with one of the world's most bubbly property bubbles. We've had the third most expensive bank bailout in the world of the last 40 years, a decision that was taken, in effect, by just two people, and rushed through a completely compliant parliament. The investigations into the banking sector, planning, and politics through Mahon have detailed a culture of casual and callous corruption, while the investigations into the banking sector and its regulation in the wake of the bank collapse detailed an almost equally depressing story of greed, stupidity, groupthink, and incompetent complaisance. All the signs are that to the extent our political class were not corruptly involved in the property bubble, they were dense enough to honestly believe it could either go on forever or be brought to a soft landing, either of which would be a world first. Throughout the collapse, special interests have continued to be protected and sheltered, as they have been throughout the history of the state. We're one of the most centralised and opaque states in Europe, and we repeatedly re-elect dynasties of local politicians despite their manifest and consistent incompetence and their occasionally detected corruption. We have a rubber-stamp parliament and an ineffective media largely under the thumbs of a couple of well-connected press barons.

And that's before we get onto our social history.

I'm not in favour of not being able to make our own decisions, but I am in favour of having those decisions reviewed and subjected to criticism as much as possible.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw wrote: »

Let's see - we've had a series of grotesque economic misadventures since the birth of the state. We've had two booms, one larger than the other, and managed to have asset bubbles each time. We had a genuine and impressive growth in prosperity in the tightly disciplined run-up to euro entry, and then blew it spectacularly once we were in, with one of the world's most bubbly property bubbles. We've had the third most expensive bank bailout in the world of the last 40 years, a decision that was taken, in effect, by just two people, and rushed through a completely compliant parliament. The investigations into the banking sector, planning, and politics through Mahon have detailed a culture of casual and callous corruption, while the investigations into the banking sector and its regulation in the wake of the bank collapse detailed an almost equally depressing story of greed, stupidity, groupthink, and incompetent complaisance. All the signs are that to the extent our political class were not corruptly involved in the property bubble, they were dense enough to honestly believe it could either go on forever or be brought to a soft landing, either of which would be a world first. Throughout the collapse, special interests have continued to be protected and sheltered, as they have been throughout the history of the state. We're one of the most centralised and opaque states in Europe, and we repeatedly re-elect dynasties of local politicians despite their manifest and consistent incompetence and their occasionally detected corruption. We have a rubber-stamp parliament and an ineffective media largely under the thumbs of a couple of well-connected press barons.

And that's before we get onto our social history.

I'm not in favour of not being able to make our own decisions, but I am in favour of having those decisions reviewed and subjected to criticism as much as possible.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Hmmmm, when you put it like that... (:o)

Scofflaw wrote: »

an ineffective media largely under the thumbs of a couple of well-connected press barons.

I just wanted to link the following article by Vincent Browne in relation to the above:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0425/1224315145169.html
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So how come this spectacular turnaround? This could all be a compete coincidence, of course, but during the week that the extraordinary U-turn was undertaken – this was the week beginning April 16th, 2007 – a private undisclosed meeting took place between Tony O’Reilly and Ahern, accompanied by Brian Cowen.

At a Fianna Fáil press conference during that election campaign, Cowen was asked about that meeting. He confirmed the meeting had taken place and refused to state what was discussed.

But the extraordinary feature of that was that immediately following the meeting the Sunday Independent changed its tack 100 per cent on Ahern and we are asked to believe that “editorial was independent”.

no