Jonny7 wrote: » A group of people interested in open, transparent, honest politics - like Direct Democracy Ireland?
kult wrote: » I am happy that I helped you, good. And seriously you sarcasm is just pathetic, nothing else, nothing constructive to say so you just say "whatever"... that's v. smart too. You are great electorate... you will do the job just fine:D
super_furry wrote: » Or is it Alex Jones
SpaceTime wrote: » Sorry lads, I think most people realised it was actually our own speculative sector and its political and media fanboys that inflated and crashed the economy, not some weird outside agencies of any type. The outside agencies just got in on the action with handing our speculators vast amounts of loans as they were all was 'chasing the dream' of a quick buck. One thing about Ireland that I notice is actually a strength and a weakness is we tend to be quite capable of washing our dirty linen in public when something does come out in the open eventually. A lot of other cultures try to find outsiders to blame for any major problem - immigrants, minority groups like the Jewish community in the past, global conspiracy theories. The Greeks are blaming Angela Merkel and the EU for what was effectively their own establishment's fiscal and financial mismanagement. Yeah, the EU didn't rescue them to the level they might have liked and yeah the EU's policies acted a bit like an accelerant but there was no outsiders trying to wreck Greece, on the contrary they tried to rescue it with billions and billions of Euro. Unfortunately, it was our own home-grown speculators that wrecked the place and I think the vast majority of us understand that fully. The weakness is that we tend to then go into some kind of weird self-flagellation mode and start wallowing in a combination of self pity and slagging ourselves off. I think though that's why we're not having riots. We know exactly what happened. The most important thing we need to do now is get ourselves back into some degree of normality and respectability and stop with the depressing self-harm stuff and keep an eye out for any more half-wit speculator fanboys/girls trying to inflate more bubbles.
KyussBishop wrote: » There is barely a country in the world where bad regulation wasn't a problem - the problem here is, the ECB should have been given regulatory powers to deal with this centrally, but this was decided against for political reasons, even though it was a near-indispensable requirement for ensuring stability. It's not all on us. The Euro itself was simply a disaster waiting to happen, right from the start, because all of Europe is to blame for implementing it and accepting it, in such a broken fashion. You can't neatly place the blame on each individual EU country, because all of Europe is responsible for implementing a system, that was guaranteed to cause a deadlock, upon hitting an economic crisis. It was literally just waiting to happen, because the Euro was broken right from the start - only ably to function properly when there is no economic instability.
kult wrote: » The plan is and always was: get countries into a huge debt, crush the economy and make people slaves , and it's working. We are all slaves to the system which squeezes out more and more of us... some of us just do not realize this just yet...and euro zone is a total failure, always was, even at the very beginning...
SpaceTime wrote: » The plan was actually the complete opposite. It may have backfired horribly, but that was most definitely not the plan. Whole thing actually started off with a huge degree of optimism.
kult wrote: » Sorry but I do not buy that... they do it everywhere now, every country is in debts, so why , when the plan was completely opposite..
kult wrote: » I have kinda of complicated job where I have to go and do projects etc.
SpaceTime wrote: » I don't really buy that. Other than the ECB and Eurozone powers were idiotic in assuming banks would behave sensibly and in the public interest or that national regulators would be able to control things or would even want to. The behaviour that went on here was utterly deplorable across the whole speculative sector and people were calling it out for years. David McWilliams, various Prime Time programmes etc etc all pointing out that we were in a huge bubble. The establishment didn't listen to a word of it, nor did many of the people voting for them either. Many, many other parts of the Eurozone did not have these problems because their economies didn't go into meltdown. Yeah, they felt some effects of it, but they didn't spectacularly crash and burn like we did or like Spain did. (The Greek situation's a little different) The Eurozone didn't force Anglo & the lads to do what they did. It may have made it possible, but it didn't cause it.
DistanceVector wrote: » Take away the dole and Sky sports and there would be a second Republic in a week. It is about time we got off our fat complacent arses and threw some of this sh1t back at the govt.
Hedge11 wrote: » Super secret underground resistance agent? I don't believe you're Irish either FWIW.
LoganRice wrote: » Before rioting we must think of the elderly and young children
KyussBishop wrote: » Europe had a responsibility, to implement a banking system with adequate checks and balances, i.e. regulations, and to implement this centrally - not to leave it only half-implemented, which is something many of the economists who participated in putting together the Euro, knew was a problem. Also consider this: All economies have boom and bust cycles, and there is never a logical reason to assume there will never be another economic crisis. The Euro, in its initial construction and still now, is completely incapable of dealing with any crisis - it was going to blow up and put countries in a deadlock eventually, as soon as a big enough crisis hit. The safeguards and mechanisms needed to deal with crisis, were removed from countries when they lost monetary sovereignty, no safeguards/mechanisms were put in place when that monetary control was centralized within Europe - it was a guaranteed failure, right from the start, and again many of the principle economists responsible for founding the Euro (such as Bernard Lietaer) knew about this, and warned about it. That's a failure, which lies in the hands of all of Europe - you can't fob all of that off onto individual countries, and individually blame them for a system which was guaranteed to fail.
SpaceTime wrote: » The plan was actually the complete opposite. It may have backfired horribly, but that was most definitely not the plan. Whole thing actually started off with a huge degree of optimism. What we're paying for is the consequences of out of control speculation both here in Ireland and by other financial institutions elsewhere in the world. The bailouts happened because those institutions were big enough to hold a gun to the heads of various governments and probably the ECB and various other agencies. Solution : probably shrink the financial sector and regulate it back into a manageable situation again.
SpaceTime wrote: » Well basically what happened was you took a primarily German idea of controlling inflation (and putting this above all other concerns) and bolted it onto a EU that it doesn't remotely operate like Germany and where inflation has been used as a tool to deal with boom-bust cycles. The Germans aren't really prepared to budge on that, due to being completely irrational fear of inflation (despite their reputation for level headedness they're anything but). That's fundamentally the core problem - Eurozone policies reflect Germany's old DM policies and not the Eurozone as a whole. It was undoubtedly well-intentioned : bringing price stability and fiscal certainty but, it doesn't work. ... If Eurozone policies reflected the reality of the Eurozone and the Euro's value were allowed to drop to a more realistic level actually reflecting the European economies, things would probably be in a much better situation. ... On the regulation aspect of it, yeah it was cart before horse. It still doesn't mean Ireland's speculative bubble was caused by the Eurozone though. It was facilitated by it rather than caused by it.
KyussBishop wrote: » Sorry but, if it was that innocent, then why are none of the necessary reforms in place? European governments, principally Germany, have directly stifled meaningful reform; torpedoing/neutering attempts at reform. We're still in a system, almost equally as primed to implode as it was 7 years ago, and nothing has changed - not even the problems from this crisis have been dealt with, and we are facing more crisis not far off in the future. If every country in Europe, really has good intent here and wants to see a working Euro system, we'd have seen reform by now - 7 years gone already!
SpaceTime wrote: » Because, despite what people think, the Germans are totally irrational about certain things. Inflation - terror of it due to Weimar Republic hyper inflation days. Complete lack of ability to see that inflation may actually help in this situation. Nuclear power - effectively shut down their nuclear power plants without any idea what they were going to do to provide energy and have caused a CO2 spike + major increase in gas and coal prices. (I'm not saying that nuclear power's a great thing, but I'm just saying it was a remarkably knee-jerk reaction for a huge country) ... And Merkel's faced with an electoral tight-rope act to deal with at home all the time. I think there's a bigger risk now that Germany's industrial powerhouse might get eclipsed by China and a resurging Japan (things are starting to wake up there due to economic policy changes)... Couple that with mismanagement of the EZ and German inflexibility and it's bad for everyone including Germany.
KyussBishop wrote: » We're heading towards deflation. What is more likely: 1: Germany is scared of inflation, even to the point of risking deflation - something all economists know is extremely harmful as it leads to a deflationary spiral 2: Germany is at an economic advantage, by the Euro practically being tailor-made to work in favour of Germany, and by the crisis holding back all others EU countries economic activity more than Germanies, allowing Germany a massive advantage over the rest of Europe - which they want to keep. I'm not saying that's what the motive of Germany's government is, but it sure as hell makes a lot more sense, than a silly fear of inflation - to the point of allowing deflation. That inflation fear is just a total myth really. Germany literally printed money during WWII, using MEFO bills, which funded their rearmament and built their massive war machine - they got over their fear of inflation pretty fast...
SpaceTime wrote: » Priority #1 at the moment should be re-floating the European economy, not protecting German inflation.
