How The Irish Saved Civilization, — Again !!! Options Rating

[Milton Roe]

Though I think it's safe to say that while the Irish are in trouble, they're doing better, relative to the UK and Europe now, than they ever have in history. They just spent themselves broke with retirement and entitlement programs, like the rest of Europe.

Bear in mind that Ireland doesn't want or need a bailout. It's the banks that are bankrupt, and most of them aren't even Irish banks. The Irish are being asked to take a truly staggering cut in their standard of living in order to co-sign a bailout of foreign financiers.

Banks don't really have a nationality, they are global. They are the parasites feeding off the body politic. They need to be destroyed.

Oh, yeah, that's a brilliant idea. And replaced by what?

Nothing! Yeah it's amazing aint it, a world without banks!! Oh the horror.

Yep. It's like the idea of a "world without governments." Except no such thing can exist. They guys with the most guns are always the functional goverment, whether or not you grant them the title. And it's the same with the guys who have all the money. They're "banks." It doesn't matter if you don't want to CALL them banks. If you want to borrow money, you still have to see them. There have always, in that sense, been banks in the modern world (at least since we've had writing and money). Do you know where the word "bank" comes from, even? It's the same root as the bank of a river. Or a board. It was some guy with a table, on which he put his money and you put a paper with your signature.

[RMHED]

Though I think it's safe to say that while the Irish are in trouble, they're doing better, relative to the UK and Europe now, than they ever have in history. They just spent themselves broke with retirement and entitlement programs, like the rest of Europe.

Bear in mind that Ireland doesn't want or need a bailout. It's the banks that are bankrupt, and most of them aren't even Irish banks. The Irish are being asked to take a truly staggering cut in their standard of living in order to co-sign a bailout of foreign financiers.

Banks don't really have a nationality, they are global. They are the parasites feeding off the body politic. They need to be destroyed.

Oh, yeah, that's a brilliant idea. And replaced by what?

Nothing! Yeah it's amazing aint it, a world without banks!! Oh the horror.

Yep. It's like the idea of a "world without governments." Except no such thing can exist. They guys with the most guns are always the functional goverment, whether or not you grant them the title. And it's the same with the guys who have all the money. They're "banks." It doesn't matter if you don't want to CALL them banks. If you want to borrow money, you still have to see them. There have always, in that sense, been banks in the modern world (at least since we've had writing and money). Do you know where the word "bank" come from, even? It's the same root as the bank of a river. Or a board. It was some guy with a table, on which he put his money and you put a paper with your signature.

Still stuck on the concept of money are we. Now try imagining a society without it.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Yeah it's amazing aint it, a world without banks!! Oh the horror.

Banks are an absolutely essential feature of a modern economy. Without them, you can't have credit, and without credit, your economy cannot progress and must perish in short order.

That being said, governments must regulate banks up one side and down the other, lest they become the master instead of the servant. Unregulated banking does indeed become parasitic.

[Milton Roe]

Though I think it's safe to say that while the Irish are in trouble, they're doing better, relative to the UK and Europe now, than they ever have in history. They just spent themselves broke with retirement and entitlement programs, like the rest of Europe.

Bear in mind that Ireland doesn't want or need a bailout. It's the banks that are bankrupt, and most of them aren't even Irish banks. The Irish are being asked to take a truly staggering cut in their standard of living in order to co-sign a bailout of foreign financiers.

Banks don't really have a nationality, they are global. They are the parasites feeding off the body politic. They need to be destroyed.

Oh, yeah, that's a brilliant idea. And replaced by what?

Nothing! Yeah it's amazing aint it, a world without banks!! Oh the horror.

Yep. It's like the idea of a "world without governments." Except no such thing can exist. They guys with the most guns are always the functional goverment, whether or not you grant them the title. And it's the same with the guys who have all the money. They're "banks." It doesn't matter if you don't want to CALL them banks. If you want to borrow money, you still have to see them. There have always, in that sense, been banks in the modern world (at least since we've had writing and money). Do you know where the word "bank" come from, even? It's the same root as the bank of a river. Or a board. It was some guy with a table, on which he put his money and you put a paper with your signature.

Still stuck on the concept of money are we. Now try imagining a society without it.

It's sort of neothithic. So you really are sitting there typing on a computer filled with integrated circuits made by multi-billion dollar technical companies, advocating that we return to a world without representative money. How many grains of barley do you suppose a chip fab plant is worth?

[Alison]

Bear in mind that Ireland doesn't want or need a bailout. It's the banks that are bankrupt, and most of them aren't even Irish banks. The Irish are being asked to take a truly staggering cut in their standard of living in order to co-sign a bailout of foreign financiers.

This guy knows the truth.

[RMHED]

Yeah it's amazing aint it, a world without banks!! Oh the horror.

Banks are an absolutely essential feature of a modern economy. Without them, you can't have credit, and without credit, your economy cannot progress and must perish in short order.

That being said, governments must regulate banks up one side and down the other, lest they become the master instead of the servant. Unregulated banking does indeed become parasitic.

Who wants a modern economy? Not me.

[jayvdb]

Who wants a modern economy? Not me.

There are plenty of places you can move ..

[TungstenCarbide]

This guy knows the truth.

grumpy old guy is right but missing part of the story. Much of economics is driven by psychology. After the great depression people thought credit was evil. You wanted a car ... save your money and pay cash. Nowadays most people choose to live their whole lives with large credit loads.

Easy credit is like a drug, some people can't get enough of it and end up bleeding themselves dry. Governments have been making credit easier and easier for decades.

This post has been edited by TungstenCarbide: Fri 10th December 2010, 2:11am

[Alison]

This guy knows the truth.

grumpy old guy is right but missing part of the story. Much of economics is driven by psychology. After the great depression people thought credit was evil. You wanted a car ... save your money and pay cash. Nowadays most people choose to live their whole lives with large credit loads.

Easy credit is like a drug, some people can't get enough of it and end up bleeding themselves dry. Governments have been making credit easier and easier for decades.

That's also true. Interesting article here which shows the situation in 2004. Back then, they were stating that nearly 43% of American families spend more than they earn each year. So yeah - not good, but where does the blame lie; government or wide-eyed, gullible people?

"Call 1-800-YOU-FAIL to get the credit you deserve!"

Deserve?? How many times have they played those adverts on TV? And they're always aimed at people with already bad credit ratings

[RMHED]

This guy knows the truth.

grumpy old guy is right but missing part of the story. Much of economics is driven by psychology. After the great depression people thought credit was evil. You wanted a car ... save your money and pay cash. Nowadays most people choose to live their whole lives with large credit loads.

Easy credit is like a drug, some people can't get enough of it and end up bleeding themselves dry. Governments have been making credit easier and easier for decades.

All that nice easy credit puffs up the economy until eventually it goes POP!

This is the basis of the "modern economy", it is a fundamentally flawed system.

Everything is geared toward short term gain, and to hell with the future.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Easy credit is like a drug, some people can't get enough of it and end up bleeding themselves dry. Governments have been making credit easier and easier for decades.

That's also true. Interesting article here which shows the situation in 2004. Back then, they were stating that nearly 43% of American families spend more than they earn each year. So yeah - not good, but where does the blame lie; government or wide-eyed, gullible people?

It is extremely misleading to suggest that this crisis was caused by John Q. Public (although JQP is certainly being asked to pay for it.) The vast majority of the the debt is the $1+ Quadrillion in derivatives transactions. JQP wouldn't know a derivative if if bit him on the ass. Governments should agree to euthanize these guys and much of the problem would be solved.

[Avirosa]

The irony, dear friend, lies in the fact that the UK claims already to be Christian, and in fact possesses a quasi-theocracy where the monarch is also the head of an established church.

Is this possibly a meta irony, where the purported ironic comparitor is itself a source of irony ?

The fundamental logistical failure of addressing famine in Ireland in the 1840s was lack of any inhibition on the export of ceral crops from Ireland. And the largest exporter of Irish produced grain ? The Catholic Church !

A.virosa

[Milton Roe]

This guy knows the truth.

grumpy old guy is right but missing part of the story. Much of economics is driven by psychology. After the great depression people thought credit was evil. You wanted a car ... save your money and pay cash. Nowadays most people choose to live their whole lives with large credit loads.

Easy credit is like a drug, some people can't get enough of it and end up bleeding themselves dry. Governments have been making credit easier and easier for decades.

That's also true. Interesting article here which shows the situation in 2004. Back then, they were stating that nearly 43% of American families spend more than they earn each year. So yeah - not good, but where does the blame lie; government or wide-eyed, gullible people?

"Call 1-800-YOU-FAIL to get the credit you deserve!"

Deserve?? How many times have they played those adverts on TV? And they're always aimed at people with already bad credit ratings

Sigh. The Irish situation is a duplicate of the US one, already much-discussed here. During the 2000-2007 housing bubble, both the US and Ireland (I mean the good people of both countries) borrowed a lot of money against their inflating housing prices. The new financial instruments (which HK calls generic "derivatives") made it easier than ever to convert real estate "paper-equity" into cash. One of those derivatives was insurance on securitized mortgage backed loans. You could even buy stock in companies that sold insurance on securitized mortgage backed loans. Like AIG. Level piled upon level of speculation there, and it all collapsed in 2008 when the markets simply could not take any more, and all the loaned out money on housing that wasn't worth it, came due to be repaid. In both the US and Ireland, since the capital markets around the world are all connected too well now for any to be isolated.

2004 was right in the middle of this. How could 43% of American families (or Irish families if you like, because it was all the same there) spend more than they earned each year? No problem in 2004 at the height of this rising housing bubble. It wasn't going all on credit cards, but coming out of houses being used like ATM machines, as second and third mortgages became available. There even existed plastic cards that gave you money from a loan against your house (a home equity line of credit-- try to get one of THOSE now). Nobody cared about this, before the housing equity values (on paper) were going up faster than the home loan borrowers were spending the money; it was sort of like spending money you were making on your stock account in your portfolio. Except that everyody knows such rises in stock value are imaginary numbers until you lock in the earnings by actually selling the stock. In housing speculation people weren't actually selling their houses even though they were speculating with them in just the same way as with stock-- they were just watching their paper value rise, and borrowing against THAT, and spending it.

When it all came crashing down in 2008, people owed more on their houses than they were worth. In Ireland, too. HK thinks the banks got all that money, but he's wrong. The people who borrowed against the housing market, which means the home-owners, got most of that money. Letting banking systems collapse now that they own the titles to all the real estate left behind (the "ash" of this bubble), is not going to fix this problem. The blame for all this is everywhere. A lot of it is with homeowners who had a great time with the money they "made" speculating against their own home prices as they rocketted up.

If you can let your banking system collapse, which means that your industry is not far behind, then your economy goes down and everybody is out of work. Not just 10% but 25% or more. They tried that 1929-1932 in the U.S., and it didn't work so well. Tight-money made the depression worse. Bernanke, a student of the depression, is therefore now trying the opposite, which is to put all the housing credit default on the government credit card. So far it has kept the US economy from imploding.

Now it's Ireland's turn. They (like the U.S.) have a total government debt of about 100% of their yearly GDP. But this next year, if they bail out all the housing market lenders (and yes, most of them are banks, who will foreclose on the houses) that will go up to 133% of GDP. They will have spent 33% of a year's GDP in a SINGLE YEAR, bailing themselves out. The US did almost that last year, but it put them only up to 94% GDP. Ireland's debt position is worse.

But they don't really have any choice. If they allow the housing sector, mortgage lenders and banks to take the default on all that credit, there won't be any more banking in Ireland. Which means no more Irish economy, no more Irish industry, and no more Irish miracle. So they're going to have to do what the U.S. did, or else have a Great Depression of 1929. Were it not for the suffering that would cause, I'd wish that they actually would do that, just to teach HK and LaRouche a lession that they seem to have failed to learn from 1929-32.

[Jon Awbrey]

“Economic Downturn”

=

Engineered Theft of the Common Wealth

[Jon Awbrey]

The Invisible Hand

Stole My Lucky Charms

! ! !

[TungstenCarbide]

This guy knows the truth.

grumpy old guy is right but missing part of the story. Much of economics is driven by psychology. After the great depression people thought credit was evil. You wanted a car ... save your money and pay cash. Nowadays most people choose to live their whole lives with large credit loads.

Easy credit is like a drug, some people can't get enough of it and end up bleeding themselves dry. Governments have been making credit easier and easier for decades.

That's also true. Interesting article here which shows the situation in 2004. Back then, they were stating that nearly 43% of American families spend more than they earn each year. So yeah - not good, but where does the blame lie; government or wide-eyed, gullible people?

"Call 1-800-YOU-FAIL begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              1-800-YOU-FAIL      end_of_the_skype_highlighting to get the credit you deserve!"

Deserve?? How many times have they played those adverts on TV? And they're always aimed at people with already bad credit ratings

Sigh. The Irish situation is a duplicate of the US one, already much-discussed here. During the 2000-2007 housing bubble, both the US and Ireland (I mean the good people of both countries) borrowed a lot of money against their inflating housing prices. The new financial instruments (which HK calls generic "derivatives") made it easier than ever to convert real estate "paper-equity" into cash. One of those derivatives was insurance on securitized mortgage backed loans. You could even buy stock in companies that sold insurance on securitized mortgage backed loans. Like AIG. Level piled upon level of speculation there, and it all collapsed in 2008 when the markets simply could not take any more, and all the loaned out money on housing that wasn't worth it, came due to be repaid. In both the US and Ireland, since the capital markets around the world are all connected too well now for any to be isolated.

2004 was right in the middle of this. How could 43% of American families (or Irish families if you like, because it was all the same there) spend more than they earned each year? No problem in 2004 at the height of this rising housing bubble. It wasn't going all on credit cards, but coming out of houses being used like ATM machines, as second and third mortgages became available. There even existed plastic cards that gave you money from a loan against your house (a home equity line of credit-- try to get one of THOSE now). Nobody cared about this, before the housing equity values (on paper) were going up faster than the home loan borrowers were spending the money; it was sort of like spending money you were making on your stock account in your portfolio. Except that everyody knows such rises in stock value are imaginary numbers until you lock in the earnings by actually selling the stock. In housing speculation people weren't actually selling their houses even though they were speculating with them in just the same way as with stock-- they were just watching their paper value rise, and borrowing against THAT, and spending it.

When it all came crashing down in 2008, people owed more on their houses than they were worth. In Ireland, too. HK thinks the banks got all that money, but he's wrong. The people who borrowed against the housing market, which means the home-owners, got most of that money. Letting banking systems collapse now that they own the titles to all the real estate left behind (the "ash" of this bubble), is not going to fix this problem. The blame for all this is everywhere. A lot of it is with homeowners who had a great time with the money they "made" speculating against their own home prices as they rocketted up.

If you can let your banking system collapse, which means that your industry is not far behind, then your economy goes down and everybody is out of work. Not just 10% but 25% or more. They tried that 1929-1932 in the U.S., and it didn't work so well. Tight-money made the depression worse. Bernanke, a student of the depression, is therefore now trying the opposite, which is to put all the housing credit default on the government credit card. So far it has kept the US economy from imploding.

Now it's Ireland's turn. They (like the U.S.) have a total government debt of about 100% of their yearly GDP. But this next year, if they bail out all the housing market lenders (and yes, most of them are banks, who will foreclose on the houses) that will go up to 133% of GDP. They will have spent 33% of a year's GDP in a SINGLE YEAR, bailing themselves out. The US did almost that last year, but it put them only up to 94% GDP. Ireland's debt position is worse.

But they don't really have any choice. If they allow the housing sector, mortgage lenders and banks to take the default on all that credit, there won't be any more banking in Ireland. Which means no more Irish economy, no more Irish industry, and no more Irish miracle. So they're going to have to do what the U.S. did, or else have a Great Depression of 1929. Were it not for the suffering that would cause, I'd wish that they actually would do that, just to teach HK and LaRouche a lession that they seem to have failed to learn from 1929-32.

I doubt that's the half of it.

Looking from a different angle, if you were a group of powerful bankers who had enormous political power at your fingertips, what kind of laws would you get your lackeys to pass to enrich yourself? Those laws would have to be based on human psychology.

You'd want to make it possible for people to load themselves up on credit, to the hilt. Then you'd want their home to hang in the balance - keeping one's home is a big motivator (these lines of credit weren't legal when I was a kid.) Then you'd want them to shoulder the maximum amount of credit for as long as possible to bleed them over a lifetime.

This post has been edited by TungstenCarbide: Sat 11th December 2010, 2:09am

[lilburne]

Looking from a different angle, if you were a group of powerful bankers who had enormous political power at your fingertips, what kind of laws would you get your lackeys to pass to enrich yourself? Those laws would have to be based on human psychology.

You'd want to make it possible for people to load themselves up on credit, to the hilt. Then you'd want their home to hang in the balance - keeping one's home is a big motivator (these lines of credit weren't legal when I was a kid.) Then you'd want them to shoulder the maximum amount of credit for as long as possible to bleed them over a lifetime.

When this first kicked off it was obvious that shysters had been going into poor areas in the US and arranging dodgy loans to poor people that didn't have a hope in hell of ever repaying the loans, after the initial ultra low interest rates had finished. That what had happened was the biggest transfer of assets from African Americans to Corporate America since the end of slavery. The loan arrangers all got their fees and bonuses and the rest got shafted.

In the UK we had that daft bitch Angela Knight, chief executive of the British Bankers' Association, arguing that they were clever people and would just get a round any regulations. One should send them all a photograph of Blackfriars Bridge as a Xmas card.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Level piled upon level of speculation there, and it all collapsed in 2008 when the markets simply could not take any more, and all the loaned out money on housing that wasn't worth it, came due to be repaid.

You still think this is about housing?

If you can let your banking system collapse, which means that your industry is not far behind, then your economy goes down and everybody is out of work.

Why do that? The only course of action that will actually work is to put the system through the equivalent of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Then sovereign governments will need to create new credit which will be channeled very specifically into productive activity. The alternatives are the kind of collapse you describe, or a series of bailouts culminating in a collapse much bigger than what you describe.

See also: Iceland Better Off Than Ireland Because They Let Big Private Banks Fail, says President

[Milton Roe]

Level piled upon level of speculation there, and it all collapsed in 2008 when the markets simply could not take any more, and all the loaned out money on housing that wasn't worth it, came due to be repaid.

You still think this is about housing?

Yes, I and most economists. Let your eyes wander over this chart of Dublin housing prices 1970 to 2005:



Do you see anything that looks like a housing bubble? Hmmm?

Here's a pretty good review of what happened to Ireland. You'll like this quote:

An extraordinary housing bubble emerged [in Ireland]. From 1997 to 2006, housing completions grew by 9.6 percent a year, and by IMF calculations, Irish house prices grew by 90 percent more than fundamentals predicted, compared to 28 percent in Spain and 20 percent in the United States.

As in other GIIPS, the economy shifted away from manufacturing and toward services and housing. Financial intermediation, real estate, and business sectors sapped 10 percent of GDP away from the industrial sector from 1999 to 2006. Residential investment grew from 5 percent of GDP in the mid-1990s to over 12 percent by 2007.

Throughout the course of this boom, the Irish government appeared to behave responsibly, running an average budget surplus of 1.6 percent of GDP from 1997 to 2007, helped by surging tax revenues. Over that period, the aggregate Euro area never once recorded a surplus, and Greece averaged a deficit of 4.8 percent.

Doesn't that make it rather clear?

If you can let your banking system collapse, which means that your industry is not far behind, then your economy goes down and everybody is out of work.

Why do that? The only course of action that will actually work is to put the system through the equivalent of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Then sovereign governments will need to create new credit which will be channeled very specifically into productive activity. The alternatives are the kind of collapse you describe, or a series of bailouts culminating in a collapse much bigger than what you describe.

Hershel, FDR already tried what you suggest, with the WPA and all the alphabet agencies created in 1933. Basically that didn't work. It was a bit better than Hoover's tight money policies (basically "let the private banks fail" which allowed the Great depression up till then, from late 1929- early 1933). But all that happened was that FDRs policies kept things from getting any worse. It is also not true that WW II ended the great depression-- during the war the standard of living stayed at great depression values, but nobody cared because they expected it (since it was a war). They put up with rationing and taxes they would not have in 1934. Finally, the US emerged from WW II as the only major western power with a working infrastructure, and that was not courtesy of FDR, but courtesy of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. THEN we emerged from the great depression, with personal income and joblessness reaching 1928 levels for the first time in 1947.

See also: Iceland Better Off Than Ireland Because They Let Big Private Banks Fail, says President

That's not what the story says. Ireland didn't let its banking system fail. It divided it into a foreign-investment sector and a domestic-investmnt sector, and it let the foreign-invested banks fail, basically selectively screwing foreign investors in Iceland. You recommend the US should do this? What do you think China will say about it? And how will LaRouche feel about the U.S. screwing China's investors? Come off it, HK-- Iceland's "solution" (if you can call it that) is not open to the U.S.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Do you see anything that looks like a housing bubble? Hmmm?

Absolutely. You have successfully demonstrated that the housing market was a bubble, but not that it was the bubble. In fact, there are bubbles everywhere:

That one is not the bubble, either. The bubble, or what history will call the Greenspan bubble, is an order of magnitude larger. Housing, soybeans, and all the other stuff are just part of the froth.