While Americans were stuffing their Type 2 faces with turkey flavored tryptophan-laced fixins’, the hard drinking tag team of Cowen and Lenihan were meeting behind (very) closed doors with the bond thug representatives of the IMF and the Eurozone to traitorously sell out an entire nation of 4.5 million people. I am talking about Ireland.
This sellout which would burden the Irish state with somewhere between $89 and $113 Billion depending on which news source you believe. If I am doing my math right, that is saddling every single Irish soul with a debt(plus interest!) of over $25,000. I would remind the Irish people
how the people of Iceland reacted when a similar absurd sellout into debt slavery was proposed early this year that would have saddled every Icelandic citizen with over $17,000 in debt. This so called oxymoronically labeled Icesave legislation was resoundingly defeated by over 90%. of Icelanders. Iceland is a remarkable place, a little island of democracy where the people stood up to Dutch and UK bondholders who were demanding that Icelandic citizens make good on the gambling activities of their unregulated banking system. The situation in Ireland is eerily similar to Iceland and for that matter to the US where the bondholders of AIG were bailed out by a corrupt American political system owned lock, stock and barrel by the bond market. As you may recall, that bailout went not just to the Blood Squid Goldman Sachs in New York but to European and Asian bondholders, all of it paid with borrowed money from our American children’s futures.
But wait, there is more. The dipsomaniac Cowen agreed to a raid of the Irish pension system to the tune of $17.5 Billion. This has been done and tried in other nations, Argentina among them, to try to bail out the nations banks at the expense of the citizens of Ireland who had no direct role in the collapse of banks in Ireland, most notably the Anglo-Irish bank. Do you notice the name? The Irish serfs, which is what they will soon become, are being forced to bail out not just Irish banks but US,UK, German, French, and other European bondholders. The worldwide bond market has been getting away with jamming it’s blood funnel into the citizens of the world to cover its bad bets. Is it possible that the Irish people do not see that they are being asked to bail out international banks ? This loan is to save not the the Irish state, or Irish banks. This loan is to try to save bondholders in the globalized banking system at the expense of the Irish citizens. It is simply outrageous. When the Iceland Parliament was debating whether to sellout the Icelandic citizens this spring, Icelanders showed up in a vast mob banging on pans and demanding justice. And it worked. It can also work in Ireland but the Irish people are going to have to get serious. They had a march a few days ago which was supposed to be a “family friendly” rally of about 100,000 well behaved people. Well, family friendly didn’t cut it and when it is so painfully apparent that the bond market owns the Irish politicians, the next rally will need serious teeth and I am not suggesting that Cowen and Lenihan and Peter Sutherland, the former AG of Ireland now in the pay of Goldman Sachs should be dragged out of their comfy offices and placed in stocks in the town square. Violence also doesn’t cut it. A French Revolution style protest would be internecine . I would suggest a lot of pots and pans and true to Irish tradition, perhaps armed with thousands of PVC or ABS potato guns, open fire on Cowen’s bunker and demand the immediate resignation of the whole pusillanimous pack of cowards. The Irish people need to demand that default is the only option.
Would default endanger economic stability in the Eurozone? Of course. Would an Irish default endanger the Euro? Perhaps. Would default stick it to the bondholders? Obviously. The banks and bondholders hold vast amounts of not only Irish but Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian debt. But should the citizens of these countries bail out these banks? Obviously not. The misnamed “bailout” of Ireland is just more can kicking and the first and only rule of thumb when you have dug yourself into a hole is to what? STOP DIGGING! If it is debt that caused the failure, then how will taking on more debt fix it?! Even Paul Krugman of the NY Times is having second thoughts about borrowing and throwing money at the Irish problem. If Ireland defaults, what who will be next? Portugal, Spain? Italy, Greece? California? Probably. Will the EEU fail? Perhaps. But these solutions by the bond market gangsters solve nothing. The mountain of debt is not being restructured or reduced because the bond market just hates losing money. Eventually this mountain of debt will hit it’s angle of criticality and implode in a disorganized fashion. A scheduled, organized, orderly default is the only solution. I would suggest that the Irish Parliament book a flight on Aer Lingus to Stockholm and ask the Swedes for their recipe of bank restructuring which they employed in the 1990’s to take care of their bank default. There simply is no other option.
No comments:
Post a Comment