The Irish banks beat the Greek government to the starting line!!!
And the Greeks should be using their leverage to leave the Eurozone, rather than continue these pathetic votes in favor of national suicide…
Gorilla says: “Whether they know it or not, the can can no longer be kicked!”
Ireland’s banking system results will come in today, and they’re not expected to be good.
The truth is that the only feasible solution for the Irish is to leave the Eurozone, devalue the currency, and give large haircuts to the bondholders (aka German, French, British, Spanish and Dutch banks).
In a country with nearly 15% unemployment, coupled with ludicrous fiscal austerity, it’s just not possible to grow your way back to prosperity.
Gorilla says: “The Blarney Stone’s needs to move out of Frankfurt!”
Not the Irish banks, they’re already bust, but the German banks!!!
Germany doesn’t want to fess up to the huge losses their banks will take on their many bad loans to the Eurozone periphery. So there’s great insistence on austerity and great resistance to any kind of Eurobond creation.
Ireland, fresh from an election, wants to change the terms of their EU bailout deal, so a game of brinksmanship will be undertaken this weekend at the EU summit.
And it’s all a big disaster. Ireland should default and leave the Eurozone. The Germans should get busy with restructuring and recapitalizing their banking system.
Gorilla says: “Extend and pretend is the only game in town, and it’s a mug’s game!”
The Irish have changed governments, and the latest election winners promise they’ll be talking with France and Germany about renegotiating their loans from the EU!
Meanwhile, griding deflation goes on and unemployment continues rising.
Put simply, Ireland can’t grow its way out of this disaster unless they leave the Euro zone. French and German bankers, not to mention French and German politicians, are not about to let them off easily, so the game of extend and pretend will continue.
Gorilla says: “A landslide it may be, but it’s on top of a mudslide that isn’t ending!”
Changing the payback period for Greece and Ireland from 3 to 30 years: the newest gambit on offer from the Germans!
It’s all about bailing out German banks, and avoiding the far larger nightmare of contagion spreading to Spain…
And it won’t work, because the price Club Med will pay for all this crippling debt is years of grinding deflation and high unemployment. Ultimately, it would be far better for Greece and the others who are in trouble to default, leave the eurozone, and devalue. But that won’t save the Germans, French, and Dutch, or their bankers, so extend and pretend goes on.
Gorilla says: “It’s not a Hail Mary, but it is a pass!!!”
Irish banks, mostly all bust, keep on borrowing!!!
The Emergency Liquidity Assistance program: where the debts climb further, now at 110% of GDP!!!
Apparently, the ECB limits are being reached, so the banksters have decided to plunder their own government a bit further!!!
Gorilla says: “M. Trichet has had his day!”
The world’s bankers care not one iota about whether they appear to be criminals.
Gorilla says: “That’s because they are! When everything’s destroyed by nature, we still shoot looters, don’t we?”
John-Joe Feeney, unemployed carpenter, Dublin (h/t Reuters): “I just know they (the government) are going to hurt the people who have nothing, like me, my wife and kids and leave the fat cats alone. It’s not worth thinking about.”
Gorilla says: “So sayeth the Irish, so sayeth we all!”
Or perhaps electricity is what you seek, come to Spain and Ireland for a really good deal!
Magically, the ECB hopes that the confidence fairies will return once enough lousy bonds are bought and/or more credit is extended to member states that have no chance whatever of paying their debts in full.
What’s being ignored are two things: 1) the PIIGS can’t finance their debts when their economies are bust and 2) the non-PIIGS banks are already bust.
Gorilla says: “It’s not the Merkel put, it’s the Trichet cliche!”
Today’s message from the ECB to Ireland and Greece (coming soon: Portugal, Spain, and Italy)…
And so begins yet another round of extend and pretend.
Surely, the EU thinks, given another 3 years and another huge rise in unemployment, a group of magical confidence fairies will rescue German, French, and Dutch banks from their own very special stupidity…
The problem, same as it is in the US: economic growth is not sufficient to cover the demands of austerity, let alone provide millions of Europeans and Americans with the jobs that are essential to any economic recovery.
Gorilla says: “Another 5 years down the drain!”
