It’s a different club. Spain are not taking the bank debt as sovereign debt. They learned from our original mistake whereas we compounded ours with a yes vote.

Btw. Wasn’t that supposed to be ratified this week? Haven’t heard a dickie bird about it being ratified.

Irish voters decision to ratify the fiscal compact will prove to be the greatest own goal in the history of Ireland since ratifying the Act of Union.

Lorenzo Bini Smaghi outlined the EU/ECB case for expecting Irish taxpayers to bear the full cost of the banking collapse.

‘The principle of ‘no taxation without representation’ should work both ways. If taxpayers have the right to share in decision-making, they must also accept the consequences,’ Bini Smaghi wrote.
‘As long as the accountability of supervisors to taxpayers is primarily a national affair, then there is a high risk that taxpayers will foot most of the bill. They should not complain when it actually happens,’ he added.

Irish taxpayers are liable for the governments & regulators negligence and incompetence according to Smaghi. No whisper of a rebuttal from the same negligant elite regarding the ECB’s role/complicity in the banking crisis. In fact, the ECB were more culpable in the Irish crisis than has been recognized to date. The negligant political elite happy to sit idly by with their thumbs in their mouth including Honohan. The only party that seemed to recognise this were the IMF.
Anyway, Spain has been spared this shabby treatment. Maybe their elite can show a bit more wit and spine than ours.

By the end of this Germany and France will be in the same boat.

This is just a slow train crash.

People look at Greece and go damn lazy Greeks. Well this is a Eurozone wide problem and only when people admit that, will we be able to get on to resolving it. Resolving will be a very painful and monumental process.

If ye think that people are over hyping this crisis. Look at the consternation that little Greece has caused, and yet Spain is over 7 times larger. It’s banks are 10 times larger in loans, it has a significantly higher unemployment rate that Greece. It’s banks are dealing with more empty units than all of America has.

The Euro circus rolls on, to its inevitable demise.

Possibly both.

Way to late for that now my friend…
The deal is signed and sealed by the latch on government cronies who voted YES hoping to be looked after when this sinking ship goes down :(

Do you really believe that thought will even cross their minds?

It was our lads that guaranteed the banks, they shouldn’t have, they didn’t have to, it’s not our debt.

Your wording sounds just right to me :)

I’m sure that if you go to the pub jacks in Clara about now, you’ll hear him mumbling that from behind the cubicle door. The drink is a terror.

That is the way it should have been done here but Lenihan and friends did not want the EU/ECB sticking their noses in to the toxic banks here. The list of who was loaned what, and at what rate, is said to read like a FF dinner dance attendance sheet, all at very favourable rates.

Duped by Cowen/Lenihan not the EU

Because they could.

In the RTE documentary “Freefall” the late Brian Lenihan admitted that he was told by Europe (head of ECB and Lagarde) to save Irish banks at ALL costs. This is as close as we will get to an admission that he was ordered to guarantee the banks.

incompetence isn’t an excuse IMO

Spains debt to GDP is still quite low so they don’t really need that much austerity as they can still grow enough to offset their deficit, the difference between them and us is they weren’t stupid enough to guarantee their banks.

We didn’t vote for an austerity treaty, we voted for a stability treaty.
The Spanish are seeking funds to bail out their banks, not their budget, hence no new austerity measures.

Spain have implemented quiet far reaching austerity. They are heading for 30% unemployment this year. If they had additional austerity, then they would collapse quiet quickly.

Spain hasn’t a bad old economy, however it is stuck in the Euro which makes it very hard for it to grow out of this crisis.

Spain’s banks are shot through and through though.

Every happy family is alike, but every unhappy family is unique.

Spain has some good points, but there are no’s coming out of it, that are truly frightening.

Basically the 12th largest economy in the world is insolvent and unable to meet its borrowing requirements in the market. Italy has some great figures and yet it still is in a slow decline, trapped in the Euro, which is too strong for it.

Yipee we live in interesting times.

Crap we live in interesting times.

We had relatively low debt and the means to reduce our budget deficit on our own terms until we socialised the bank debt. Our politicians screwed us then and screwed us again with the Austerity treaty

Btw Ben Gunn, Stability??? Tell that to the Spanish!

Spain 1 – Ireland 0

You need to extend your list.

@ Ciaran these politicans were incompetent, economically illiterate, arrogant and in Aherns case corrupt. However, Irelands economy would still be in crisis even if none of these 3 ever set foot in the Dail.
Here’s why.

In 1971, the gold standard system, established at Bretton Woods, was abandoned in favour of a fiat currency system with the US dollar positioned as the global reserve currency. This allowed the US to bridge funding gaps, caused by the cost of funding both the Vietnam war and the ongoing Cold war with Russia.
The world benefitted greatly from this momentous decision.
Firstly, the US, liberated from the monetary shackles of the gold standard, could finance enhanced military expansion/adventurism without subjecting American voters to onerous levels of taxation.
Secondly, fiat currency offered enhanced economic capabilities to central planners (governments, central banks). The volume of currency supplied into the economy could be increased to stimulate growth (monetary easing) during recessionary episodes. This was particularly opportune for nations like the US & Britain as their domestic manufacturing industries were in decline in the 1970’s. In both these nations, uncompetitive businesses were allowed to fail as any economic impacts were, or would be, mitigated by a, soon to be, thriving banking and financial services sector courtesy of the enhanced monetary capabilies now available to central planners.
An anomaly of fiat currency is it’s requirement for constant monetary expansion and it’s propensity to generate credit fuelled booms and debt. As fiat currency holds no intrinsic value, to ensure monetary stability all new currency is issued as debt. Central banks issue new currency to governments and Market participants as collaterallised debt. To allow for repayment of this new currency (debt) the volume of new currency must constantly increase (constant monetary expansion). Needless to say, the rate of monetary expansion has increased exponentially over subsequent decades.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/chapter-8-fed-money-creation
While governments issue bonds to their central banks to access new currency, Market participants faced increasing difficulty sourcing, the expotentially increasing quantities of securities required to access new currency. The danger of a collateral drought were that the wheels would come off the accelerating fiat currency merry-go-round.
In the US, this problem was overcome by issuance of toxic securities. In many cases these were facilitated by the expanding subprime mortgage market.
European banks, as well as trading in toxic securities also, accessed collateral via the government bonds of nations, whose creditworthiness had recently been enhanced, such as Greece. Also, newly created collateral courtesy of credit-fuelled property booms in countries such as Spain and Ireland.

http://mises.org/daily/6065/The-Fiasco-of-Fiat-Money

Chris Martenson is a former VP of Pfizer’s

Sure they were saying earlier in the week that they would only need 40billion. Europe is becoming a farce!

Sean R you need to add Kenny, Noonan etc to your list.