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10A082
Irish Blarney
by Jim Davies, 11/23/2010
Normal experience tells us that bankers lend money only after we prove we don't need it, and never to someone who looks likely to have trouble repaying the loan - never, that is, unless some Community Reinvestment Act compels him to do so by force of law. Such normality applied in the case of Greece, whose government had squandered an earlier loan on bureaucrats and welfare, and was begging for a bailout. It got one only after being sternly lectured and only because if that government went belly-up, all manner of other moneylenders would probably be left holding worthless paper and the Euro could come crashing down. Yet here, the stuff is being pressed hard upon a borrower who doesn't want it. What gives?
Here's another light on the matter: in the words of Al Jazeera, "Higher-tax countries, including Britain, Germany and France, have long seen the Irish rate as a form of unfair competition" and for the Irish government to take on that role it would have to raise taxes, and low (12.5%) corporate taxes are what has enabled the Irish to perform their recent economic miracle. So the bullies of the Union want to clip their wings, just like any cartel acts through government to exclude nimbler, low-price competitors. How odd, that one has to go to an Arab source to discover what's happening in one's own back yard. In effect, if this explanation is correct, the big thieves in Europe are bullying a lesser thief into stealing more. This is government; yet amazingly, there are still people who want governments to continue to exist. |
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Those who kiss the stone will never be
short of words, so it's said; even if now and again what is
spoken falls just a wee bit short of strict standards of accuracy;
but in any case the blarney here is not what is
being said by the Irish, but about the Irish.
The story that has come from the lips of newscasters this month
has been that European moneylenders want the Irish
government to take a large €-loan, which on Sunday it most reluctantly
accepted. The readers of this story look right into the camera,
just as if they understood it! They're well-practised
liars and actors, paid very well to tell us what their licensors
want us to hear.
Nobody is talking; perhaps you have a better
theory and if so, let me know. But it seems possible that the
party in trouble in Eire is not so much the government, this
time, as the bankers, as in the USA; and if Irish banks go under, there could be
a similar cascade effect on the Euro as would follow a Greek
sovereign default. So the EU wants to turn the Irish government
into its debt collectors for Irish bankers; the money would flow
from Irish working people (by taxation, ie theft) through the EU,
to the banks in trouble. I can't prove it, but that flow
fits the facts.
