The Irish have a long history of being tyrannized, exploited, and oppressed–from the forced conversion to Christianity in the Dark Ages, to slave trading of the natives in the 15th e 16th centuries, to the mid-nineteenth century "potato famine" that was realmente un holocausto. The British got Ireland's food exports, while at least one million Irish died from starvation and related diseases, and another million or more emigrated.
Hoxe, Irlanda está baixo un tipo diferente de tiranía, imposta polos bancos e os Troika–the EU, ECB and IMF. The oppressors have demanded austerity and more austerity, forcing the public to pick up the tab for bills incurred by profligate private bankers.
The official unemployment rate is 13.5%–up from 5% in 2006–and this figure does not take into account the mass emigration of Ireland's young people in search of better opportunities abroad. Job loss and a flood of foreclosures are leading to suicides. A raft of new taxes and charges has been sold as necessary to reduce the deficit, but they are simply a backdoor bailout of the banks.
At first, the Irish accepted the media explanation: these draconian measures were necessary to "balance the budget" and were in their best interests. But after five years of belt-tightening in which unemployment and living conditions have not improved, the people are slowly waking up. They are realizing that their assets are being grabbed simply to pay for the mistakes of the financial sector.
Five years of austerity has not restored confidence in Ireland's banks. In fact the banks themselves are packing up and leaving. On October 31st, RTE.ie informou that Danske Bank Ireland was closing its personal and business banking, only days after ACCBank announced it was handing back its banking license; and Ulster Bank's future in Ireland remains unclear.
The field is ripe for some publicly-owned banks. Banks that have a mandate to serve the people, return the profits to the people, and refrain from speculating. Banks guaranteed by the state because they are the state, without resort to bailouts or bail-ins. Banks that aren't going anywhere, because they are locally owned by the people themselves.
A garantía bancaria que causou a bancarrota a Irlanda
Ireland was the first European country to watch its entire banking system fail. Unlike the Icelanders, who refused to bail out their bankrupt banks, in September 2008 the Irish government gave a blanket guarantee to all Irish banks, covering all their loans, deposits, bonds and other liabilities.
At the time, no one was aware of the huge scale of the banks' liabilities, or just how far the Irish property market would fall.
Dentro de dous anos, a garantía bancaria estatal dera a bancarrota a Irlanda. Os mercados monetarios internacionais xa non prestarían ao goberno irlandés.
Before the bailout, the Irish budget was in surplus. By 2011, its deficit was 32% of the country's GDP, the highest by far in the Eurozone. At that rate, as perdas bancarias levarían cada centavo dos impostos irlandeses polo menos durante os próximos tres anos.
"This debt would probably be manageable," escribiu Morgan Kelly, Professor of Economics at University College Dublin, "had the Irish government not casually committed itself to absorb all the gambling losses of its banking system."
To avoid collapse, the government had to sign up for an –85 billion bailout from the EU-IMF and enter a four year program of economic austerity, monitored every three months by an EU/IMF team sent to Dublin.
Tamén se puxeron bens públicos no bloque de poxas. Os activos actualmente en consideración inclúen parts of Ireland's power and gas companies and its 25% stake in the airline Aer Lingus.
At one time, Ireland could have followed the lead of Iceland and refused to bail out its bondholders or to bow to the demands for austerity. But that was before the Irish government used ECB money to pay off the foreign bondholders of Irish banks. Now its debt is to the troika, and the troika are tightening the screws. In September 2013, they demanded another 3.1 billion euro reduction in spending.
Algúns ministros, con todo, resisten a eses recortes, que din que son politicamente inaplicables.
In The Irish Times o 31 de outubro de 2013, un antigo funcionario do FMI advertiu that the austerity imposed on Ireland is self-defeating. Ashoka Mody, former IMF chief of mission to Ireland, said it had become "orthodoxy that the only way to establish market credibility" was to pursue austerity policies. But five years of crisis and two recent years of no growth needed "deep thinking" on whether this was the right course of action. He said there was "not one single historical instance" where austerity policies have led to an exit from a heavy debt burden.
Austerity has not fixed Ireland's debt problems. Belying the rosy picture painted by the media, in September 2013 Antonio Garcia Pascual, chief euro-zone economist at Barclays Investment Bank, advertiu de que Irlanda pode necesitar pronto un segundo rescate.
Segundo John Spain, escribindo Central irlandesa en setembro de 2013:
The anger among ordinary Irish people about all this has been immense. . . . There has been great pressure here for answers. . . . Why is the ordinary Irish taxpayer left carrying the can for all the debts piled up by banks, developers and speculators? How come no one has been jailed for what happened? . . . [D]espite all the public anger, there has been no public inquiry into the disaster.
¿Bail-in por supertaxe ou soberanía económica?
En moitos sentidos, Irlanda é o punto cero para a captura de activos impulsada pola austeridade que agora arrasa o mundo. Todos os países da zona euro están endebedados. O problema é sistémico.
En outubro de 2013, un informe do FMI discutiu o equilibrio das contas dos gobernos da zona euro mediante un superimposto do 10% sobre todos os fogares da zona euro con riqueza neta positiva. Iso suporía a confiscación do 10% do aforro privado para alimentar o insaciable casino bancario.
The authors said the proposal was only theoretical, but that it appeared to be "an efficient solution" for the debt problem. For a group of 15 European countries, the measure would bring the debt ratio to "acceptable" levels, i.e. comparable to levels before the 2008 crisis.
Unha crítica publicada en Gold Silver Worlds observado:
[O] informe desbota de inmediato o mito que os políticos e os principais medios de comunicación tratan de vender, é dicir, a crise está contida e as perspectivas económicas positivas para 2014.
. . . Prepárate, a realidade é que chegan máis rescates, confiscacións e represión financeira, ao contrario do que intenta contar a propaganda das boas novas.
A more sustainable solution was proposed by Dr Fadhel Kaboub, Assistant Professor of Economics at Denison University in Ohio. I n a letter posted in The Financial Times titled " O que necesita a zona euro son finanzas funcionales," he wrote:
The eurozone's obsession with "sound finance" is the root cause of today's sovereign debt crisis. Austerity measures are not only incapable of solving the sovereign debt problem, but also a major obstacle to increasing aggregate demand in the eurozone. The Maastricht treaty's "no bail-out, no exit, no default" clauses essentially amount to a joint economic suicide pact for the eurozone countries.
. . . Desafortunadamente, a probabilidade dunha solución política rápida para modificar o tratado da UE é altamente improbable. Polo tanto, o escenario máis probable e menos doloroso para [os países insolventes] é a saída da eurozona combinada co impago parcial e a devaluación dunha nova moeda nacional. . . .
A lección para levar é que a soberanía financeira e a adecuada coordinación das políticas entre as autoridades fiscais e monetarias son os requisitos previos para a prosperidade económica.
Facendo fronte a Goliat
Ireland could fix its budget problems by leaving the Eurozone, repudiating its blanket bank guarantee as "odious" (obtained by fraud and under duress), and issuing its own national currency. The currency could then be used to fund infrastructure and restore social services, putting the Irish back to work.
Antes de abandonar a zona euro, Irlanda podería reducir a súa carga de intereses e ampliar o crédito local formando bancos de propiedade pública. o modelo do Banco de Dakota do Norte. O recén formado Foro de Banca Pública de Irlanda persegue esa opción. En Gales, que tamén se explotou para o seu carbón, está a organizar a mobilización por un banco público Arian Cymru "BERW' (Banca e Rexeneración Económica Gales).
O escritor irlandés Barry Fitzgerald, autor de Construíndo Cidades de Ouro, lanza o desafío á súa terra natal en termos arquetípicos:
Os irlandeses mobilízanse e espertan. Manteñen a memoria do ADN de tempos moi antigos, cando todos os homes e mulleres obedecían a regra de ouro de honrarse a si mesmos, aos outros e ao planeta. Recoñecen o valor desta harmonía no que se refire á banca. Intúen ao instante que a banca pública libre das mans sucias da tiranía da débeda usuraria forma parte da orde natural.
In many ways they could lead the way in this unfolding, as their small country is so easily traversed to mobilise local communities. They possess vast potential renewable energy generation and indeed could easily use a combination of public banking and bond issuance backed by the people to gain energy independence in a very short time.
Cando o espírito irlandés indomable se esperte, se organice e se mobilize, o país podería converterse no fillo de cartel non da austeridade, senón da prosperidade económica a través da soberanía financeira.
Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and author of 12 books, including WEB OF DEBT and its newly-released sequel, THE PUBLIC BANK SOLUTION. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com, http://PublicBankSolution.com, and http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.
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