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 i 16th centuries, to the mid-nineteenth century “potato famine” that was stvarno holokaust. 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.
Danas je Irska pod drugačijom vrstom tiranije, onom koju su nametnule banke i drugi trojka—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, javlja RTE.ie 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.
The Folly of Absorbing the Gambling Losses of the Banks
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.
U roku od dvije godine, jamstvo državne banke dovelo je Irsku do bankrota. Međunarodna tržišta novca više ne bi posuđivala irskoj vladi.
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, bankovni gubici uzeli bi svaki peni irskih poreza najmanje sljedeće tri godine.
“This debt would probably be manageable,” napisala je 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.
Javna imovina također je stavljena na dražbu. Imovina koja se trenutno razmatra uključuje 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.
Neki se ministri, međutim, opiru takvim rezovima, za koje kažu da su politički neizvodljivi.
In The Irish Times 31. listopada 2013., upozorio je bivši dužnosnik MMF-a 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, upozorio da bi Irskoj uskoro mogao trebati drugi paket pomoći.
Prema Johnu Spainu, pisanje u Irski središnji u rujnu 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 putem super-poreza ili ekonomske suverenosti?
Na mnogo načina, Irska je nulta točka za otimanje imovine potaknuto mjerama štednje koje sada hara svijetom. Sve zemlje eurozone grcaju u dugovima. Problem je sistemski.
U listopadu 2013. izvješće MMF-a raspravljalo je o uravnoteženju knjiga vlada eurozone putem superporeza od 10% za sva kućanstva u eurozoni s pozitivnim neto bogatstvom. To bi značilo zapljenu 10% privatne ušteđevine za hranjenje nezasitnog bankarskog kazina.
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.
Recenzija objavljena na Gold Silver Worlds promatranom:
Izvješće odmah razotkriva mit koji političari i glavni mediji pokušavaju prodati, tj. kriza je obuzdana i pozitivni gospodarski izgledi za 2014.
. . . Pripremite se, stvarnost je da dolazi još više jamstava, konfiskacije i financijske represije, suprotno onome što propaganda dobrih vijesti pokušava reći.
A more sustainable solution was proposed by Dr Fadhel Kaboub, Assistant Professor of Economics at Denison University in Ohio. In a letter posted in The Financial Times titled “Ono što eurozoni treba su funkcionalne financije," napisao je:
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.
. . . Nažalost, vrlo je malo vjerojatna vjerojatnost brzog političkog rješenja za izmjenu ugovora o EU. Stoga je najvjerojatniji i najmanje bolan scenarij za [insolventne zemlje] izlazak iz eurozone u kombinaciji s djelomičnim bankrotom i devalvacijom nove nacionalne valute. . . .
Zaključna lekcija je da su financijski suverenitet i odgovarajuća koordinacija politike između fiskalnih i monetarnih vlasti preduvjeti za ekonomski prosperitet.
Suprotstavljanje Golijatu
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.
Osim napuštanja eurozone, Irska bi mogla smanjiti svoje kamatno opterećenje i proširiti lokalne kredite osnivanjem banaka u javnom vlasništvu, na model Banke Sjeverne Dakote. Novonastali Forum javnog bankarstva Irske teži toj opciji. U Walesu, koji je također eksploatiran zbog svog ugljena, mobilizaciju za javnu banku organizira Arian Cymru ‘BERW’ (Bankarstvo i ekonomska obnova Walesa).
Irski pisac Barry Fitzgerald, autor knjige Izgradnja zlatnih gradova, baca izazov svojoj domovini u arhetipskim terminima:
Irci se mobiliziraju i bude. Oni čuvaju DNK sjećanje na davna vremena, kada su svi muškarci i žene poštovali zlatno pravilo poštivanja sebe, jedni drugih i planeta. Oni prepoznaju vrijednost ovog sklada u odnosu na bankarstvo. Oni odmah intuitiraju da je javno bankarstvo oslobođeno uprljanih ruku lihvarske dužničke tiranije dio prirodnog poretka.
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.
Kad se nesalomljivi irski duh probudi, organizira i mobilizira, zemlja bi mogla postati primjer ne štednje, već gospodarskog prosperiteta kroz financijski suverenitet.
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Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Institut za javno bankarstvo, and author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt, u Rješenje javne banke, her latest book, she explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her blog articles are at EllenBrown.com.
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