Oh the Irish and their bad luck...lets have a drink and pray that this day will whisper itself asleep for the darkness that we experienced today is only a token of the pain that surrounds us. In the carnival,the sad clown sees the child's eye and wonders why his loneliness was caused by the spirits that lay beside the road to harvest his best dreams for others.Rainbow after rainbow passes but we can't see it because the clouds within our hearts take us into the tarnished souls of the past and present. Sounds Irish don't you think..so I must have a little in me like a dagger twisted on a Bronx street corner in the hot month of July in year before the Beatles arrived with their phony British songs and their phony British smiles.Get the fuck out of Ireland and make us whole again..under the rain and sun,sun and rain...give us back our fields and language.Lets look towards America..land of hope and dreams.
Disaster really hit the island in 2007 when the greedy Irish,Wall St. infected,prayed at the alter of American style capitalism and embarrassed Irish Americans like me who had respect for a country that outlasted their colonial,piggish neighbor. The Celtic Tiger(period of high economic growth) has fallen because they wanted to be like us without knowing that we have been in trouble for the last thirty years(salaries haven't kept up with inflation,staggering debt).Ireland went beyond American style capitalism when it reduced corporate taxes to 12.5% and some manufacturing to 10%. Yes, many companies came and took advantage of an educated workforce and a tax structure that made grown men cry.But this growth also lead to high inflation,especially in the housing/property market.At the end of 2008,inflation was at 4.4% and its citizens had the highest level of household debt to disposable income in the developed world at 190%(lending American style with no regulation and high equity to debt ratios).
The crashing property market was caused by Irish financial institutions(sound familiar) that had substantial exposure to property developers in their loan portfolios.These property developers are currently suffering from substantial over-supply of property, much still unsold, while demand has evaporated. The employment growth of the past that attracted many immigrants from Eastern Europe and propped up demand for property has been replaced by rapidly rising unemployment. Irish property developers speculated billions of Euros in overvalued land parcels such as urban brownfield and greenfield sites. They also speculated in agricultural land which, in 2007, had an average value of €23,600 per acre ($32,000 per acre or €60,000 per hectare) which is several multiples above the value of equivalent land in other European countries. Lending to builders and developers has grown to such an extent that it equals 28% of all bank lending, or "the approximate value of all public deposits with retail banks. Effectively, the Irish banking system has taken all its shareholders' equity, with a substantial chunk of its depositors' cash on top, and handed it over to builders and property speculators.....By comparison, just before the Japanese bubble burst in late 1989, construction and property development had grown to a little over 25 per cent of bank lending."
On 30 September 2008, the Irish Government declared a guarantee that intends to safeguard the Irish banking system. The Irish State guarantee, backed by taxpayer funds(just like us), covers "all deposits (retail, commercial, institutional and interbank), covered bonds, senior debt and dated subordinated debt".
In exchange for the bailout, the government did not take preferred equity stakes in the banks (which dilute shareholder value) nor did they demand that top banking executives' salaries and bonuses be capped, or that the banks' board members be replaced(sounds very similar to Obama wouldn't you say).
Sustained increases in the value of residential property during the 1990s and up to late 2006 was a key factor in the increase in personal wealth in Ireland, with Ireland ranking second only to Japan in personal wealth in 2006. However, residential property values and equities have fallen substantially since the beginning of 2007 and major declines in personal wealth are expected.
Ireland has been in recession since second quarter of 2008 and some commentators have claimed it is in a depression,The ESRI (Economic and Social Research Institute) predict an economic contraction of 14% by 2010 , however this number may have already been exceeded with GDP dropping 7.1% quarter on quarter during the fourth quarter of 2008, and a possible greater contraction in the first quarter of 2009 with the fall in all OECD countries with the exception of France exceeding the drop of the previous quarter. Unemployment is up 8.75% to 11.4%. In late 2010 Ireland has the world's highest gross external debt at 1,305% of GDP due to the operation of Monetary Financial Institutions, Government borrowing and the financial bailout and effective Nationalisation of one of Ireland's banks which were loaded with debt due to the Irish property bubble. This is similar to the Irish CSO mid-2010 data, suggesting a gross external debt of €430,000 per person.
I wonder if they were happier when they were poor financially but rich spiritually.Do they still sit in the bars and sing songs of love and conflict?Are they reading the newspapers/Internet(Financial times,Wall St.Journal) for new tips on investments like us? Do they blame the poor like the Republicans here for the meltdown?Did they securitize the subprime loans and bet against them as many,hard working citizens lost retirement funds? God bless us for we knew what we were doing and kept doing it because money makes us feels good when deep inside we don't feel good about ourselves.
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