@Peter Hughes: not really voted for by us….just the banks handing out money willy nilly to the masses (knowing that at the end of the day, they’d get their money back), who’d say no to money on a plate as it were. The only ones left high and dry were carpenters, sub contractors and taxpayers etc.

@michal heba: And the last one which started with sub prime mortgages in the USA, didn’t affect the USA?

@Peter Hughes: we have been told not to burn senior bond holders(Germany). they have invested in to Irish banks and risked their money. When everything collapsed they wanted money back and they got it.

@michal heba: boom there you go! Spot in

@Peter Hughes: the money Irish banks lent recklessly had been lent to them recklessly. Why were only the Irish people punished, why was the burden not shared by all involved in the recklessness.

@Thomas Harrington: I presume you mean “spot on”

@Peter Hughes: the cause of the crisis while not irrelevant is not the discussion, the discussion is that Policies of austerity were not helpful and had we borrowed to fund large infrastructural projects, to stimulate our economy as the parties of the left were ridiculed for suggesting we would have come out of recession in 5 years instead of the ten it took.
This was exactly the financial approach promoted by gerry addams and sinn fein at the time and they were told it was “shinnernomics”

@michal heba: No. These is an overall consensus that the people payd for the banking debth. Bailing out banks and big corporations won’t fly this time. The political class knows that they will have fascists governments in half of European countries by the end of the year with new austerity. People will not take it again. Politicians think only amount their buts.

@NotMyIreland: it was “sub prime” lending practices worldwide, the USA just popped first. I don’t know the breakdown of private mortgages vs developers here. But either way people borrowed what they couldn’t pay back with the infamous anglo being the worst. I believe their customers were mostly commercial

@Peter Hughes: You seem to have forgotten that a lot of that debt was unsecured bonds. The EU forced Ireland to guarantee these so German, Dutch and other major EU nations didn’t have to prop up their banks, insurance companies and pension funds.

@michal heba: We could have left some of the banks go to the wall until Brian Lenihan nationalised the debt. This turned it into a potential sovereign default and meant the taxpayers owed the money instead of the bank. Also inflation is low now and we aren’t really seeing risk of an overheated economy and runaway inflation so the rules are much looser.

@King B: Thats an extreme example.

@Gerard Carthy: a ton of extra cash chasing the same limited resources. How can that not lead to inflation?

@Arthur O’Neill: Because ultimately you end up like Zimbabwe or Venezuela.

@Fintan O’flaois: if misused by dictatorships yes. Used correctly no different to borrowing. Printing by the state vs borrowing from private banks – both scenarios give a cash injection to the economy, which will be redacted over time.

@Arthur O’Neill: Irresponsible monitory policy is not exclusive to dictatorships, however, in democracies sane voices then to prevail before the “money printers” destroy the economy. The benefits of controlling money supply and maintaining modest inflationary targets are well established – countries that do it tend to prosper, countries that don’t tend to struggle.
Milton Friedman advocated what you’re suggesting on the proviso that the excess money supply would be retired at a time of fiscal surplus, so the net supply of money would remain in balance over time. Unfortunately, I just can’t imagine our government retiring money supply at a time of surplus, so we’d end up in an inflationary bubble, a la Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

@Arthur O’Neill: you don’t have to look to dictatorships for examples of governments placing too much emphasis on growing an economy in nominal terms and not enough on inflation. It was a curse in almost every advanced economy in the 70s and 80s. Germany in many ways showed the benefits of controlling inflation and how it could be done. Imagine the panic buying of toilet roll if we had hyperinflation :-)

@Arthur O’Neill: But only one increases the actual amount of money in the economy. Printing money in general leads to negative inflationary and devaluing effects. Hyperinflation is not just based on the responsibility of those in power but the world economic view of the value and stability of a currency, if you just keep printing your own it is of less value to people. So it devalues making everything purchased abroad more expensive. Putting you back in the same place as you began. That’s normal circumstances. But now is different. Money will need to be printed by everybody.

@Arthur O’Neill: I think this is a potential solution … but not with countries acting unilaterally. If all the major central banks agree to act simultaneously and print x amount per person in every country, then there will be no currency devaluation but there will be money across the world to resuscitate the worldwide economy.

@Arthur O’Neill: that is what the ECB are doing along with America and other major countries. This will sooner or later feed high inflation high interest rates major defaults by poorest countries and the collapse of the world’s financial system. Sorry to bring bad news but economically expanding money supply in a contracting economy is suicide unsustainable and for the sake of a short term illusion of dealing with a problem is ultimately going to compound an already bad situation