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The Daily PollTHE PLANET IS facing a future of more extreme weather events and increases in temperature as a result of global warming.
Evidence in a recent report shows Earth is expected to warm by at least 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels over the next 20 years, which scientists say would cause increasing heat waves, longer warm seasons and shorter cold seasons.
It will take global co-operation and a drastic reduction in emissions to reduce this figure and thereby reduce the most severe impacts of climate change.
This is an enormous issue and task facing the planet – which means it can also be a cause of concern and stress for people.
As the recent UN climate report outlines, however, there is some reason for hope as a strong and sustained reduction in emissions would limit climate change.
So today we’re asking: How worried are you about the climate crisis?
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Learned lesson … We should have left Anglo Irish bank fail and to hell with the bond holders.
Chrissie wouldn’t allow all the bondholders to lose out. All the filthy rich P igs in NY, London and Germany want paying. They should have lost out, bad investment.
It wasn’t her call.
It was and always was Cowan/Lenihan.
€31 billion that will never be recoverable.
Cowen should be locked up for life.
Instead he’s sitting on a cushy board position at Topaz.
“It was and always was Cowan/Lenihan.”
True. But it was then Kenny/Noonan that converted it into sovereign debt that will cost us up to double that amount by the time its repaid by our grandkids.
This woman is a snake
I don’t know what’s wrong with ye all. We borrowed the money and now we we are paying it back.
What did ye idiots expect? FREE FU*king money???????….
You are obviously economically illiterate……
@ Luke Stalker.. He’s considerably economically illiterate…
The IMF and ECB are neo liberal capitalist institutions who promote the fantasy that Euros are a scarce resource when it fact it is created at will on the keyboards of central and commercial banks.
Modern fiat money has no intrinsic value, is created primarily on computer keyboards and so largely exists as electronic account entries.
All financial assets are matched by an equal liability and so cancel each other out and ultimately net to zero. What remains is the real wealth of goods and services primarily produced by the working class through their labour. Financial assets (money) is a claim on that real wealth and therein lies its power.
So Lagarde peddles the hard line that no debt relief is possible for Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal etc. in the full knowledge that the debt was created via the simple act of keystrokes which can be reduced or cancelled as easily as it was made.
The reason that the debt is such a burden for these Eurozone nations is that it is effectively a debt in a foreign currency which must be earned with real resources (e.g. labour) or borrowed externally also to be repaid ultimately with the real resources of the citizens.
In contrast, a sovereign currency issuing nation e.g. U.K. can afford any debt denominated in its own currency at it is source of that currency and creates it at will. This is why the U.K. was able to absorb an enormous bank bailout totaling £850 billion and yet this ‘debt burden’ did not cause a sovereign default or force the U.K. to seek IMF loans.
Exactly, the generosity of our European “partners” Would mean a whole lot more if they didn’t control the supply of money.
What’s the point in playing by the rules if we get nothing out of it
Patronising b1tch its rubbing salt in the wound having her here. She won’t take part in the Debt Conference and is very good at telling everyone else to take a hit but never the IMF itself.
Had her snout in the trough in her own country too!
We didn’t all borrow the money, though most of us will have to pay it back. Of course it wasn’t just bankers and developers. Everyone in Ireland sitting in a home worth more than a million euro is a beneficiary of the property casino. There are more than 120 BILLION euro on deposit in Irish banks. Lots of people partied. Lots of people continue to reap the rewards. Lots of people didn’t and far more people will have to pay the debts of the propertied classes for decades to come. Don’t blame Lagarde, Merkel or Cowan. Is your home worth tens of thousands more than it was last year? Where did you think that value came from??? The Property Fairy?
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Pity we still need to keep borrowing to keep the country running, otherwise we’d be done with bonds, commitments to repay and couldn’t care less about our credit rating.
Reality is such a pain in the arse. It spoils every political argument.
I wont be voting for any party that can’t guarantee to scrap or reorganise the current ‘rent allowance’ system in Ireland.
It’s sound like a teacher/parent at the end of a telling off. “Now what have you learn from this?” You will tell them what you think they want to hear in the hope they’ll go away.
I’m expecting a lot of news reports filled with “Ireland is an example to us all” type quotes.
Cue cynical face….
And there wont have been one single worker (bondholder subsidiser) at the meeting
Lessons learned, the joke really is on Ireland. Tell these people to go away. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Irish taxpayer is paying for this.
Oh don’t forget to put in your receipts Chrissie. .. the Irish Tax payer will need them to verify that you were here……
Tell them to take Irish Water home when they leave.
IW is Endas idea, nothing to do with the IMF.
Swanky water charges were brought in at the insistence of the troika.
Every single country that ever took a bailout from the IMF ended up with the privatisation of their water.
That’s a 100% record.
We have no government in Ireland, just a bunch of Euro-lapdogs.
A great leader would not bow & scrape before these nefarious, manipulative Eurocrats.
Sorry francie these “Eurocrates” are thw IMF based in and directed by …the good old USA
A contract is a contract and a debt is a debt, and if the borrower goes bust, you don’t get paid. Except where the EU is involved, in which case the contract doesn’t matter, you get the sovereign governments to cover the debt, and then you preach to people about how a contract is a contract and debt is a debt.
This is exactly what a government official should have stood up and said at the IMF visit press conference today. A little bit of back bone would go a long way.
The lessons we have learned?! Yes. Don’t trust politicians and their rich banker bosses, ever. The rich get massively richer during “Austerity” and finally, Trickle down economics are a scam.
If our government had any courage they should say no more money and deport them.
A debt, is debt. Unless you are a banker. Then it can be transferred to the poorer people.
‘I’ borrowed NOTHING. I didn’t build houses, I didn’t play on the stock market and I certainly didn’t borrow millions from the bank. I worked, paid my taxes and my bills. I do NOT own any of this debt.
With Greece the way it is and Italy, Spain, Portugal and France in a bit of a fix we are showing growth and determination. Having the highest growth in Europe and also financially screwed we should rock the boat on the markets and shake the euro. Angela will do everything in her power to protect her godforsaken euro!
Of course, Germany is the only country in the Euro area to benefit most from the euro.
The Euro will eventually collapse, we have get out Punts back and the sooner the better
Time for true leadership Kenny, Honohan & Noonan, confront these people now – threaten the Euro unless we can achieve unambiguous & very substantial sovereign debt reversals/ forgiveness on behalf of the Irish people. When you are out-of-power please don’t try to pretend afterwards that you wanted to do this but had been ‘overruled’.
It is not a good time to buy Dollars, Sterling or Swis francs…..but should be good for Irelands tourism market.
At times like this we could do with Charlie to stand up for us
@Kate. You have to be joking
@ Gus
You are right. As shown in “Charlie” on RTE last night, currency union ( after the fall of the wall) was always for political reasons. It did not make sense economically for so many diverse countries to have the same currency, but the politicians didn’t care … to them it made sense politically
Isn’t it ironic, the MAJORITY of Ireland’s trade is OUTSIDE the Euro, and yet our Europhiliac government couldn’t wait to sign up. Interest rates were then decided by Germany which were far too low, and which poured fuel on an already booming property market
There over here to talk about the euro coz its f%cked
We learned not to trust Europe and what should we have done different, well burning some bondholders would have been a good start.
You’re right Peter, we’ve learned the hard way to never trust Europe again.
I hope that’s the real lesson we keep in mind.
“A debt is a debt it is a contract” so how is it the “wealthy” can exit bankruptcy and leave their debts behind them? Yet the ordinary people will still be saddled with their debt when they cannot pay. It’s a contract for the ordinary person but not for the “wealthy” class who can restart all over again. Likewise it’s a “contract” for poor old Ireland!!! whose efforts enabled the wealthier states to escape the consequences.
we don’t want her here.. feck off Chrissie….
I am very sure that Lagarde would like this to go away but if syriza win at the weekend she will have to deal with the issue for the first time, the greeks have a precedent in the 1953 conference at which the fore runner to the IMF were present and together with other countries ( US, France, UK, Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland to name but a few ) agreed to cut german debt in half, they further agreed that no interest would be charged on the balance and that payments could only be made from budget surplus, in other words the germans could not be asked to borrow money to make the payments, the payment period was also extended significantly in the hope that the Marshall plan pumping money into germany leading to inflation would erode the balance. In this case a Debt was not a Debt and Syriza seeking to revive this conference is certainly the only concrete move to end this mess that has come out of europe, The conferences and pretty speeches by lagarde and other politicians have done nothing other than deepen the crisis as it becomes clearer that these people really do not have a clue. This idea is innovative, it worked for germany, it is certainly worth discussing and not a simple dismissive statement from a woman who has herself offered nothing.
Well said. All of Germany needs to be reminded of this.
This where we should all be protesting outside.
She looks like Arsene Wenger in drag :)
She looks like good craic
Enda’s in for a bit of oral from Christine!
Even if she doesn’t look like she has one
As Geraldine Kennedy said fcuk
Surprise surprise no debt relief a debt is a debt its a contract she’s a yoke if I ever came across 1! Ya we learned a few things like our government will bend over and take it no problem our bankers can do what they like with no consequences because the people will cover the debt with no say in anything thanks hun you and your imf really looked after us nice1!
At Christmas it’s was quietly released that the government was abandoning the move for retrospective bank recapitalisation. Government supporters on this site claimed a debt conference outlined by Noonan was the way to go.
The lying and BS never stops.
Neither do you.
Amos have you a point to make?
Do you?
I see,just childish responses.Have a good day at playschool.
I will.
Wait, the main news here is, that Benot Coevre, is due to attend todays conference, yet he REFUSE’S to ATTEND INQUIRY HEARINGS!!! Himself and Mario Daghi, should be made stand before that inquiry!
These people are parasites, nothing else. Lagarde have you seen the state of our Health System after your imposed austerity programme??? The sooner we are out of this ‘EU’ the better. Next we have TTIP to look forward to, thanks Europe.
The fact that the Lisbon vote was run twice shows how much Europe cares about the paddies
This woman made a particularly odd speech last May with a sinister message…
What happened 20/7/14? Why was it a sinister message?
Its the content of the speech…
1:22 – “Now I’m going to test your numerology skills by asking you to think about the magic seven”
1:34 – “Most of you will know that seven is quite a number”
2:24 – “2014, you drop the zero, fourteen, two times, seven”
4:08 – “It will mark the 70th anniversary, 70th anniversary, drop the zero, seven, of the Bretton Woods Conference that actually gave birth to the IMF” (7 + 0 = 7)
4:22 – “And it will be the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall, 25th..” (2 + 5 = 7)
4:38 – “It will also mark the 7th anniversary of the financial market jitters”
5:08 – “After those seven miserable years, weak and fragile”
5:14 – “We have seven strong years”
5:43 – “Now I don’t know if the G7 will have anything to do with it” (G is also the 7th letter of the alphabet)
The reference to 7 bad years and 7 good years has biblical significance. Obviously Irelands good years were wasted and now we have to pay the price.
Old Testament says the master must release the slave after seven years and not to let him go empty handed.., this makes up one part of the Jewish Torah
Only proves that she is an eejit, that is all…
“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times”. Matthew 8:22
Seven represents perfection an d is found 735 times in the Bible.
6X7=42 and that proves nothing unless you say o yes that is how many letters are in the name of God and there is something in the bible about every 42nd or 7th name in the bible collected and when translated will make a sentence, when translated into the names meaning.
You will find meaning in anything even starring at your own navel long enough, some of these politicians and co know this and they use conspiracy theories just to muddy the water in order to hide their corrupt greed. That is why they go weird every so often because they know people will read into it, it is a bit of fun for them, take a look at Denver airport?
Denver Airport is steeped in the Occult, It is 39° North (13+13+13). Satanists will use sacred numbers that are used in the Bible to carry out their Evil acts by encoding these numbers in dates and figures and have them published on Wiki. 777 firemen died in NYC fireservice up until 7/11 and on 9/11 343 firemen died. 343 = 7×7×7.. London Tube bombs 7 /7 Occured 7 July 2+0+0+5 = 777. MH17 occured 17 July 2+0+1+4 = 17, 17 -7- 7 (17 Represents immorality and like other master numbers it is not reduced) 17 Killed in Paris attack…
But when your dealing with only 9 numbers then picking certain events and dates will always give certain numbers, the rest is just picking the right ones you want, as out of every 9 events then one will always match up???
Yeah lets pay back all your rich hedge fund, vulture capitalist, speculator mates Lagarde while forcing us to close hospital beds and take medical cards of sick children. F**k all y’all.
So we are all good boys and girls behaving ourselves and paying our taxes! How patronising can you get!
This from a woman who gave out to the Greeks for not paying their taxes and yet doesn’t pay any taxes on her own salary! Legarde is merely using this job as a spring board for the French presidency in 2018
Feck off Christine…
Always the people who get hurt while politicians slap each other on back saying “well done old boy” b@srards.
Not always their backs, take Lapgate for an example???
That is because the people here let those in government do anything and let them walk all over them, no other country in the world is such cowards to their own government.
The ECB made and told banks here to accept Euro loans from them to boost the euro on the markets as the loans were cheap because they were borrowing at cheap interest. Then when things went wrong Enda started to apologise to the E.U. for Ireland’s over spending but yet it was the ECB shoving the loans into the banks to loan out, just to boost the Euros value…
Then Obama told us to take loans from the IMF AFTER the last government gave millions to Greece and Italy because the ECB told us to and now we are still messing with the IMF who have not got a clue about Ireland and a government who have no balls or bark, look at Iceland.
Then the IMF is giving loans now to Ukraine to buy weapons, not food or medical supplies but weapons… How the hell is that right.
Then “Ireland is the IMF’s star pupil”, because there is no fight in us or the government and we the Irish are just willing to take anything from them, while other countries have more pride about themselves and protest but all we do is say yes and more please… And repay the bondholders what they lost after their insurance pays for their loss and then we give them a billion extra, what for???
The fact that the Journal’s headline describes Ireland as a “pupil” tells us that the author has become very comfortable with our overlords and by the tone taken in this article, we should all be well happy that we’ve been screwed right up the a**. The recovery is here we’re constantly told while most serious economists are predicting a total collapse in the near future.
If all they are focusing on is bank debt, one third of our overall debt, they’ve learned nothing
Being elected and making stupid mistakes are two different things. Do you think because someone is elected amos then they have the right to do as they please .
No, but the point is; the IMF would never have been here if it was’nt for gross incompetence by FF.
Amos in case you missed it FG throughout all the years of FF’s incompetence was calling for more spending and greater tax cuts.
They are all as incompetent as each other.FF does not have exclusivity in this regard.
Galway tent, brown envelopes, cosying up to bankers and developers. Please.
FG and Dennis O’Brien what’s the difference.
Big difference, FF brought the IMF to our shores.
Remind me did FG vote for the bank guarantee? Did FG also convert the promissory note into sovereign debt?
You still choose to ignore the fact that FG was calling for greater spending and deeper tax cuts during the boom years.All on the Dail record,so quite hard to rewrite history.
Remind me why the IMF came to this country.
Answering a question with a question,inspired.
Inspiration needs to be acquired.
FG / lab copper fastened the troika aftsr FF brought them on..
Under the watchful eye of the ECB. It was’nt a bailout, it was a very expensive loan.
Because Obama told us to take a loan out, because debt is the best way of control.
Fine gael than became their lapdogs AMOS BREARLY
She said the Irish people are heroes surly she means victims of corruption defraud bad management.
Really does this woman think were morons – what utter clap trap – bet she and Noonan never had a day worrying about were the money for the next meal is going to come from.Our Media are some lick arses
Told you before Christine..Feck Off you wagon!
Well christine, water charges will fail and you can come over and chastise us over it.
We’ll f@@@ you in the liffey.
If the likes of Michael Collins were around, she would have to up her security.
What a snake.
Bend over and keep smiling Ireland…
Not another frivolous simpleton gathering, people showing off their levels of arrogance with attempts of “trying” to fix a problem which can’t be fixed due to a conflict of interest.
A DEBT IS A DEBT!
Dear Christine,
I agree a Debt is a Debt but US Law dictates that it is shared between the lender and the borrower. Both share the losses.The US is an advanced Democracy. The EU places all the DEBT burden on the borrower (citizen) like 12th century SERF law. We don’t want EU SERF law here.
Greece, when it joined the Euro, borrowed like there was no tomorrow. For example outside the Euro there was no way they would have been able to stage the 2004 Olympics. Athens Airport, which pre Euro, had leaks and rats in it was suddenly transformed into state of the art. Money poured into the country
Creditors were saturating Greece with cash because Greece was in a monetary union with one of the most strongest and most competitive counties in the world, Germany and thus they felt secure with what they were doing. But we all know what happened next.
If Greece had kept the humble drachma, these same lenders would have been much more cautious about lending to Greece and Greece would not be where it is now i.e. saddled with a mountain of debt
Just noticed this – one other point is that it was the Greek government who borrowed of private investors and europe, so the debt was actually accumulated by the state, which could not afford to pay back, that is when it was restructured so that private creditor got paid in full, and the ECB took the hit. Ireland did not have such a problem, the entire debt was private. What would happen is that the bad gamble on Greece would be unsustainable if the private Irish Banks did not pay back the ECB, so in essence we had a billion times worse situation than Greece (nationalising someone else’s debt), but then followed the bad deal made by greece afterwards (extending the loan over 2 generations). And to top it off – even greece got a writedown of the initial debt.
It is so simple, but why was there no revolution in Ireland to stop this, when everyone could see it happening?
In the soon to be immortal words of Geraldine Kennedy f_ _k off IMF.
When I saw “A Europe-wide conference” in the headline I thought it was another Journal story about Leo Varadkar.
That woman looks scary
She’s as useful as an ashtray on a motor bike. She’s as welcome as a fart in a space suit.
Nice of Ms. Lagarde to patronise us on her visit to Dublin today.
You better don’t cry, you better don’t pout…
She called it a Journey, but a journey has a destination, and an end, we have only an idea , a hope for our destination, and no idea yet when we may reach it, no end in sight for the poor and the new poor this journey has created, but there is no hurry,it’s still quite comfortable in first class.
F#€k off La Garde
Hope for there sake the eu never needs the irish vote again.they can take it out of my cold dead hands.
Imf is gone to the dogs !!
Keep telling Paddy he’s doing great while you dip his pockets and all that’s left in them is fluff.
Narrow legalism trumps equity, fairness and national solidarity and mutual support within the EU or with the IMF.
Yes, the CBU and the ECB failed to regulate, the euro created the ideal conditions for a credit bubble but the very many in Ireland who obtained no benefit from the boom, pay the price of the bust.
Smile as the country is shafted. Grin and bear it. Forget about fairness and reasonableness. Forget about the failures of the ECB and the European Commission. Forget about the imposition of private bank debt and the poor.
W*nkers!
Imagine if we had borrowed off the Russians like some papers rumoured Ireland would.
Mother Russia’s tanks would be lining the Irish coast, and no international power would dispute that they were legitimately here to collect their coupons.
Stay here, just in case FF get back in.
Yet the present incumbents followed the plan laid out by FF and the troika.
Well, they were elected.
Are you claiming they were elected to carry on the work of FF like they are?
Work of FF? What work?
Based on using lies to get in? And the fact here that we as a nation will always choose a F.G. or F.F. government if one upsets us, while the both are just the same in reality.
Why is there a pic of Doc Brown as the thumbnail?
What patronizing nonsense from a proxy for the bankers, bondholders and ECB.The Irish people were mugged by the IMF, poorly served by our politicians and thrown to the wolves by our European partners. Would the Germans be so stupid and nieve? Not in 60 billion years not to even suggest euro.
Patronising b…..ch!!!!!
Maybe it’s just me, but she always reminds me of a female? version of Mr Burns!
This government are embarrassing, they run after those who have the money and the power and are like butt kissing prostitutes to them but when it comes to those who voted for them or who didn’t, they just have contempt and treat us like a piggy bank for what they want…
“A debt is a debt, and is a contract”. However if undue influence can’t be disproven by the Lender/ Enforcer then the Debt can be set aside…
7.5 billion a year on interest payments and rising fir the next 30 years thanks IMF. That’s hiw many roads hiw many hospitals how many people left to die in ireland?
The Troika should have realised Ireland had no idea what a bond really was.
Reading this forum, it is clearly still the case.
We understand borrowing money, getting into our pocket and spending it. It is the paying back part that we can’t get our heads around, particularly if we don’t have any money. I mean, that should mean we don’t have to pay it back right?
Darn, I still don’t get these bond things. Explain them again, I’m Irish.
Irish people understand loans and paying them back, we’ve been doing such things for a long time…..the difficulty is understanding why they’re paying back the gambling debts of others who refuse to take a loss on their gamble.
What makes it even more frustrating for them are those who keep saying that we are obliged to pay the Bondholder debts and get all sweaty if someone says we shouldn’t be paying such debt.
http://youtu.be/q7bAfjKy5Z4
The indebted entity simply needs to default.
Once you step in and say you will guarantee that entity, you then effectively become the entity and cannot shake the debt off unless you default yourself and trigger all your own debts into a default event according to their contracts.
Not at this point. All the Bondholders have been paid and have ridden off into the sunset with our money.
To pay for this we are selling Government bonds on the market, paying interest to the buyer immediately and destroying the money we get for them, this is to delete the over printing of Euros that the ECB told us to print and funnel straight into the banks.
We sold €500 million of Government bonds on the 23/12/2014(it made no headlines) and the €500 million that we got for them was immediately destroyed by our central bank(that made no headlines either)….it’s gone and in a few years time when the buyer comes back to cash in…we will have to borrow €500 million to pay him back. We will do this every year for many years and at it’s high point we will be selling and destroying €2 Billion a year in Government bonds and Euros. This is no longer to satisfy Bondholders but the ECB…to take €70 Billion out of circulation.
That is the deal that Noonan did with the ECB to make an illegally organised debt(his own words) ….legal……if it was illegal when the deal was done, it should have stayed illegal and been wiped.
Noonan doesn’t play ball for Ireland…he plays for the EU Premier League like all the EU primadonnas.
Just because he said a debt was illegal doesn’t mean a court of law would agree with him.
Ask the bondholders and their lawyers. Ask Argentina.
If you think you can tear up bond contracts when the entire global financial system is built upon them and disagrees with you, you’re just being deliberately ignorant.
You’re missing the point…the Bondholders have been paid already, we are now burning currency to please the ECB who pushed us to cover the banks and would allow no write down. We should now take our fight to the ECB.
so Gahan we just just accept everything that’s been thrown at us and say nothing?
A debt is always a debt.
If the borrower is insolvent the lender only gets a dividend. That’s insolvency Law!
Our Government, the EU and IMF have broken all international Laws by forcing the Irish Taxpayers to pay the debts of corrupt Bankers, Developers and Builders who over- traded.
In our Company Law Legislation there is a provision that Directors who over trade can be charged with “reckless trading” !
Bertie Ahern told the then Regulator not to interfere with the Irish Banks.
Bertie is as guilty as the Regulator!
Not one Politician, not one Banker, not one Developer, not one builder has been charged and found guilty of over trading and Financial Treason.
The Laws of Ireland are a joke and can only be used by the super wealthy!
If Fine Gael do not take action against the Bankers Developers and builders before the next election they will not be trusted and re- elected.
Before the election they promised they would clean up the Quangos.
Germany got a 50% debt write off after World War 2.
Ireland contributed to the DEBT write off for Germany.
German’s answer is ” transfer unsecured debts due to German Bankers to all Irish Taxpayers ”
Brian Lenihan (RIP) had the right idea. nationalise Anglo Irish Banks then write down all unsecured Bondholders. The Bondholders could have been converted into either Ordinary Shares or Preference Shares. Yet Brian Cowen refused and instead made us all liable!
He now draws a huge pension of over €100,000 which we pay.
We are like a good obedient dog…The contempt these people hold us in is quiet frankly insulting…
Having said that It’s a good thing though we don’t try to renegotiate our debt deal. The sight of that political whimp Enda Kenny might inspire the IMF to increase the interest rates…
Ah aren’t we only marvellous
have your say