Irelands main Industries, exporting over €90 billion worth of goods in 2014. Greece exports came to €27 billion in 2014.

pharmaceuticals
chemicals
computer hardware and software
food products
beverages and brewing
medical devices

Will, what do you call our agri sector?

yea Will, we’re very barren. we are exporting the best beef in the world and now the only EU country to be doing so to USA (the germans would especially miss it), our waters would be shipped to death by forgeign trawlers if it weren’t for the navy, now they want the water we drink as well.

nah, i’d say follow UK and leave the kip. we be far richer as a result, we have what they want. location as well, perfect for US multinationals and an ideal airbase. we will in fact be left with nothing if we remain. better to leave now while we have something left, rebuild it, then shut the doors in their face.

i would say Greece, Portugal and many of the eastern bloc countries have little to offer. Italy, i mean for a country that outputs fancy cars and products for insane prices to the world (how they themselves can afford them is anyones guess) and running debts of trillions? something not right. are they paying their bills?

Where once you would find a towel made in portugal, now turkey. Wine? very rarely see portuguese wine here, which is odd. they’re a tourist zone, not much else.

Well said John.

Like Ireland, much of Greece’s debt was imposed on the nation to cover the losses of financial speculation.

“The EU-IMF Troika forced a bankrupt country to take on further loan packages, allowing foreign banks to dump their bonds onto Greek taxpayers and trap Greek citizens in debt servitude. To add insult to injury, this was called a rescue.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11376031/Investors-have-woken-up-to-Greeces-nuclear-risk.html

This odious debt of the Ireland, Greece and Portugal etc should be written off immediately. If the ECB wants to reimburse private speculators for their failed gambles on Greek and Irish banks, then they should cover that cost themselves and not impose the debt on member nations.

The ECB should create the necessary currency to extinguish that illegitimate debt from the national balance sheets as an economic necessity and an ethical imperative. There is no practical roadblock to this as the money is simply a matter of keystrokes for the sovereign currency issuer.

Great stuff Paudi – but we now have a net international investment position of minus €176 billion.

And a national debt of €203+ billion – which is over 110% of our GDP.

Not that great….

Waffler your misinterpretation of what is contained in that article was already highlighted in a previous thread.

As was your claim that printing money would solve all our problems…

You forgot to mention our young people exported too.

“We have little or no industry either”
Are you fu*”ing serious? We have the potential to be an extremely wealthy country, if it wasn’t for the corrupt p*”cks running the place. Oil, gas, fish, meat, dairy the list goes on. Don’t be so stupid will!

ardi. Will’s economic figures are correct and don’t show a good overall picture. Or do you dispute them?

We have plenty of industry. The problem is that the Irish people are not the ones profiting from it.

Don’t forget financial and insurance related service exports… That’s 20% of our exports and growing.

Much more profitable as its generated purely on Irish talent rather than importing goods to process and re-export or extracting natural resources.

Ireland actually has an export driven economy more akin to Germany. Than a consumer driven one like the UK and USA.

@waddler nobody even bothers to read your boring deranged Marxist rantings anymore- the same old claptrap day in day out ! Get yourself a sandwich board & go for a bit of fresh air!

If they go can everybody stop using the word “Grexit” ?

On the contrary Avina. Your lack of understanding of the operation of the fiat currency monetary system and macro economy has been exposed on a number of occasions now .I’m happy to have the debate with you again now if you wish?

ardi. Glad you agree with the dreadful figures. Put simply, we have made a bad mess of our many good resources – and will pay for it, for generations.

“The Greeks have little or no industry other than tourism so they have no means of paying the debt. Forcing them to continue the bailout is only kicking the can down the road. They may as well let them exit the euro now or forgive more of the loans to an amount they can pay”

“They” = us. Any debt deal comes from us, because it is European taxpayers to whom the debt is owed. I know there’s some saying “let the ECB print the money” but (a) they can’t, (b) it’s undesirable, and ultimately still comes from us.

If the were to ECB “press the buttons on keyboard” as some people here seem to be suggesting, then all it will do is reduce Greek debts at the cost of destroying the value of everyone else’s money. Are you happy to have less spending power and your savings savaged, so that Greece can temporarily put off enacting the full package of reforms?

@Havardi
“Are you fu*”ing serious? We have the potential to be an extremely wealthy country, if it wasn’t for the corrupt p*”cks running the place. Oil, gas, fish, meat, dairy the list goes on. Don’t be so stupid will!”

We *are* an extremely wealthy country in spite of everything, though “oil, gas and fish” are not where Ireland is going to be making its money.

As I keep pointing out Waffler, and as you keep failing to grasp (or quite possibly intentionally disregarding), printing money would indeed work well in an economy that was entirely isolated from the rest of the world, where no imports were required and where you didn’t want any of your citizens to save money for old age etc..
In any other economy (pretty much every economy in the world) anything other than very limited QE can have disastrous long-term consequences.
“Easing means squeezing.”

Our problems can be summed up by us being run by schoolteachers and not by men and women with business experience.

Extremely wealthy?!

With massive debt (see posts), inadequate healthcare, loss making railways, corrupt/inept politicians and bankers etc. etc.

Are you seriously suggesting Ireland is not a wealthy country?

“With massive debt (see posts)”

Sure, but the key thing is that it’s massive debt we can actually service.

“inadequate healthcare”

Ireland spends more per capita than other European countries with demonstrably better healthcare systems than us. Money is not the problem. The problem is the cow-towing to the public sector unions who protected unnecessary admin staff from redundancy, and now we have a bloated, inefficient mess. We have a bunch of people at the lower/middle end of health system being paid far too much for far too little return, while we (somehow) can’t come up with enough money to get in world class consultants.

“loss making railways”

You can blame, again, Iarnród Éireann and its shambolic parent company Córas Iompair Éireann. While the privately-operated Luas races ahead, efficient and (mostly) well-run, the state-owned IE, in partnership with successive governments, has run our rail network into the ground, while its drivers earn world class wages. While the government has never taken rail investment seriously, IE still had enough thrown at it to be running a far far superior service. Again, money isn’t the issue here.

Eagle – I see you agree about healthcare and the railways. On debt – yes, serviceability is important.

However, debt’s sad and critical legacy is the curtailment of growth and investment – because the diversion of income/cash to service the debt, year after year.

Yes, we are a wealthy country compared to undeveloped ones…

John the programme forces them to be responsible – something new to them

QED Avina. You don’t understand how the fiat currency monetary systam and macro economy functions.

Every sovereign currency issuing state in the world creates new money each day through government spending. (printing money as you call it though it’s primarily electronic). This has been going on since 1971 (and in truth before) when the gold standard was dropped with no “disastrous long-term consequences”.

It is government spending that creates new money and puts it into circulation while taxation removes money from circulation and extinguishes it. Taxation is what ‘backs’ the currency. The government imposed tax liability creates a demand for the currency, ensures it is widely accepted and so gives the currency legitimacy.

In fact the only way the non-government sector in aggregate can accumulate savings (surplus) is if the government sector runs a deficit. The surplus exactly equals the deficit as it’s a national accounting equation. Historically if the government does balance the books and actually runs a surplus over a sustained period, it is almost inevitably followed by a recession. This is because the government surplus drains money from the private sector which is then replaced with private sector borrowing which is unsustainable. (Ireland was running a budget surplus in the 5 years prior to the 2008 crash and we know what happened then).

You’ll note that all these sovereign currency issuing nations (e.g. U.K, Denmark, Japan, Australia, Sweden, Mexico etc etc etc) are all trading successfully with many other nations with imports and exports flowing freely. There is no isolation.

What you fail to grasp is that there is no simple linear relationship between money supply and inflation (or debasing the currency) despite what the establishment vested interests would have us believe. The point at which inflation rises depends on the availability of real resources (goods & services) versus the actual demand for purchase.

Currently the Bank of Japan is holding about 40% of GDP’s worth of Japanese government ‘debt’. That means that the BoJ simply credited the Treasury accounts electronically via keystrokes. Not only is Japan not facing inflation it suffers from periodic deflationary episodes. The Bank of England is holding about 20% of GDP’s worth. This money was simply spent into their economies without any accompanying inflation above normal levels.

This is because the creation of new money is not in itself inflationary if there is sufficient real wealth (goods & services) to buy with that new money. This is especially true if the new money is directed to the productive sectors of the economy for example through infrastructural improvement which leads to GDP growth and so more availability of real resources to purchase. Another key factor which prevents inflation is large scale unemployment where the productive capacity of the economy is not close to its peak. In this scenario which we currently face in Ireland and across Europe, the labour of the unemployed can be purchased with newly created money with no risk of general inflation.

In fact the Eurozone is now facing deflation due to the fall in aggregate demand through 6 years of austerity despite the QE program over the past few years where €1.4 trillion in reserves has been keystroked into existence and made available at extremely low interest rates to the parasite banks whose greed and stupidity triggered the economic crisis in the first place.

You keep cutting and pasting the same stuff without really understanding what it means Waffler. Yes you’re right in that governments ‘create’ their own money, however this is done in precisely the sort of limited, controlled, sustainable and responsible way that I spoke about. It’s a very delicate balancing act though, and if the balance is tipped by excessive printing of money there are a whole raft of very negative consequences.

I’ll post this again as you obviously failed to absorb it the first time:

“QE cannot simply generate wealth, and the drawbacks and potential risks of even more QE will become greater the more money has been created already.”
“It will only buy more time. It does not solve the underlying economic problems.”

http://www.ecrresearch.com/world-economy/dangers-and-drawbacks-quantitative-easing

Waddler- you have gone into panic mode! The thoughts that the EU will call Greece’s bluff & send them packing is making you sprout out even more delusional drivel. To make matters worse for you & the looney bunch Ireland is beginning to recover!!! What are we going to do ? The people of Jobstown will cop on to us & realise that we were only using them as pawns to stir it up! No more arrests what are we going to do??? Murphy & Coppinger have been made to look foolish with their dopey comments, what else can we do? We could be facing the nightmare scenario that we & our small rent a mob flying squad may even be forced to get a job as the paying classes (workers) have had enough of our discredited & outdated rabble! It’s getting desperate, we may have to move to North Korea!

Will
You are incompetent

Greek bullshit has just ran into german reality :D

Not all of voted for the Lisbon Treaty

Yeah but were did the tax go. Who made that money

QED? Waffler you’ve proves nothing. You claim no one else understands how fiat currency works bar you? Even left wing economists, Krugman, Keynes, recognised that printing money led to inflation; they just hold that high inflation leads to low unemployment (proved false by Milton Friedman by the way). The only academic authority you have are blogs written by members of CPUSA whose brains stopped working back at Woodstock.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much ignorance wrapped up in arrogance as you and your buddy mike hall when you write on this site

@Mike Mostly multi-national exports no tax in us or revenue from such exports. Not an asset to our national economy exchequer wise; other than what taxes are derived from the workers.

Avina,
Your quote is correct in that QE cannot generate wealth. The 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.

As explained, the Bank of Japan is holding about 40% of GDP’s worth of Japanese government ‘debt’. That means that the BoJ simply credited the Treasury accounts electronically via keystokes.
In the U.S. the Federal Reserve has lent and spent $29,000 billion to rescue the financial system since its systemic collapse in 2008.
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_698.pdf

Ditto for the U.K. who conjured up £850 billion to shore up their financial system.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/163850bn-official-cost-of-the-bank-bailout-1833830.html

Is this your definition of “limited, controlled, sustainable and responsible…. delicate balancing act”?

Cont…..These massive sums of money were simply keystroked into existence to shore up the crumbling banking and financial systems and guess what? No inflation. And we are in fact facing into deflation.
Did you miss the part where I explained that the only way that the non-government sector in aggregate can accumulate financial assets is if the government sector runs a budget deficit (i.e creates money)?

So if the government doesn’t create money, the private sector by definition loses money via taxation. The negative consequences happen if the government doesn’t create money, not the other way around as you believe. We are seeing those consequences now under the 6 year austerity program with mass unemployemnt, mass emigration, crumbling social services, a homeless crisis etc etc etc.

P.S. If you are going to include sources, please try and avoid those that are clearly from the vested interests whose role is to preserve the system which enriches them at the expense of the majority
http://www.ecrresearch.com/about-ecr

“For over 35 years ECR Research has focused on mid term interest rate and currency developments in the G-10 economies, providing a clear insight into how the global economies and markets interrelate and affect each other. More than 3,500 professionals of reputable companies and financial institutions throughout the world read the ECR reports and appreciate the unbiased and thought-provoking comments. In addition, we offer a wide range of tools to help you with your asset allocation decisions.”

seriously trying not to laugh at the lefties :D

Chucky,

The New Economics Foundation have made an interesting proposal on how Greece and the other Eurozone countries can access funding while avoiding profiteering by the bond market speculators.

“When it cannot be sure of the long term co-operation of the central bank, the Government can easily implement an alternative by ceasing the issuance of government bonds and borrowing instead directly from the commercial banks in the form of long-term loan contracts. This has the advantage of increasing bank credit creation, as well as strengthening the banking system by improving the quality of its loan book. Such a policy is the potential solution to many of the problems faced by countries such as Spain and Ireland presently: the prime rate, i.e. the interest rate banks charge borrowers with the best credit risk is often far lower in Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece than the sovereign bond yield of similar maturity. The reason is that bank credit is not tradable and hence not susceptible to speculative attacks, or downgrades by rating agencies- while being eligible as collateral with the ECB, not required to be marked to market and not requiring new capital from the banks, according to Basel rules.”

http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/where-does-money-come-from

The commercial banks create most of the new money in circulation today when they issue loans. In issuing credit, banks simultaneously create new electronic deposits in the recipient’s bank account via computer keystrokes. Governments borrowing directly from the commercial banks is not prohibited under the current treaties of the EU. So this capability of the private banks to create new money can be legally harnessed by Greece as a source of funding if they chose to do so. (The slavering neo liberals in the ECB and Eurogroup would be most upset by a development like this which would be an added bonus.)

This proposal is from the economists and financial professionals below. Are they qualified enough for you?

Tony Greenham is Head of Finance and Business at nef. He is a former investment banker, a Chartered Accountant and regular writer and media commentator on banking reform.

Professor Richard Werner is Director of the Centre for Banking, Finance and Sustainable Development at the University of Southampton and author of two best-selling
books on banking and economics. He is credited with popularising the term ‘quantitative easing’ in 1994 whilst Chief Economist at Jardine Fleming Securities (Asia), following a spell as visiting research fellow at the Japanese Central Bank.

Josh Ryan-Collins is a Senior Researcher at nef (the new economics foundation) where he is leading a programme of research on the history and practice of monetary systems. He is studying for a PhD in finance at the University of Southampton.

Every single job you listed there could be up ended at any second. All those jobs are provided by MNC’s that really could not give a damn about Ireland and its workers. The reason they are here is due to our low corporation tax which many don’t even pay and due to the fact that we are in the single currency union. Pure economics people. Get this bullshit concept out of our heads that we are somehow better than our European counterparts. The IDA favours foreign enterprises more than properly establishing sustainable Irish businesses. Wait to see what happens our industries if TTIP is signed. Agriculture in this country will never be the same that’s one thing for sure.

Some amount of spam from the AAA lunatics :D

I read them..

Soon Coddler will resort to passages from Ulysses as he will have nothing left to copy and paste

“Get this bullshit concept out of our heads that we are somehow better than our European counterparts. The IDA favours foreign enterprises more than properly establishing sustainable Irish businesses. ”

Rather than the IDA changing its rather successful strategy, we should be focussing on producing more high quality graduates, rather than the swathes of low quality ones we produce at present, which has resulting in there being significant gaps in the market for financial, analytical and software engineering roles.

There is a good documentary on what your talking about it’s called the money masters by bill still or another good one is hidden secrets of money by mike maloney.maybe people should go watch them they would get a better understanding of where your coming from.

That was a reply to coddler

@Ronan SF the classic populist & jump-on-the-bandwagon merchants will only claim they are the Greek equivalents if the Commies in Greece win- which gets more unlikely everyday as they rapidly back peddle from their pre- election fantasy policies! The loons like Murphy & Coppinger are also biting their nails as they are also been found out as well with their delusional rantings. The facts is that the Greeks never liked paying for anything, they cooked the books to gain entry to the EU, took the money now don’t want to pay it back! The Greeks never even wanted to pay the basic of taxes required to run the day to day functions of their state. Why should the taxpayers of Europe pay their bills for them when they don’t want to pay them themselves?

Greeks are really sticking it to the EU big time…….not

This is what happens when you try to play hardball with nothing to back it up.

Computer says No: what now greece, where next will the lefty bull?

@Justin Gillespie FG and Labour goon!

He who pays the piper calls the tune. Greece was never going to get anywhere with this.

He is calling it spot on pal …in stark contrast to you !

What are u doing here anyways ..haven’t you some water meter installers to harrass and bully ?

Hmmm ?

And all the idiots on here last week saying I wish our government stood up to Germany like the Greek’s…

Yes ESL, that’s how computers work.
I wrote the comment initially, keep it in a word document and paste it when I wish. And funnily enough, the truth doesn’t wear out and the comment remains correct each time I paste it. Magic!

Watched that fury film last night those Germans are bad lads can’t be trusted I’d say !!!

Who is going to lend to a borrower who can “keystroke the debt out of existence”? And if nobody is going to lend to such a borrower, how does the borrower run the kind of ongoing limitless deficit you advocate?

lefties always run into problems when they have none else’s money to spend

tbh i think Germany would be invaded by now were it the 1930s again. they’re a problem. we all should leave their euro, cos it is their baby.

Gzeit,

The Journal is crawling with blueshirt party hacks terrified the Greeks will get a write down on their odious debts and expose our quisling government for the traitors they are. They descend like flies on any article relating to Greece and are very easy to spot:

The aliases include: Protect Democracy, Citizen Smith, Tim, Exit Stage Left, Bazalini, Sergeant Yates, realgael, johngahan, Uncle Mort, Will Derbylight, Tommy Aquinas, Harold etc.

And of course, justanothertaxpayer. My apologies.

I was actually just about to complain you left me out of the list of people that understand economics. Phew.

But I don’t think I have ever voted for FG so you can keep your ‘blueshirt’ childish jibe.

So Waddler, anyone who disagrees with you is a “blueshirt party hack”.

Interesting glimpse into your thought process.

“Thought process”?

Stop making assumptions.

Not anyone Justin. Just the obvious party hacks mentioned and probably a few that I’ve forgotten. They’re very obvious to regular readers of the Journal.

It’s easy enough to expose them. Despite their anonymous Twitter & Facebook accounts, they will refuse to divulge who the voted for in the last GE for example.

The unusual fallback is that they voted for some unnamed “independents’ who conveniently share their far right political viewpoint.

I’m very disappointed not to have made the list now too! :- (
Fair enough, I’m not a supporter of any party in particular, but I thought I had a pretty good grasp of how economics works in the real world (as opposed to whatever world Waffler is living in)….

I didn’t vote in the last GE, and as I have said in the past.. in a rare moment of political effort… I went so far as to email FG HQ saying I would consider voting for them if they didn’t have Enda Kenny as a leader.

However, my political persuasion, while being none of your business, has nothing to do with the realities of economic markets

Dearest Waddler
I’m still here keeping an eye on your deluded posts. I give you, you’re posts and you’re honours degree from the Robert Mogabye school of economics absolutely no credibility

“The Journal is crawling with blueshirt party hacks terrified the Greeks will get a write down on their odious debts and expose our quisling government for the traitors they are. They descend like flies on any article relating to Greece and are very easy to spot:”

To be honest I think there’s more people on here who are desperate for Greece to get some kind of “deal” so they can use it as a stick with which to beat our government. Not everyone who doesn’t believe in the magic of printing away all our problems, or taxing some imaginary rich is a “FG party hack”. The world isn’t that binary.

Ditto Tim. I’ll be keeping an eye to make sure you’re not making anymore libelous accusations of the Socialist Party or Anti Austerity Alliance.

what the AAA and other lunatics have to say about the greek bluff being called by german

I have never been asked who I vote or voted for. And I have never been a member of a political party. But I am happy to tell you my first preference in 2011 went to FG, in 2007 to Labour, in 2002 to the Greens, in 1997 to FG, in 1992 to FG, in 1989 to PD, in 1987 to PD, in 1982 to FG (both elections) in 1977 to Labour and in 1973 to Labour. No vote before that. I could never bring myself to vote for a government that might be led by Charlie Haughey, who I considered a crook and a conman the very first time I came across him, I felt more or less the same about Albert Reynolds (gombeen and cute hoor) and as for BA… Well slimy.

The main reason a lot of people have little support for the Greeks is that it is more than a bit rich to ask for write downs when you can’t even collect the tax owed by the well off in Greece.

When I see them getting serious about getting their house in order then I will be behind them in their efforts at getting a deal, but until then……

Mr. Forde, you are a party hack, and everybody knows it.

Sheik Yahbouti
Who’s this Mr Forde your speaking about?

Who is Mr Forde?

Waddler
What libelous accusations?

i want to see them exit and survive so we’ll have another bench mark to compare to. then there will be more and then the eu will be no more. cripple them.

“Bridging loan” was a new loan with fewer Ts&Cs.

An extension is the status quo.

Greece has opted for the latter.

there’s a massive delta between the two. One comes with Troika involvement and one without. The right to self determination and choices over what is privatised and what isn’t is priceless. Just saw that the BBC is running with extension=bridging loan in recent minutes. Lets see

“The right to self determination and choices over what is privatised and what isn’t is priceless. ”

You don’t get to have “the right to self determination” when you’re asking for someone else’s money.

as we well know in Ireland. Our government played ‘marionette’ to the Troika for 4 long years. They dictated their requirements on a quarterly basis and our government enacted changes based on those dictations on an annual basis via budgetary austerity. Let it be known they stayed in one of the most expensive hotels in Dublin during their brief sejourns. The IMF/ECB/EU gang don’t ‘rough it’. Varoufakis is possibly trying to avoid a replay of ‘our’ play. He has the benefit of hindsight. Nothing wrong with a spirited defence. At least he knows he tried.

World is about to get a dose of lefty reality. the good thing is we can all learn from the greek demise

Too right Mr ! The Greek lefties want to re hire more people to run their outdared administration systems so that they can retire at 55 on fat pensions.

The fatherland has quite rightly said we aint payin for that ..get your house in order Dudes.

Proper order too !

Broke and unable to pay our bills? I do.

You mean we would be in the same position if Sinn Fein and AAA were running the country.

We were never in that position. We have massive exports compared with the Greek’s who have olive oil :-/ they’re fooked.

Spot on, Eagle.

you would have more hope if you contracted ebola than if you were greek. thats what lefties do, destroy a country

id rather we were in Greeks shoes and make the exit. burn the timber, carbon tax won’t exist anymore. back to the land. none of this nonsense. we’ll be better for it. oh and get rid of money as well. we’d survive, don’t you fret. enda and co. wouldn’t though. they don’t know what hard graft is. we need to get things back down the basics. lose you material possessions. you’ll be happier i guarantee you cos its all money spin every week to get you to spend something thats created out of thin air to keep you in debt to their slave machine.