DUBLIN, Ireland — After the binge of the "Celtic Tiger" years, Ireland has been jolted awake with the mother of all hangovers, an empty wallet and a horrendous bill.
On Thursday the government shocked a bewildered nation with the disclosure that the final cost of bailing out the Irish banks could rise to 50 billion euros ($69 billion). This is much more than previously admitted, and the impact on the country and the population of nearly 5 million has quickly became apparent.
The bailout will cost every man, woman and child in the republic 10,000 euros. Ireland will have to endure savage cuts in expenditure. There will be hair-shirt budgets for at least four years. And the Emerald Isle, warned the European Union, can now no longer remain a low-tax economy.
Finance Minister Brian Lenihan agreed the figures were “horrendous," but said they "can be managed over a 10-year period.”
The reaction of the media in Dublin and the world’s financial capitals was pretty uniform: Ireland’s Celtic Tiger is dead.
The Celtic Tiger Is Dead. Long Live The Hungover Pussycat.
Near us? It is us.[...] The calamity in Ireland is the result of reckless lending by its banks during a boom that ended in 2007, and which, as property prices plunge, has become one of the biggest busts in history.
The cost of winding down Anglo Irish bank alone is estimated at 34 billion euros. Its directors lent outrageous sums to developers to buy sites and acquire properties that in many cases have become entirely worthless.
Even more shocking for a country where the banks were seen as solid pillars of the national infrastructure, one of the two biggest financial institutions, Allied Irish Banks, was practically nationalized with an injection of 3 billion euros and the brusque removal of its chairman and managing director on Thursday.
7 comments:
An Irish Prayer for the US Congress
May the people rise to crush you.
May the knife be always in your back.
The leaders of the ObamaNation have a better solution. More whiskey to dull the pain & keep those printing presses ROLLING, baby!
It's not unlike flying from here to there and in between discovering you're out of fuel. The jet begins to nose over and you tell the passengers you're descending under the clouds for a smoother ride. -- pay no attention to those oxygen masks that just dropped.
Nickie - And they know it.
Got to get the mad as hell voters out on Nov. 2. Now is not the time to stay home and sulk. This administration seeks to crush us; as you say, let's return the favor. One Rep. Congress critter stated that the people that contact him are more scared then angry. They see where the country is going and it frightens them. Now that they see it, they do not buy Obama's change even if they voted for him.
Wetzy - assuredly, many of them will. But let us not forget that they are not responsible for every sin on this planet. How about those to whom they pander; for them the public purse can never be deep enough and their expectations never high enough.
LL - and the grind is that it is not a solution at all. It is just masking the pain for a dying patient. But as they say, it isn't the fall that kills you. It's when the fall suddenly ends.
the 'slow slide ' has ended-for us in the US--many have awakened-it is never too late!!!
as to the Irish-there used to be fighting blood there-now-I guess there is none-
Sad---
Carol-CS
Carol CS - liek some many others, they have also been betrayed by those they trusted. I only hope the Irish are as pissed off as the rest of us and manifest their displeasure at the polls.
Post a Comment