Fianna Fail have been sneaking into Government with ever decreasing votes over the last decade. The PD's are running Health and Finance yet only represent 5% of voters in Ireland.

It would be interesting to see a compulsory vote being brought in to this country to see which political party would get in. For once it may encourage new political parties to become established in order to represent the different groups out there.

Whats the point in all of this painfully obvious rambling I hear you ask?

It's simple really.

Vested interests are able to run this country with a minority of the votes.

The property market in Ireland WILL end up bankrupting this country, there can be no "soft landing". How will Ireland cope with 15 years of price drops? How will this country be run when the political parties who hold the reins of power cannot manage Health, Crime, Housing.

Consider the budgets that they have had in the last few years, yet they seem powerless even to manage traffic in Ireland.

I am amazed that the media seem to think that Biffo Cowen has a get out of jail free card with the Stamp Duty issue. I really do think that in order to become a politician in Ireland you must get a Degree of Incompetence.

The facts are simple.

This Government could do nothing to prevent the house price increases.

What makes you think that they can prevent decreases?

It will be 20 years this year since the big crash in the UK, Pundits have always commented that Ireland is 20 years behind. It looks like the predictions may be about to come true.

As sentiment has changed and the idea that we are not "that" different and that HPC "could" happen here, I am amazed by the number of people who when confronted with bearish arguments, counter that a property crash will bankrupt the nation and therefore it cannot happen.
People's faith in government (any government) to avert economic downturns amazes me. It makes me wonder how they accept previous recessions; do they think that the government of the day thought that it would be a good idea to have a floundering economy?

Baffled.

2 years ahead of your time gentlemen.

Rooting through the old threads - crazy

The Gubberment Would not prevent a bubble. They could have ensured proper regulation of banks, Resonable supply of zoned land, and removed incentives that encoraged speculative investment in shelter.

The muppets still belive (or spin ) that we are a small open economy and clearly not part of the eurozone.

Not true. No bubble in Germany, mild bubble in France and Italy, and most definitely no bubble in Belgium.

The case of Belgium is instructive. Never had any property bubbles because the government deliberately makes the cost of the transaction so expensive. No flippers there.

The property crash in Ireland will not bankrupt the country. What will bankrupt the country is the refusal of the government to cut public expenditure by at least 30%. Now. For the last 5 years more than 50% of the increase of government tax receipts came directly from taxation directly related to the property bubble. Goverment expendiure rose by 10%,15%,20% p.a. as if the good time would never end. All that tax revenue is now quickly disappearing leaving a huge hole in the budget, E8 billion so far this year. Two or three years of borrowing to cover the tax hole, and without very deep cuts in government expenditure, and you are looking at a least a doubling of the national debt (in GNP terms).

It hello 1981 time again.. FF will only make the correct decision when the economy is on the verge of complete collapse, and when there is absolutely no other alternative. They have done this twice before. They have a history. Based on past form they might start seeing sense by 2012 at the earliest - but I would not bet on it.

Hang on tight. Its going to be a very bumpy and very unpleasant ride.

http://constructireland.ie/Articles/Opi ... rvive.html


We are already bankrupt, just nobody has foreclosed on us yet!

Lucky France

Sarcozy didn't have time to Americanize their economy.

Not only could the government and I mean FF have prevented the property bubble (or at least severely limited it) but they actually did exactly the opposite. Section 23 combined with planning corruption and a complete absence of proper regulation of the banks was like heaping tyres and petrol on a bonfire.

Anyone on here who doesn't start to cop that FF over the last 8 years have in effect undid all the growth of the previous 20 and are likely to have set us back to the eighties if we're lucky and the fifties if we're not.

FF threw petrol on an already burning fire (and they deserve a good drubbing in the polls for that), their and other political parties abdication of fiscal responsibility during the boom is partly what got us here. But remember this is republic running a democratic voting system, in such a system we vote for the gombeen in a Santa Claus suit. Try telling Joe Public that you are deliberately going to stop him speculating on property and see if you get re-elected.





Agreed, but the problem is not just FF (FG seem to have had a recent Pauline conversion, now that it suits them).
It is the bankruptcy of ideas and leadership within the Irish political system and western 'democracies' that fuels this, a politician with true courage and integrity, leadership and vision would have been able to persuade people that following the Bacon report was the best course of action.
Sadly we only get genuine leadership when our backs are against the wall and we've tried every other foolish solution beforehand.

And hopefully the ECB will prosecute the directors for wreckless trading.

No need to. The French government has engaged in creative accounting for the last 20 years that would put Enron to shame.

All that unfunded pension liability. Ignore it because it would double the national debt load. That 5 billion euro p.a deficit in the health services. Put it in special off balance sheet section of the national budget. The Eu rules that the railways need to be self-supporting. No problem. Put the profitable bits in once company and put the cost of building the system, more than 17 billion euro, in a separate company that is financed by low interest government backed bonds..etc etc.

The French have nothing to learn from the Americans. Except maybe customer service, transparency, and general good neighborliness.

Interesting post , I can accept the German level of debt as being reasonably accurate, but the French one had me stumped. Your explanation if valid (its certainly believable) would explain it nicely.

LTR - individually, the French are not indebted. Nationally they are with a debt:GDP ration of 64% at the end of 2007.
Eurostat PDF
The German ratio: 65%, Italy leads the pack with 104%

It seems you can either indebt your citizens or your state. Having tries the state approach, we've now tried the citizens approach. Which tastes better?

Well in France, for their public debt they actually get public services that work, they've thrown alot of time and money at it though, there's no stomach for that here but maybe, if we get through to the other side of this, maybe we'll start seeing a more left leaning approach to the development of public services...

Soon after Sarko won the election the new Finance Minister made public what everyone had suspected for a long time, they were fiddling their books. If France used the same criteria that other EMU countries used for calculating their national debt it would around 120% plus of GNP, about double the official numbers.

The senior people in the Ministry are seriously worried about the numbers and the direction they are going, which is why they went public.

Yes it would be good if it were wreck-less, and I'm sure the ECB are full of hope that this will happen. db (a tad grumpy this morning)