PE's Michael Burke has an article on the Socialist Economic Bulleting putting the Irish situation into context for British readers:
Like Greece before it, the population of Ireland will experience the true nature of the bailout; a form of international loan-sharking. The economy and government finances have spiralled downwards because huge transfers of wealth and incomes have been made to the rich, led by the banks, to soften for them the effects of the recession. These transfers were from the poor.
The downward economic spiral naturally ran out of control, as incomes plummeted and new debts mounted. These were reflected in the soaring costs of government borrowing in the bond markets as investors viewed eventual default as an increasing likelihood. Now Irish taxpayers are being forced to take on even greater debts and to accept the extremes of further ‘austerity’ measures in a doomed attempt to pay for them. The Dublin government is the borrower - but the funds will be offered to existing creditors. As the Financial Times’s Martin Wolf remarked of the earlier Greek crisis, this is worse than Argentina’s debt crisis, as the creditors are being paid to escape, and there is no-one to replace them.
Click here to read the full article.
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