Do 'Cold Turkey now, and Celtic Tiger back in 2011?

ardmaj

Lenihan is right, that they should suffer the medicine next year, and get back to health in 2011. it looks like it will take that to get the Celtic Tiger roused again. And next time, learn from the mistakes of the last tiger era.

jap gt

i think the 'tiger' is gone for a long time, they would be lucky to have a 'kitten' in 2011

ei.sdraob

this has nothing to do with celtic madness

and everything to do with

Income twice < Expenditure, with the balance being borrowed from loan sharks

dan_d

What?
It's not going to happen.If we even got some semblance of normality, that would be good (ie stability). Forget going back to this boom thing. Not going to happen anytime soon. The cetic tiger is long dead, and may he stay that way.

Daithinski

ardmaj wrote: »

Lenihan is right, that they should suffer the medicine next year, and get back to health in 2011. it looks like it will take that to get the Celtic Tiger roused again. And next time, learn from the mistakes of the last tiger era.

Hmm. I'm no expert, but my hunch is it will take more than one years worth of bad medicine. Maybe twenty years or so.

It took foreign direct investment and EU grants to lift us from the mire of the 80's. (It all went horribly wrong when it turned into construction based economy driven by low interest rates and a driven an overinflated property market)

Since we are no longer that competitive for FDI, (not to the extent that will create 300k jobs) what will be the vehicle that will lift us from this mess?

Its not going to be natural resources. The only valuable natural resources we had were given away courtesy of FF (gas).

We had valuable fishing rights. Also given away.

As far as I can tell unless some really freak occurrence happens we will never see the likes of the so called celtic tiger again.

The best we can hope for now is for the economy to slowly sink down to a level thats sustainable, (bankrupting a huge chunk of the population along the way.).

And when it does get to a sustainable level, I reckon the standard of living here will be a far cry from what most people were used to during the "celtic tiger". Forget about rousing the tiger. Countries economies rise and fall and some never recover that is the way of the world.

kev9100

ardmaj wrote: »

Lenihan is right, that they should suffer the medicine next year, and get back to health in 2011. it looks like it will take that to get the Celtic Tiger roused again. And next time, learn from the mistakes of the last tiger era.

The celtic tiger was a bubble economy that was built on greed and short term gains. We as a country are now reaping what FF and the developers sowed.

ardmacha

The future will be cat.

dsmythy

I'll take slow steady modest growth over a tiger economy any day.

CamperMan

the tiger is well and truly dead!!!

seclachi

Our virtual economy is over, when you think about it almost everything is borrowed in this country, Developers loan off the banks to get something built, then somebody loans off the bank so they can buy it. All the while the banks were going to the ECB with a big cash bag. Shure never mind we dont have it on deposit, the price of property will never drop, and nobody would ever loose there job or get a pay cut.

Shea O'Meara

ardmaj wrote: »

Lenihan is right, that they should suffer the medicine next year, and get back to health in 2011. it looks like it will take that to get the Celtic Tiger roused again. And next time, learn from the mistakes of the last tiger era.

One could argue, 'What mistakes?' They all knew full well what they were doing, what was happening. I love the way Lenihan and Cowen preach about what we need to do to get back on track when it was them who derailed us in the first place. Has anyone in FF had the balls to apologise to the nation?

murphaph

kev9100 wrote: »

The celtic tiger was a bubble economy that was built on greed and short term gains. We as a country are now reaping what FF and the developers sowed.

....and the people who kept voting FF back in and the people who took out huge loans and and and. People need to take personal responsibility too, or it WILL happen again.

jmayo

ardmaj wrote: »

Lenihan is right, that they should suffer the medicine next year, and get back to health in 2011. it looks like it will take that to get the Celtic Tiger roused again. And next time, learn from the mistakes of the last tiger era.

Stop believeing in fairy tales, especially the ones told to you by ffministers and their fellow elfs.
PS santa ain't coming either.

The real Celtic Tiger economy died in 2001 BTW. :rolleyes:

kev9100 wrote: »

The celtic tiger was a bubble economy that was built on greed and short term gains. We as a country are now reaping what FF and the developers sowed.

Ahhh there was a celtic tiger economy, once upon a time.
You remember when we had growing exports, when we had people being employed in productive enterprises.
When ireland was a place to base your European HQ, where indigenous software companies appeared to be doing well.
It died in 2001, but in 2002 onwards it was replaced by a construction bubble being funded by cheap credit.
Of course the government kept calling it the celtic tiger economy, even though it was one giant bubble :mad:

Oh and it wasn't just what ff and the developers sowed.
Lots of people bought into the myth, hell the ones that didn't were termed whingers and not just by bertie.
Of course the government, bankers and developers were the biggest cheerleaders and gained most out of it, but lots of others including lots of the ones now complaining about negative equity climbed aboard the property gravy train to easy riches.

diverdriver

Both Daithinski and Jmayo have it spot on. There was a Celtic Tiger and it lasted until about 2001 and was already beginning to fade before the 9/11 which didn't help. Started properly in about 1997. I know because I was made redundant in March of that year and simply couldn't get any work until October and that was in a multinational who quite simply was hoovering up everyone it could lay it's hands on. It was the multinationals who got the Tiger growling. But you worked long hours for rubbish pay. But at least it was a job.

Then it was taken over by the construction bubble as almost unnoticed the multinationals began to retract little by little. I was again redundant, (voluntary this time) by 2005. The company was shrinking it's Irish workforce and beginning to move production to cheaper places. Getting another job turned out tougher than I thought and I ended up on less pay and being treated more badly by another multinational. The writing was already on the wall for manufacturing in this country and no one noticed.

Meanwhile the property bubble expanded and expanded and it was frightenly easy (in retrospect) to get a loan.

The reality though was that for me, fundamentally in 2007 I was worse off than I was in 1997, just before I lost my job. So much for the Celtic Tiger making us all rich.

The government used all that tax revenue benchmark the public service to keep up with us overpaid private sector employees.

To be fair construction was needed, roads were needed, motorways were needed, infrastructure was needed. But the lack of urgency is obvous now. Only last week, finally, almost ten years into the 21st century is Dublin linked to another city by entirely by motorway. Ahead of schedule and below budget they boasted. Thirty years behind schedule if you ask me. This stuff should have been done in the eighties.

So will the Celtic Tiger be revived. No it's dead and quite smelly now. Although I'm pretty sure it was almost mythical for most ordinary people in ordinary jobs who benefited little from it. The way prices went up, it may even had disadvantaged many, forcing the to borrow.

The multinationals continue to slowly disengage, at least in manufacturing. I'm aware of at least two now who are slowly shedding jobs and cutting costs. There may be no Dell like sudden announcments of closure. But where there was once 3000 will soon be 2000 or less and where there was once 5000, it will be as low as 1500. These are the hidden job losses you don't read about. Translate that across the country and you can see that the original driver of the boom is gone.

Construction will recover slightly, it has to. There's always a need but it will never be the same. Tourism will recover as other countries come out of recession. We have no natural resources and there is no big thing coming up the tracks. So what will drag us out of the mire?

It's back to the eighties I'm afraid. High unemployment and exporting our brightest and best again.

The people I most feel sorry for are the younger people who grew up during the good years. Back when I was growing up, there was a fatalistic acceptance that things were bad and you would probably have to emigrate and or accept bad jobs or time on the dole. The Tiger cubs grew up in an Ireland where opportunity reigned and we were like all the other countries in Europe. Sometimes better. What a shock to find it's all gone.

RIP the Tiger.

damnyanks

The celtic tiger was not just the propery bubble. To get a job after college in the 80's and early 90's you just left the country.

Either people here didnt exist so cant remember or just seem to have forgotten.

weedfreedomtinp

talk is cheap