Big sunday gloomy we're all screwed discussion mega merge

cml387

Terry wrote: »

I know. I just wanted to make you feel bad for a while.

If it's any consolation, writing that exact line on the cover of my Irish homework book landed me my first suspension and a week long detention back in 1990.

Did you write it as gaeilge?

blogga

Elevator wrote: »

can you believe this bull****??

http://www.highlandradio.com/2010/11/20/minister-urges-public-to-pray-things-do-not-get-worse/

After each name and title, please intone "Pay for us"

Charlie Haughey, Collar of Charvet
Charlie McCreevy, Commissioner of Contempt
Brian Cowen, King of Ardilaun
Brian Cowen, Son of Biffology
Brian Lenihan, Shirt of Hair
Ray Burke, Lord of the Joy
Bertie Ahern, Protector of St. Luke's
Bertie Ahern, Guide of the Blind,
Bertie Ahern, Font of Tears
Bertie Ahern, First Born of the Dig Out.

Nodin

Biggins wrote: »

LOL

Cheese and prayer, yep, that will solve everything.

Aye, Pray to Cheezus and ye shall receive.

easyeason3

Well sure if a bit of an aul pray doesn't work then maybe we could ask the leprechauns would they mind cashing in a few pots of gold.
That cash for gold offer looks good at the moment.

sheesh

look there was an election we were asked who we wanted to represent us for the alot of us voted fianna fail Even though their leader was shown to have unexplaind and large amounts of money in possession at some point in the past.

when we discovered that FF did not have the handle on the economy we thought they did we did the only logical thing ,lashed out at the junior partner, in government for letting them get away with it.

The problem with the country is not FF or democracy its that the electorate kept on putting them back in power.

bronte

You have used two inches of sticky tape.
God bless you.

scientific1982

We're powerless plebs.

dr.bollocko

Merge. Bloody depressing threads clogging up AH. Well now there's only one where there were three. So that's a start. Cheer up or I'll ban the lot of ye.

Javiero

By been born and living here you signed up to a Rodeo ride on one heck of a mad cow.
Deeper and deeper into our pockets they go!
I Dont think the IMF are the cure.

How can anybody make decisions if they dont know the whole truth.

lies, deceptions cover-ups..... That's the Irish way, and its frustrating to be a normal Joe.

Cheap Thrills!

sheesh wrote: »

look there was an election we were asked who we wanted to represent us for the alot of us voted fianna fail Even though their leader was shown to have unexplaind and large amounts of money in possession at some point in the past.

when we discovered that FF did not have the handle on the economy we thought they did we did the only logical thing ,lashed out at the junior partner, in government for letting them get away with it.

The problem with the country is not FF or democracy its that the electorate kept on putting them back in power.

Hey! Speak for yourself. I've never voted for them in my life!!

karlog

Forget the phrase The fighting Irish, we shall now be known as The Irish who bend over and take it from the government.

Poly

dr.bollocko wrote: »

Cheer up or I'll ban the lot of ye.

Beatings will continue untill morale improves:D

ninebeanrows

There are still alot of FF'ers among us.

I reckon they would get 24% in an election even now.

Because people will vote for them no matter what, seriously it's scary.

You find these people by looking for the, 'But look at the other bunch' or ' as bad as each other' or ' Im not voting for that Enda kenny, ya kidding' or ' Labour, puh them Unioners, want us to become a socialist state yea?'

They are all around us!

Chris P. Bacon

A bit of light hearted fun

TAOISEACH, Brian Cowen, has told Waterford Whispers News that praying to God could well be a “viable option”.

On Friday afternoon, while praying for help in his local church, he admitted that Ireland would be best off praying for a miracle than borrowing money from the European Central Bank (ECB).

"We're ****ed! There's nothing else left to do only pray

"If every single person in the country prays we should get some kind of response.

"After all, we need all the help we can get." he added.

Cowen highlighted the fact that miracles have happened in the past and could happen again if we all just come together and ask the big guy for some help.

He said the focus of the prayers should be providing a contingency capital fund that can be used as a back-up for the banks.

"You will need to specify this in the prayer, otherwise he won't know what your on about" said Mr.Cowen.

The Taoiseach admitted that although the Government will be applying for a bail out, it doesn't expect to see anything happy or positive for at least 20-30 years.

Speaking about the type of prayer to be used, he said that the 'Our Father' is a good one to start with and that people should 'ad lib' between verses and use a worried tone when speaking.

"The prayer should sound real and desperate. Don't be afraid to get down on your knees and beg. If this run of bad luck keeps up, we'll all be very used to kneeling" he joked.

Enda Kenny, the leader of the opposition, described the Taoiseachs praying strategy as 'ludacris' and stated that the 'Hail Mary' would be a more suitable prayer to use.

LINK

HavingCrack

I don't understand why Ireland doesn't just default on our debt. My udnerstanding of how bonds work is that you take a risk when you buy them, sometimes you make a gain and sometimes you make a loss. Why should Irish people bail out banks and private businesses that made a gamble on bonds and lost??

sdanseo

In fairness, O'Cuiv is only a token minister because of his Grandad. He's not intended to be taken seriously :P

Saila

how high is the wall in your front garden?

PeterIanStaker

Cheap Thrills! wrote: »

Hey! Speak for yourself. I've never voted for them in my life!!

Me neither!

TheZohanS

Ah nothing like a good thread merge to improve the readability of crappy threads.

She put the whole melon up there?

Jebus...how did she manage that?

Nolanger

Because our Finance Minister, Comical Leni is from a law background and does everything 'right'.

bonerm

Because nobody wants to be the first to admit that money is just an abstract concept.

Monty Burnz

Because we need money to run the state. Right now we need to borrow about 35% of that money - if we don't repay the bonds, then nobody will lend to us.

Of course, the real problem is not government debts, it's €100 billion worth of BANK debts that the government made into the Irish people's debts with the bank guarantee.

Bonavox

Saila wrote: »

how high is the wall in your front garden?

About four foot. Why?

Cavehill Red

We should renege on the bank guarantee immediately. It was based on fraudulent data provided by corrupt banking officials.
We should only guarantee deposits. That means we're off the hook for at least 80 billion euro of debt which is NOT the responsibility of the Irish taxpayer.
Let the bondholders go hang. No taxpayer bailout for Roman Abramovich and Swiss bankers!

mrjaygibbs

Too many fat greedy people intertwined with government and it's departments not willing 2 give up and default on the huge salaries, just look at deals like the croke park agreement! Ireland is a disease in Europe and the IMF are looking for any excuse 2 come in and upend this country! It's only a matter of time b4 this happens and changes Ireland Inc 4ever.

OfflerCrocGod

Because France, Germany, the UK and the US don't want to bail their banks out so they are applying huge pressure to the Irish government to make certain Irish people will be broken slaves for the next decade and pay of their banks.

Biggins

Rather than start another thread - here is a write-up from todays Times.

Yes... its long but its detailed well.

Death of the Euro
As the money men bail out Ireland from its terrible financial mess, we ask whether the single currency zone can survive

Amid the fury and gloom, shafts of Irish humour still shine. What’s the capital of Ireland, asked one joke last week. Answer: about €20.

Or take the woman standing outside the central bank in Dublin as officials from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund descended to bail out the country. Her placard, drawing on Ireland’s long struggle for independence, read: “Ireland’s new absentee landlords — ECB [European Central Bank] and IMF. Famine next!”

The jokes, however, can only go so far in lightening a very dark mood. In a direct echo of Britain’s humiliation 34 years ago, when a broken economy was forced to turn to the IMF for a bailout, Ireland has had to be rescued from bankruptcy. A country that until recently was lording it over the rest of Europe, and enjoying some of its highest incomes, has found itself at the gates of the national equivalent of the debtors’ prison.

Worse, Ireland’s woes threaten not only the euro — the grandest of the European Union’s grand projects — but the EU itself. The kind of rhetoric normally reserved for hardened Eurosceptics has found its way to the heart of the European mainstream, and its seat of power in Brussels.

Though he later toned down his comments, Herman Van Rompuy, the European council president, said Europe was facing a “survival crisis”.

“We must all work together in order to survive with the eurozone, because if we do not survive with the eurozone, we will not survive with the European Union,” he said.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the IMF and a potential challenger to Nicolas Sarkozy for the French presidency, said the only solution to crises such as that facing Ireland — and the worries swirling around Greece, Portugal and Spain — was to centralise the EU in a way long feared by Britain.

“The wheels of co-operation move too slowly,” he said. “The centre must seize the initiative in all areas key to reaching the common destiny of the union, especially in financial, economic and social policy. Countries must be willing to cede more authority to the centre.”

The alternative is that the euro, held up as a crowning achievement of the EU, does not survive in its present form.

Ireland is in a terrible mess. Wages in the public sector have been cut, sometimes by 20%. Property prices have plummeted 30%. The greed and lunacy of feckless bankers have bequeathed vast debts. To cap it all, private lenders are now deserting the nation in its hour of need and a “silent run” on the banks has been under way, with companies quietly withdrawing their deposits from the country’s crisis-hit banks.

The problem is the scale of the banking boom and bust. Not surprisingly, this latest phase in the great financial meltdown is turning personal. On Friday, Dan Boyle, the chairman of the Green party in Ireland, said he wanted to create the crime of “financial treason”.

The once roaring Celtic Tiger is reduced to miaowing for EU milk — an expected €100 billion (£85 billion) of it to be unveiled in the coming days — and, he said, the guilty should be incarcerated and fined.

He is far from the only one venting spleen. Taxpayers in Germany and other countries, having bailed out Greece, question why they should come to the rescue again. The tabloid Bild railed against the “bankrupt Irish” getting billions. Even Germany’s leading broadsheet asked: “How many more times will this happen?”

Nor is the British taxpayer immune. The UK is potentially on the hook for an £8 billion contribution to one EU mechanism for propping up financially crippled states. George Osborne, the chancellor, has also said that Britain might make further billions available because it is in our “national interest”.

The money will be a loan, not a gift. But Ireland, as the credit rating agencies have made clear, is hardly the safest prospect. What Osborne meant is that the alternative, to let the country implode, would be worse, not least because it owes British banks at least £80 billion. Sound familiar?

Yup: two years ago many banks, threatening to topple one after another, had to be rescued by their governments. For some, it merely shunted the problem from the banking sector to states.

In recent months fears of similar contagion began to stalk weaker nations yoked to the EU’s single currency. As problems mounted among the eurozone countries, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, came under political pressure from voters opposed to bailing out weaker countries. They had stumped up for Greece in May; they were not keen to pay for others.

So, late last month, Merkel spoke out. She said that when problems arose, banks and investors should not just be bailed out by taxpayers, but should bear some of the losses themselves — they should take a “haircut” in the jargon. Some observers were aghast. “It’s not what Merkel is saying, but the way she is saying it and the appalling time she chose to say it. It’s important not to create panic,” a senior EU official said.

Too late. Her words exacerbated the nervousness in the financial markets. As lenders feared they might not get their money back, they began to charge more for it. Ireland’s troubles intensified again.

Rescue was becoming inevitable, whether Ireland liked it or not, if only because other countries were worried their banks might suffer losses. The Frankfurt-based ECB, too, wanted to recover the billions it had pumped into Ireland.

The bailout will come too late for many people in Ireland, including Frank Feighan, a member of the country’s parliament and owner of a small business his family has run for a century. On Friday he said: “We have used up all the reserves we have, and money is not forthcoming because the banks just don’t have it. After 100 years of business in this community, we are being forced to close down after Christmas.”

However, EU officials’ concerns go far beyond such misfortunes. As they thrash out a deal with the Irish government, they hope not just to rescue Ireland but to prevent devastation rippling further through the eurozone. After Greece and Ireland, will Portugal, or even Spain, soon need rescuing? And if either does need help, what does that portend for the euro system?

Talk of a break-up of the euro, or its outright collapse, was once confined to the fringes. No more. Financial markets have been openly speculating on the single currency’s partial break-up, simply because the alternative for many countries — of soldiering on within the system, and inflicting unprecedented pain on their citizens by doing so — looks too difficult.

Even William Hague, the foreign secretary, was unable to provide reassurance about its long-term future. Asked yesterday whether it could collapse, he said: “Well I hope not. No one has pointed out more of the problems than I have over the years in having a currency where we lock together the exchange rates and interest rates of countries with different economies. But I very much hope not. Who knows?”

David Marsh, a former banker who is co-chairman of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, is also the author of a recent book entitled The Euro. He said: “It is quite clear that the Greeks and Irish got into this mess because of the euro. “We are probably moving towards a situation where the euro does split up into, say, north and south, the core and the periphery.”

There could be, he suggests two different types of euro — one for economically strong countries and another for the weak, with an exchange rate between them. “Cutting off the gangrene-stricken western and southern fringes in order to keep the central part functioning would be a tremendously important move,” he said. “But I fail to see this would be the end of civilisation as we know it. These things which belong, you might think, in the realm of science fiction are starting to become reality.”

Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform, said: “I don’t think the current membership of the euro is written in stone.” For a country to leave, he said, would be “very messy and risky” but it is no longer “inconceivable”.

The pressures are building, according to David McCreadie, an analyst at the financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald. He said: “Just like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, eventually the bond markets will turn on Spanish debt. It’s only a matter of time.”

The EU has enough firepower to bail out Ireland, Portugal and other small countries, but Spain is in a different league. Its economy is so much bigger that the EU would have to ask for further guarantees — and they might not be easy to come by. As Tilford says: “Would Italy [which already has huge debts itself] be able to underwrite another X billion of debt, given that the markets might be sceptical they would get it back? I don’t know.”

There are several alternatives for the euro, which was launched with champagne-popping euphoria on New Year’s Day in Brussels nearly 12 years ago. None is palatable.

One is that the single currency will struggle on, holed below the water line, patched up regularly by huge sums from taxpayers in its stronger members. The trouble is that for countries such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal, that would mean the euro becomes a permanent and painful straitjacket, not the route to prosperity it once appeared to be.

The financial crisis has blown apart the cosy belief that, once inside the eurozone, countries could borrow from the markets on the same terms as Germany. Without that, the reasons for staying in look thin, particularly when the sacrifices needed to do so are enormous. So one, or all, of the “Pigs” economies — Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain — is likely to leave in the next three or four years, if not sooner.

Another possibility is that the system will disintegrate, leaving Europe with its national currencies again. In the 19th century, a series of monetary unions in Europe failed. Europe’s leaders insisted 12 years ago that this time it would be different, such was the political will. History was against them then and it may be even more against them now.

And, if there is a retreat from the euro, where would that leave the wider political ambitions of the EU?

Additional reporting by Bojan Pancevski, Brussels, and Stephen O’Brien, Dublin

mrjaygibbs

Cavehill red is right, because of these bondholders we've become the laughing stock of the world! Let them hang and choke instead of the taxpayers being made 2 suffer because of the mistakes.

DominoDub

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone?
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry, 'Some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son':
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave.

cson

So the IMF Claw Wedge will shortly be gracing our shores. Feck the Banks and Government Deficit I say. Let's embrace our new IMF Overlords and spend their sheckles on better things. Like...

Lets spend €10m voting for Wagner to win X-Factor.

That'll show Cowell.

And the greedy Bankers and Politicians.

:cool:

chin_grin

"We" won't get any of the money.

It's the typical attitude of the disgruntled middle/lower classes.

"Where's MY bailout. The banks are getting a bailout where's mine?" Bull.

I'd like to think it's going to be used for the same thing as before. Wiping their ar$es with.

orourkeda

Wipe our arses with €50 notes.

It's about as useful as giving it to Anglo Irish Bank.

Turtyturd

Lets invest it in houses. Buy low, sell high.

cson

orourkeda wrote: »

Wipe our arses with €50 notes.

It's about as useful as giving it to Anglo Irish Bank.

Ah I see now; use it as a stimulus package for our toilet paper manufacturing industry.

cson

chin_grin wrote: »

"We" won't get any of the money.

It's the typical attitude of the disgruntled middle/lower classes.

"Where's MY bailout. The banks are getting a bailout where's mine?" Bull.

I'd like to think it's going to be used for the same thing as before. Wiping their ar$es with.

pssst; this thread is a piss take...

chin_grin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fEjJ4Ecy9Q

seanin4711

Bail out the banks!!!

Turtyturd

WelfareKid wrote: »

''Lets invest it in houses. Buy low, sell high.''


Yeah take a look at the property tax,do you own two houses?

Lets invest it in a sense of humour for this guy....who's with me?

zuroph

lets build apartments!

blogga

We should use the IMF / EU money to buy drink.
Oh wait...we did that.

krudler

Monoraillll


Monoraaaaillll!!!

MONORAILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!

Axe Rake

We will use it to fund the bailout for Portugal and then Spain.

4zn76tysfajdxp

Mono-...D'oh!

blogga

krudler wrote: »

Monoraillll


Monoraaaaillll!!!

MONORAILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!

Yes, yes we're doing that. Its called metro north.

rednik

Remove all the vermin from Leinster House.

RobitTV

(Written By: Peter Geoghegan) (not me lol)

Forty thousand Irish people left last year; with joblessness running at over 13% another 100,000 are expected to join them before the end of the Year.

What is there to stay put for? With its boarded-up main street, uninhabited ghost estates and derelict shopping centre, my hometown, in the midlands of Ireland, is hardly atypical. Here greed gave way to naked stupidity when developers started building houses in the boggy flood plain five years ago. Recently a gallows humour has replaced the air of despondency that marked the early days of the collapse.

The IMF and its apparatchiks hold little fear for residents of such places – what does austerity look like when your home is practically worthless, your job is gone and your children are likely to follow suit?

By even the most optimistic predictions, the Irish economy will take generations to recover. The government is once again turning to the safety valve of emigration: despite its protestations little or nothing is being done to encourage young, well-educated men and women to stay in Ireland.

But late last Tuesday, as news bulletins on every channel reported live from Dublin and Brussels, I found my thoughts turning not to my country but to myself. The life I have made away from Ireland – first in New York, then Britain – is a comfortable one but it is also an emigrant's. If I raise a family they will speak with a different accent to mine. The country whose passport I carry will not be my home.

The true cost of Ireland's folly should be counted not in billions of euros but in the millions of Irish men and women who will forced to emigrate, to accept the reality that they too will never be able to go home.

Far from being finished, a new chapter has just been started in the age-old story of Irish emigration.

And after recent events, it seems like going home is no longer an option.

alwaysadub

RobitTV wrote: »

(Written By: Peter Geoghegan)

Whoa!!!
Wonders never cease!

MagicSean

We should usse the money to pay off all private mortgages and then people can live with the cuts.

bonerm

Just give it all to Lenihan and point him in the direction of the nearest magic bean salesman.

starbelgrade

We should but lots of cheese.