How much better off this nation would be if COWEN never entered politics?

Quiet you

44leto wrote: »

I stand by it, what if Cowen when he was Finance minister in his first budget brought in measures to cool down the economy and put some breaks on development. He could have, but at that time nearly 15% to 20% of the economy was in the building sector.
.

This is the major failing in Cowen. He inherited a situation where the economy was fueled by construction and property helped out with little to no banking regulation, a situation happily encouraged and supported by Berite and McCreevey. It would have taken balls of steel and a willingness to commit professional suicide to act at that stage to slow things down to a more manageable level.

He should have seen it coming and should have acted with the nations interests in mind but to be honest I'm positive that there's no politician in the country that would have done that.

As for the bank guarantee. They lied to the government and forced them to make a rash decision. In hindsight it was a poor decision but as has been said already in this thread, all but Labour supported it.

Laisurg

Ehh.... probably not that much better.... I mean Haughty or Bertie maybe but cmon now Cowen may have been an idiot but he didn't single handedly destroy the country.

pragmatic1

parker kent wrote: »

This is true. If in say 2004, there was a conservative budget the 6one news would have been full of whining about "wasted opportunities" and how the government were not being generous enough. In fact, if you go back to what are now considered the giveaway budgets that helped fúck us up, there were still people moaning about the government not being generous. FF won election after election because they gave the galleries more or less what they wanted. And any other party would have done the same thing to stay in power.

Very few people in Ireland were paying attention to global warnings about our economy. In 2000 The Economist warned we were a bubble waiting to burst. But vast amounts of the public were caught up in the boom. To paraphrase Bertie, they thought that the boom was going to get boomer.

So what. People would moan. I'm sure people in other European countries who are doing a whole lot better than us moan too. Its the job of the government to look after the nations security, not to pander to public opinion. This we were all to blame stuff is bull. Negligence on the part of the last government is the reason we're in this mess.

LighterGuy

Quiet you wrote: »

Ugh........... Bertie was the cause. Cowen just watched. Pay attention.

Thats the impression I am under too.
Wasnt Cowen's fault. Of course he was no better than bertie. But damage was already done by the time Cowen got elected.

Its kinda like me fu*king up a company .. bringing it down into the ground and then someone else takes over as CEO and they are blamed for the downfall.

fatalll

Belly_Dancer wrote: »

Just watching RTE1 and I cannot help but think how much better off we would be if BIFFO had NEVER entered into a career in politics?

I think It was his previous leader who is to blame...
yeah he takes some responsibility as does Charlie McCreevy..
basically FF....

44leto

Well I benefited from the Tiger years, so I was in that we I had my foreign holidays, nixers and pay rises, although I never went mad or believed it could last forever I was at least optimistic and if Cowen cooled down the economy when the world was booming I would have criticised. Remember at one stage be it briefly Ireland was the richest country per capita in the world.

So I still believe it was one great mass illusion which at some level we all fell for. Look how ridicules this sounds now, Ballsbridge was once the most expensive real estate on the planet.

I criticise Cowen and his government for the initial handling of the crisis, that was awful. but that is all. Then we really did need prudent and daring leadership, he was not the man to give that. He was very easily led and said he took very bad advice and believed a lot of banker's lies.

280special

That Biffo was, is and always will be a gob****e.

Probably a lot of you wont remember the bank strke back in the early 90's. Biffo was Minister of Labour at the time and allowed one Bank out of the four big banks to cause the whole industry to close down for 3 weeks and cause ordinary people a lot of grief. Even back then he was too much on the side of the boys with the big bucks, to take them on for the good of the country.

Lets not forget that he stood by as Minister of Finance when if he had any guts he could have seen the obvious flaws in our economics and spoken out. But he didnt.

That particular arrogant, self centred piece of work is a traitor to this country and should be in jail along with his business and banking cronies.

parker kent

pragmatic1 wrote: »

So what. People would moan. I'm sure people in other European countries who are doing a whole lot better than us moan too. Its the job of the government to look after the nations security, not to pander to public opinion. This we were all to blame stuff is bull. Negligence on the part of the last government is the reason we're in this mess.

You'll notice that I don't actually absolve them of blame. Obviously they share an extremely large part of the blame. Nonetheless, the wider public needs to share some of the blame. Bertie Ahern didn't come round and force people to take out ridiculous mortgages. Sean Fitzpatrick didn't force anybody to take out loans they could not afford to re-pay. People DO need to share some of the blame. People are not remote control robots, they do have free will.

Of course people moan in other countries. Humans are a greedy, selfish animal. Of course the job of governments is to look after the nation, instead of pandering to the public. But if they don't pander to the public, they won't win the next election and will then have no opportunity to do anything. That is the flaw in party politics. It boils down to who can keep the mob happiest. If Fianna Fail did not give their standard giveaway budget just before an election, then they may well have been voted out.

Just to add one more time before people claim otherwise, yes of course the government shares a massive amount of the blame. But so does society, businesses, banks, the world economy, the war on terror etc. To childishly blame one man (as this thread seemingly intended), is idiotic.

starlit

yep we would have been way better off.

pragmatic1

parker kent wrote: »

You'll notice that I don't actually absolve them of blame. Obviously they share an extremely large part of the blame. Nonetheless, the wider public needs to share some of the blame. Bertie Ahern didn't come round and force people to take out ridiculous mortgages. Sean Fitzpatrick didn't force anybody to take out loans they could not afford to re-pay. People DO need to share some of the blame. People are not remote control robots, they do have free will.

Of course people moan in other countries. Humans are a greedy, selfish animal. Of course the job of governments is to look after the nation, instead of pandering to the public. But if they don't pander to the public, they won't win the next election and will then have no opportunity to do anything. That is the flaw in party politics. It boils down to who can keep the mob happiest. If Fianna Fail did not give their standard giveaway budget just before an election, then they may well have been voted out.

Just to add one more time before people claim otherwise, yes of course the government shares a massive amount of the blame. But so does society, businesses, banks, the world economy, the war on terror etc. To childishly blame one man (as this thread seemingly intended), is idiotic.

I dont blame just Cowen. Question though. If we had proper regulation within the banks, would we be in this mess at the moment?

parker kent

pragmatic1 wrote: »

I dont blame just Cowen. Question though. If we had proper regulation within the banks, would we be in this mess at the moment?

Well I didn't say that you blamed just Cowen. Nonetheless, look at the thread we are posting in. It is clear that there exists a belief that you can blame individuals.

Of course better regulation would have helped. Nonetheless, there were more issues than just poor regulation of the banks. Plus we are a small outward looking country in a global economy, so it is bigger than just Ireland. The greatest government in the world, the most selfess citizens and the best financial regulation in the world would not have kept us completely out of trouble. However, my earlier post remains true, the people cannot just ignore their own actions. A lot of people acted stupidly. Not everybody, but enough to say that the wider public need to shoulder some blame.

44leto

pragmatic1 wrote: »

I dont blame just Cowen. Question though. If we had proper regulation within the banks, would we be in this mess at the moment?

But what country at that time were practising tight banking regulations, it was a period of financial deregulation. It was the banking business model at that time.

American banks went bust and others needed a bail out as did British banks. So our system was not the only one to behave that way.

But I agree if the regulators did a more hands on job we would not have been in this mess, but again who was going to step in and force them to cool the boom.

Also it has to be considered by then the ECB were controlling interest rates and because money was so cheap, WE borrowed and borrowed and we would have continued till that tap of interbank lending was turned off in 2008. Which only now in hindsight, we know, that was inevitable Cowen could never have seen that happen. No-one did, it almost brought down the whole world's financial system.

Liam Byrne

squod wrote: »

Quiet you wrote: »

He wouldn't have had to even consider doing that if it wasn't for Bertie and that weasel Mc Creevey.

Honestly. It's not a tricky topic. It's pretty black and white. Fianna Fail led by Bertie got us to where we are. The most important point there being "led by Bertie".

Disagree entirely.

Disagree with what ? The facts ?

Liam Byrne

Are people somehow forgetting that Cowen was Minister for Finance while Bertie was leading us down the path to disaster ?

Ahern may have been the worst offender, but suggesting that Cowen merely "took over" after him is deluded......Cowen was supposed to be making the Finance decisions well before he became Taoiseach.

My name is URL

namloc1980 wrote: »

That's because Lenny and Cowen told the country that the Bank's only had a funding issue, when in fact the Bank's were insolvent and bust.

http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/noonan-confirms-plans-to-extend-bank-guarantee-281110-Nov2011/

FINANCE MINISTER Michael Noonan has confirmed his intention to extend the bank guarantee scheme until the end of 2012.

Meet the new boss.. same as the old boss!

ejmaztec

Cowen was just the icing on the sh1t-cake.

sensibleken

While people are right in blaming bertie, biffo is not to be let off teh hook.

He was in Finance when they presided over the over inflation of the public sector and unsustainable tax breaks. He was the guy who had access to all the books. He was the one that gave the blanket bank garuntee, he was the one who being a god awfull negotiator negotiated the worst possible deal with the troika.

The only good thing he did was destroy fianna fail. We would have been way better off without him. worst. taoiseach. ever!