Odious Debt

shanered

Is it just me or does it see like this directly decribe Ireland's situation under Fianna Fail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odious_debt

Who else thinks Ireland's debt from that one night is Odious, and who thinks we should try get it removed as we have since got rid of the lads that put us in this mess.
Thoughts anyone?

johnr1

You'd have a tough time trying to argue that case Id say.

Democratically elected government and such....

antoobrien

shanered wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odious_debt

Who else thinks Ireland's debt from that one night is Odious, and who thinks we should try get it removed as we have since got rid of the lads that put us in this mess.

namely that State debts must be incurred, and the proceeds used, for the needs and in the interests of the State

You'll have to explain how you think the debt fails to be this criteria in order to argue that the debt is odious. The stated aim of the debt is to keep the banking system operating, which is in the interests of both the state and the populace.

It's in the interest of the general population as the vast majority of pay and social welfare is done through the banking system e.g. it's pretty hard to cash cheques without bank on which they were drawn functioning and it's nigh impossible to get at accounts as Cyprus found out.

The fact that many people believe that the taking on the debt was misguided does not make it against the interests of the state.

shanered

I think to proceeds of the debt where used in the interest of the banks not the state, I could see how your making the argument that without the banks everything would crumble therefore it was in the best interest of the state.
I think this is a little flawed, and believe that the debt we took on was not for the benefit of the state in the long run, I believe it was another short term fix to a problem I feel will never be addressed if we continue the way we are currently going.
Maybe what I'm think which would be more agreeable, is that there is large portions of the debt the we accrued that are "odious", such as Anglo for a nice prime example in my opinion, should have been allowed fail.

I suppose the thing that gets under my skin is that I believe we should have realised the trouble we are in and taken appropriate actions, while painful in the short term would be a long term solution where we made a return to the punt and did pretty much what Iceland did.
I believe what we did was the easy short term option which is going to hurt in the long term, and like many scenarios in life there is always these two options, but I believe we choose the wrong option.

But that's just side tracking a little, I believe that the debt that we took on is going to be the start of something that actually destroys our state, it is going to be like "a noose around our neck" that the Troika, the IMF and EU use whenever they need to give us a push towards Euro-federalisim.
I believe that our constitution will be slowly erroded and eventually we will be pushed towards one central EU state with one constitution.
I believe that this will not be in the long term interest of the populace of Ireland.
But I suppose that's my opinion, and I do understand a large amount of people think differently, but then again a large amount of people voted in the clowns that got us into this mess.
I suppose to wrap up my reply is that I don't believe it to be in the interest of the Irish State.
Furthermore, I see it as the single biggest problem this state has.
And we voted Fianna Fail straight out as soon as we could showing in my opinion that we did not support this debt, or at least a large portion of it.

In fairness, may I add, I see your point with keeping the banks going, but I believe this is slightly overplayed in my opinion.

Do you you believe that any parts of the debt incurred by the previous government is "odious"?
If not, do you believe all our debt is in the interest of the State?

johnnyskeleton

shanered wrote: »

Is it just me or does it see like this directly decribe Ireland's situation under Fianna Fail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odious_debt

Who else thinks Ireland's debt from that one night is Odious, and who thinks we should try get it removed as we have since got rid of the lads that put us in this mess.
Thoughts anyone?

As much of the debts have either been incurred since the guarantee or have been rolled over since, it can no longer be said to be the same debt, even if the odious debt theory held water internationally.

Basically, international law is more political than legal, and the time to argue it has long passed.

Scofflaw

No, it doesn't fall under 'odious debt', which pretty much has to be occurred by an oppressive regime for the oppression of its people, who then overthrow it.

Saddam's bill for chemical weapons used against Iraqi Kurds? Odious debt.

Money used by a democratically elected government to prop up banks used by the people? Not odious debt. Regrettable debt, sure, but the justification of saving the banking system is a valid one, even if the techniques used to save the banks, and the banks to be saved, left much to be desired.

cordially,
Scofflaw