Audi

I wouldn't mind one of those computers.

On the matter of the free market, it is utter myth. It does not exist. This crisis neatly highlights the amount of interference and rigging there actually is.

I think the Free Marketeers have basically the right idea when the engine is moving, but once it stalls their solution is to fix it with a sledge hammer. I agree with them that the banks should have been allowed to fail, that GM etc should not be bailed out, but I do not agree that you allow millions to starve for 4-5 years. You may need some unemployed to keep a pool of available labour but 15% of the population is an over kill.

If the recession is really bad there won't be investment to increase employment as there wont be demand. The idea that tax spent on a rail track is taken directly out of your pocket whilst partially correct is an oversimplification. If the rail laying employs people what percentage of their pay is returned in tax? When they spend what percentage of the recipients gross income is returned in tax? The big danger is imports. If you can price frivolous imports out of the equation you can have a fair go at increasing employment for the short term.

The government needs to be very careful what it does, they must get long term value out of the investment and it must not compete with existing businesses. Also we don't want the sort of nonsense where we destroy crops to keep the price up.

If everyone pulls the hatches down on imports, surely that would knock everything back further? Plus - I have a bad association in the back of my mind between protectionism and war. I agree with you about thinking long term. If we thought short term we wouldn't do anything at all.

I have a horrible feeling the world is going to become a lot less global as every country will start to protect their own narrow interests. Europe as a region could manage. We are going to import goods but should we encourage the import of consumer goods we can't afford? Does it matter if we don't import those plastic Christmas trees from China or the hideous outdoor illuminated Santas and the like? Utter rubbish.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Curious analysis from RTE

Shake-up could leave only two banks

There was a groaning reference or two to "not back to the Big Two" over the last couple of days. It must be being talked about.

cactus flower wrote:

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Curious analysis from RTE

Shake-up could leave only two banks

There was a groaning reference or two to "not back to the Big Two" over the last couple of days. It must be being talked about.

It was always the big two. The rest was just for show. The facade of competition. What % of market does Anglo have ?

Tough stuff from the Economist. They are saying that our two party government is "grappling with a fiscal crisis that was self-inflicted" whatever they mean by that. Are they talking about the FF years of management which didn't provide for the 3 wintry years of dicontentment we might be facing now ?

FG are having an Ard-Fheis today and I listened to some of it on TV this morning. Some small businesses were represented and they all had the same complaint - policies have not been made which make their jobs easier with red tape and the raising of taxes. I'm sure there are appalling red-tape cases out there if only they could be dug up and presented.

Varadkar said there are 800,000 people employed by indigenous small business here - equivalent to the MNC and public sectors combined and so this is an important sector for future employment and wealth. Varadkar calculates that in order to make up this year's deficit we would need to raise the standard rate of tax to 40% and the higher to 80%. Sure it wouldn't kill anyone for a a year would it ?

Senator John Paul Phelan criticised Fás expressing that it needed urgent reform and made the point that funding should follow the trainee not the trainer. Fás needs emergency reform and the institution that should be kicking into agile response mode might end up being part of the problem which is bringing us down - inability to respond to crisis, inflexibility, rigidity.

Do FG genuinely want to take on this immense crock now though ? Systems will practically need to be built from the ground up after painful demolishing first. We haven't the luxury to do that right now. We'll muddle along and somehow we'll get buoyed up by another international tide instead of taking it by the short and curlies now. While our parties are arguing over it we're not seeing the problems clearly either and making provision for repeats of them somehow for the future.

Quote :

The tiger tamed

Nov 20th 2008
From the Economist Intelligence Unit ViewsWire
Ireland's economy faces three years of declining output

The Irish economy is already in a deep recession and it now appears almost certain that activity will continue to contract over the next two years. Unemployment is rising sharply and is forecast to increase even more rapidly in the early months of 2009. The severe downturn is mainly attributable to declining domestic demand, led by a collapse in construction activity and falling consumer spending, but is being compounded by the unprecedented developments in international financial markets. The two-party coalition government is also grappling with a self-inflicted fiscal crisis, and evidence to date does not suggest that it is rising to the challenge either politically or from a policy-making perspective.
All in the numbers

Ireland's economy is moving more deeply into recession, and recent data point to a widening of the slump. Retail sales figures have shown a deteriorating trend since the start of 2008, with sales volumes declining by 0.2% in the first quarter, by 4.5% in the second and by 5.7% in the third—data for August and September were the weakest in 25 years. Unsurprisingly, housing-related retail subsectors have been worst hit. In the year to August, sales volumes in the furniture and lighting category were down by 20%, while those of hardware, paint and glass were down by 14.2%. The most recent month for which comparable EU-wide retail sales data are available is July, when Ireland's decline of 5% compared with an average fall of 0.5% across the EU and of 1.8% across the euro area.

It's a long way from 'Europe's Shining Light', isn't it?

I have been saying over on the other site for months now, to deaf ears on the part of FG posters, that they'd be crazy to want the job now. FF in the merde, FG take over, FG inflict massive and unpopular cuts to get a grip on the situation, FG slowly get economy under control, election called, FF remembered as party of 'good times', FG booted out for another ten years...

toxic avenger wrote:

It's a long way from 'Europe's Shining Light', isn't it?

I have been saying over on the other site for months now, to deaf ears on the part of FG posters, that they'd be crazy to want the job now. FF in the merde, FG take over, FG inflict massive and unpopular cuts to get a grip on the situation, FG slowly get economy under control, election called, FF remembered as party of 'good times', FG booted out for another ten years...

You couldn't put it in less words and a situation that would be interesting to hear what the take of the FG people themselves is. Do they really want to take it on ? It must be seriously frustrating for them to be shouting reform from the other side of the house all the time and perhaps see some of it get shoddily implemented. In the end it's down to responsibility of individuals in society - we want it too easy. We ignore that there's a price to this though.

Quote :

The two-party coalition government is also grappling with a self-inflicted fiscal crisis, and evidence to date does not suggest that it is rising to the challenge either politically or from a policy-making perspective.

We've spent too much, and we are not cutting back to what we can afford.
Ireland is suffering from a property crash and a fiscal crisis, both of which are home made, as well as the indirect effects of world recession.

As we are already so much overspent, the criticism over the weekend that Government should be pump priming the economy, makes for depressing listening.

cactus flower wrote:

We've spent too much, and we are not cutting back to what we can afford.
Ireland is suffering from a property crash and a fiscal crisis, both of which are home made, as well as the indirect effects of world recession.

As we are already so much overspent, the criticism over the weekend that Government should be pump priming the economy, makes for depressing listening.

Happy Monday folks! Interesting stuff over the weekend... apparently Peer Steinbrueck (German Finance Minister) has come out with some invective against the UK Vat cuts/budget stimuli... dead agin it all, apparently. Says it's unlikely to work and not cleverly targeted. (I'd firmly agree with him). The French (firmly in the stimulus camp) are now calling the Germans the heavy wagon of Europe rather than the engine. Insults flying. Interesting to see the French and the Brits on the same side for once. Have to say, I'm feeling rather better about the Government's financial management if we end up in the same camp as Deutschland...the Germans usually get things right long term. Lived there for a bit many years ago, they had the infrastructure we have now in the 1970s!

We NEED this recession to cut back consumption and retool in a different direction; restimulating consumption and growth will only lead to faster resource depletion and price spikes, leading to more asset depreciation and bank collapses

Plan for the future: take the pain, pay off the debt (public and private), get spending under control, stabilise the banks, and if you NEED a stimulus, BUILD USEFUL STUFF. Like Metros north and west, or even better, an expanded "Daniel Day" network. Insulate some old age pensioners houses....they'll need to cut the heating bills if all the pension funds are about to go the way of Northern Rock and Lehman Bros.....oh, and alternative energy, lots of it!

expat girl wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

We've spent too much, and we are not cutting back to what we can afford.
Ireland is suffering from a property crash and a fiscal crisis, both of which are home made, as well as the indirect effects of world recession.

As we are already so much overspent, the criticism over the weekend that Government should be pump priming the economy, makes for depressing listening.

Happy Monday folks! Interesting stuff over the weekend... apparently Peer Steinbrueck (German Finance Minister) has come out with some invective against the UK Vat cuts/budget stimuli... dead agin it all, apparently. Says it's unlikely to work and not cleverly targeted. (I'd firmly agree with him). The French (firmly in the stimulus camp) are now calling the Germans the heavy wagon of Europe rather than the engine. Insults flying. Interesting to see the French and the Brits on the same side for once. Have to say, I'm feeling rather better about the Government's financial management if we end up in the same camp as Deutschland...the Germans usually get things right long term. Lived there for a bit many years ago, they had the infrastructure we have now in the 1970s!

We NEED this recession to cut back consumption and retool in a different direction; restimulating consumption and growth will only lead to faster resource depletion and price spikes, leading to more asset depreciation and bank collapses

Plan for the future: take the pain, pay off the debt (public and private), get spending under control, stabilise the banks, and if you NEED a stimulus, BUILD USEFUL STUFF. Like Metros north and west, or even better, an expanded "Daniel Day" network. Insulate some old age pensioners houses....they'll need to cut the heating bills if all the pension funds are about to go the way of Northern Rock and Lehman Bros.....oh, and alternative energy, lots of it!

Thanks for the news.

"Build useful stuff" - indeed ! I've said it on another thread too - some parts of the pensions are obliged to be in Govt. bonds for a minimum of protection but why not literally build stuff with those pension funds ? I'm wondering are those retirement villages that kind of thing where you end up in a place that is geared towards retired people only or are they nursing homes ? http://www.retirementservices.ie/munsterarea.html

Also, the elderly get free electricity - why not direct pension funds into renewable energy creation machines that supply them with that for when they are old ? And now that we are getting BER tags and have other energy tags on fridges, washing machines, etc. - shouldn't countries get some form of "self sufficiency index" ? In the event of an Icelandic scale meltdown where would we be ?

Auditor #9 wrote:

Thanks for the news.

Also, the elderly get free electricity - why not direct pension funds into renewable energy creation machines that supply them with that for when they are old ? And now that we are getting BER tags and have other energy tags on fridges, washing machines, etc. - shouldn't countries get some form of "self sufficiency index" ? In the event of an Icelandic scale meltdown where would we be ?

It is my view that rising commodity and energy prices had Rather A Lot to Do with where we find ourselves today. Trying to re-energise growth will merely re-ignite the prices spikes, and give us another round of asset price drops, leading to more banking issues.

The tragedy of this is that the financial collapse is scuppering our ability to do much about the energy problem. Governments (not our own, thankfully) are throwing money at the wrong sort of stimuli...encouraging raw consumption as opposed to spending it on stuff that might get us out of energy doggy doo doo, such as a lecky car charging network, more lecky based public transport such as Luas, Dart, Metro etc. Bailing out banks will be shown not to work.... in a recession, banks will hoard and not support small businesses, they'll only start lending again if either forced by the Govt in question, or when there are next signs of an uptick in the economy.

It has been shown that money spent on infrastructure creates jobs and spending; some of the money comes back to government in taxes in addition to creating growth. Tax cuts have a less good return, as much inevitably gets either saved or spent on imports.

So, governments should NOT be lowering VAT or giving tax breaks or bailing out banks....I'm becoming more convinced that the guarantee scheme may have been a much better way to go. Gordon Brown doesn't seem to be getting much in the way of a return for his investment in the shape of more lending, now does he?? So if they ain't gonna lend anyway.........save Government money for where it is really needed and where investment will yield the right sort of growth.....energy, commodities, water infrastructure, agriculture, public transport

I think I'll know we are doomed as a species if Barack and his merry men and women bail out GM, Chrysler, Ford the minute they get into power.

The gaurantee is great until the minute it is called. Then it is all over. This will be sooner rather than later. Now both of the big banks have borrowed 2 billion using the gaurantee, when they are unable to pay the government are screwed.

youngdan wrote:

The gaurantee is great until the minute it is called. Then it is all over. This will be sooner rather than later. Now both of the big banks have borrowed 2 billion using the gaurantee, when they are unable to pay the government are screwed.

It appears to me that when they gave the Guarantee, Government gave away most of the leverage they had over the Banks, for nothing. Last week there was a lot of talk about Private Equity/Asset Strippers taking down the banks: some people said this was Lenihan trying to give them a good scare. Maybe it budged them enough to make them get their hands on this 2 billion. Who is to know what they really need?

expat girl wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

Thanks for the news.

Also, the elderly get free electricity - why not direct pension funds into renewable energy creation machines that supply them with that for when they are old ? And now that we are getting BER tags and have other energy tags on fridges, washing machines, etc. - shouldn't countries get some form of "self sufficiency index" ? In the event of an Icelandic scale meltdown where would we be ?

It is my view that rising commodity and energy prices had Rather A Lot to Do with where we find ourselves today. Trying to re-energise growth will merely re-ignite the prices spikes, and give us another round of asset price drops, leading to more banking issues.

The tragedy of this is that the financial collapse is scuppering our ability to do much about the energy problem. Governments (not our own, thankfully) are throwing money at the wrong sort of stimuli...encouraging raw consumption as opposed to spending it on stuff that might get us out of energy doggy doo doo, such as a lecky car charging network, more lecky based public transport such as Luas, Dart, Metro etc. Bailing out banks will be shown not to work.... in a recession, banks will hoard and not support small businesses, they'll only start lending again if either forced by the Govt in question, or when there are next signs of an uptick in the economy.

It has been shown that money spent on infrastructure creates jobs and spending; some of the money comes back to government in taxes in addition to creating growth. Tax cuts have a less good return, as much inevitably gets either saved or spent on imports.

So, governments should NOT be lowering VAT or giving tax breaks or bailing out banks....I'm becoming more convinced that the guarantee scheme may have been a much better way to go. Gordon Brown doesn't seem to be getting much in the way of a return for his investment in the shape of more lending, now does he?? So if they ain't gonna lend anyway.........save Government money for where it is really needed and where investment will yield the right sort of growth.....energy, commodities, water infrastructure, agriculture, public transport

I think I'll know we are doomed as a species if Barack and his merry men and women bail out GM, Chrysler, Ford the minute they get into power.

It will be interesting to see how it pans out. I am personally opposed to all this recapitalisation thats going on. My gut instinct is that it is simply not fair.
I wonder what the Germans are up to.

No one should have bailed out the banks or any other large corporation. It is taking your money and giving it away. In my book this is fraud. Worse than that they have not the slightest idea how large the liability is. They should have allowed them to go into receivership and then considered the options. There would have been a floor to work from. Equally giving open ended guarantees on something you have no real control over or knowledge of is stupid. Terrible unnecessary risk.

Also trying to revive consumer spending is utterly pointless if we do not make the products. The retail sector needs to shrink, it cannot be the major part of the economy.

Expat

I agree if they want to intervene or stimulate they should do so in a manner that produces some long term good and with some strategic, beneficial objective in mind. I have absolutely no doubt that the price of energy is going to rise in the future.

Squire wrote:

No one should have bailed out the banks or any other large corporation. It is taking your money and giving it away. In my book this is fraud. Worse than that they have not the slightest idea how large the liability is. They should have allowed them to go into receivership and then considered the options. There would have been a floor to work from. Equally giving open ended guarantees on something you have no real control over or knowledge of is stupid. Terrible unnecessary risk.

Also trying to revive consumer spending is utterly pointless if we do not make the products. The retail sector needs to shrink, it cannot be the major part of the economy.

Expat

I agree if they want to intervene or stimulate they should do so in a manner that produces some long term good and with some strategic, beneficial objective in mind. I have absolutely no doubt that the price of energy is going to rise in the future.

Well let's call the guarantee what it was - a bluff. It was an educated one though with the intention of preventing bank runs. It seems to have worked to that effect generally, although does anyone know if depositors moved huge amounts out of the guaranteed banks anyway ? I only know of one businessman who did and that's only his word. Although he says he moved his accounts because the recently-promoted bank manager in question was an asshole and pushing the Credit Crunch cak on him over something fairly petty in a rich man's view. I don't know what a bank run here might look like but I was looking forward to the spectacle.

So the bleeding didn't happen but then again there's not much blood flowing in there anyway, the banks being zombies apparently. They shut their safes fairly quickly with whatever was inside and by various accounts have become tight-fisted about what they're now giving out.

I don't know why we're considering throwing money at these fuckers but they probably have us by the balls. Maybe allowing them to fall to VCs would be no harm - what's the worst that could happen ? We only need some institution which can move money from borrower to lender in as low risk a way as possible. Community banks should be what we aim at while the other tools get their shit back together - which will probably take 10 years, but to hell with them.

Quote :

Small business loans from credit unions way up

Posted by: John Tozzi on October 22

One more indicator of credit conditions for small businesses: credit unions are originating a lot more business loans this year. Credit unions, which are not-for-profit, membership-based financial institutions, have not been exposed to the same losses that major banks have seen in mortgage investments and elsewhere. Anecdotally, I’ve heard that in recent weeks small business owners have been turning to credit unions for financing.

According to Bill Hampel, chief economist at the Credit Union National Association, credit unions originated $6.5 billion in business loans in the first six months of 2008, up 36 percent from the $4.8 billion in that period of ‘07.

To put that in perspective, in 2007 commercial banks originated about $287 billion in small business loans. (That’s according to Community Reinvestment Act data, click on table 4-1.)

So credit unions, like microlenders are a relatively small source of small business lending, but with many banks in bad shape, it looks like they may be increasingly important. It’s interesting that both these non-profit lending sectors are experiencing growth. Entrepreneurs should consider whether they can meet their financing needs through a credit union or microlender before turning to potentially high-cost options like credit cards or factoring.

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/running_small_business/archives/2008/10/loans_from_cred.html

The National Accounts for this year and last year. 7.8 billion in deficit ...

The thing about this is that they have shafted the taxpayers for 40 billion. There is a thread elsewhere where ninnies are crying that 50000 layoffs in the civil service are not needed.

What is needed is to fire them all down to the number that they had in 1950 and there would still be too many

Since we had the pleasant discussion on health care I realise that 2 million have private health insurance so the the 18 billion spent is on the other 2 million so it is twice as costly as I thought per capita. Fire the whole lot of them and save 10 billion by buying private health for the 2 million if you must.

What fun lies ahead

cactus flower wrote:

youngdan wrote:

The gaurantee is great until the minute it is called. Then it is all over. This will be sooner rather than later. Now both of the big banks have borrowed 2 billion using the gaurantee, when they are unable to pay the government are screwed.

It appears to me that when they gave the Guarantee, Government gave away most of the leverage they had over the Banks, for nothing. Last week there was a lot of talk about Private Equity/Asset Strippers taking down the banks: some people said this was Lenihan trying to give them a good scare. Maybe it budged them enough to make them get their hands on this 2 billion. Who is to know what they really need?

The guarantee was vital. When it was given one bank was quite literally on the brink of collapse. They expected to go to the wall within 30 minutes of business opening up the next day. It was so close to collapse that when the word came through about the guarantee the staff were in the process of dismantling their office, packing away goods for the receiver in crates. If that bank had gone down they would have pulled down with them two massive segments of the Irish economy and started a domino effect that with 48 hours would have pulled two other banks down. The information available predicted that if those particular banks collapsed, they would have pulled down between one-third and one-half of all the businesses in the country and placed 200,000 mortgages in jeopardy.

I know for a fact how close the Irish economy can to calamity that night. We would now be in a worse situation than Iceland. For example, if what so very nearly happened had happened the odds are that we would not be posting on machinenation. All the Irish internet service providers would have been among those pulled down by what nearly happened. And all the Irish insurance companies would also have been pulled down. So would at least one of the health insurers.

The government didn't get a good deal, but that is due to their own incompetence. The guarantee had to be given. The government was aware that if they didn't give it by the week's end much of the Irish economy would have collapsed in the aftershocks of the collapse of at least two banks.

It is not over. There are at least two Irish banks who don't know if they will survive. To give an example of what would have happened if they failed, 11 businesses in a row on one side of O'Connell Street had loans, mortgages and overdraft facilities from one of the two banks. An entire block of O'Connell Street would have seen every one of its businesses brought down if those banks collapsed that week. 3 of the main private bus companies would have collapsed. One Dubln hospital would have lost all its funds.

I am sometimes amused by the posts here and on other sites on the issue. Posters have no idea what was within hours of happening.

Papal Knight wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

youngdan wrote:

The gaurantee is great until the minute it is called. Then it is all over. This will be sooner rather than later. Now both of the big banks have borrowed 2 billion using the gaurantee, when they are unable to pay the government are screwed.

It appears to me that when they gave the Guarantee, Government gave away most of the leverage they had over the Banks, for nothing. Last week there was a lot of talk about Private Equity/Asset Strippers taking down the banks: some people said this was Lenihan trying to give them a good scare. Maybe it budged them enough to make them get their hands on this 2 billion. Who is to know what they really need?

The guarantee was vital. When it was given one bank was quite literally on the brink of collapse. They expected to go to the wall within 30 minutes of business opening up the next day. It was so close to collapse that when the word came through about the guarantee the staff were in the process of dismantling their office, packing away goods for the receiver in crates. If that bank had gone down they would have pulled down with them two massive segments of the Irish economy and started a domino effect that with 48 hours would have pulled two other banks down. The information available predicted that if those particular banks collapsed, they would have pulled down between one-third and one-half of all the businesses in the country and placed 200,000 mortgages in jeopardy.

I know for a fact how close the Irish economy can to calamity that night. We would now be in a worse situation than Iceland. For example, if what so very nearly happened had happened the odds are that we would not be posting on machinenation. All the Irish internet service providers would have been among those pulled down by what nearly happened. And all the Irish insurance companies would also have been pulled down. So would at least one of the health insurers.

The government didn't get a good deal, but that is due to their own incompetence. The guarantee had to be given. The government was aware that if they didn't give it by the week's end much of the Irish economy would have collapsed in the aftershocks of the collapse of at least two banks.

It is not over. There are at least two Irish banks who don't know if they will survive. To give an example of what would have happened if they failed, 11 businesses in a row on one side of O'Connell Street had loans, mortgages and overdraft facilities from one of the two banks. An entire block of O'Connell Street would have seen every one of its businesses brought down if those banks collapsed that week. 3 of the main private bus companies would have collapsed. One Dubln hospital would have lost all its funds.

I am sometimes amused by the posts here and on other sites on the issue. Posters have no idea what was within hours of happening.

Good post but I think you might be going hyperbolic a bit there. The share price was collapsing which meant no new capital could be raised so they would have just stopped trading the stock. The guarantee was to prevent bank runs which would have cleaned them out totally and then they would have gone out of business but the loans and other business would have been shifted to other banks .. there's plenty of business there still for someone to buy. The banks have the problem that they cannot grow as much as they could before but that's not essential at the present.

Machinenation is run from a server in Texas so we'd still be online

Well Papal don't I have good reason to be paranoid. Anyway I look forward to pulling up some Ron Paul threads for your amusement. He is running in 2012.

The more things change the more they stay the same

Papal Knight wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

youngdan wrote:

The gaurantee is great until the minute it is called. Then it is all over. This will be sooner rather than later. Now both of the big banks have borrowed 2 billion using the gaurantee, when they are unable to pay the government are screwed.

It appears to me that when they gave the Guarantee, Government gave away most of the leverage they had over the Banks, for nothing. Last week there was a lot of talk about Private Equity/Asset Strippers taking down the banks: some people said this was Lenihan trying to give them a good scare. Maybe it budged them enough to make them get their hands on this 2 billion. Who is to know what they really need?

The guarantee was vital. When it was given one bank was quite literally on the brink of collapse. They expected to go to the wall within 30 minutes of business opening up the next day. It was so close to collapse that when the word came through about the guarantee the staff were in the process of dismantling their office, packing away goods for the receiver in crates. If that bank had gone down they would have pulled down with them two massive segments of the Irish economy and started a domino effect that with 48 hours would have pulled two other banks down. The information available predicted that if those particular banks collapsed, they would have pulled down between one-third and one-half of all the businesses in the country and placed 200,000 mortgages in jeopardy.

I know for a fact how close the Irish economy can to calamity that night. We would now be in a worse situation than Iceland. For example, if what so very nearly happened had happened the odds are that we would not be posting on machinenation. All the Irish internet service providers would have been among those pulled down by what nearly happened. And all the Irish insurance companies would also have been pulled down. So would at least one of the health insurers.

The government didn't get a good deal, but that is due to their own incompetence. The guarantee had to be given. The government was aware that if they didn't give it by the week's end much of the Irish economy would have collapsed in the aftershocks of the collapse of at least two banks.

It is not over. There are at least two Irish banks who don't know if they will survive. To give an example of what would have happened if they failed, 11 businesses in a row on one side of O'Connell Street had loans, mortgages and overdraft facilities from one of the two banks. An entire block of O'Connell Street would have seen every one of its businesses brought down if those banks collapsed that week. 3 of the main private bus companies would have collapsed. One Dubln hospital would have lost all its funds.

I am sometimes amused by the posts here and on other sites on the issue. Posters have no idea what was within hours of happening.

That is an excellent evocation of Ireland on the verge of a financial precipice. The problem is that we are still balanced on one. The guarantee has not protected us from the potential for catastrophic failure. The banks didn't get to that precipice overnight though, and the fact that things were allowed to drift to that point is not gratifying. The IMF in 2007 had flagged the overlending on property that was taking place and others before. When it was apparent that banks were under stress, there were months in which a contingency plan could have been put in place.The whole saga is grossly depressing and was largely avoidable.

The wipe out on O'Connell Street that you describe has happened less visibly in the construction sector, and so we are heading for an 8 billion deficit by the end of the year. The idea of basing tax spend on long term commitments on an overheated property boom was clearly daft. The only thing I would grant you was that the sheer scale of the thing is greater than expected, based on what one could see in Ireland. I read last week that Irish banks loaned enough to make the Irish the second biggest buyers of commercial property across Europe in 2007. That must have accounted for some of the less visible lunacy.

Here on Machine Nation we have foreseen the awful prospect of prolonged internet outage: I would like to present you with this emergency communications kit, especially designed for such and event

So if I'm left handed, do I just reverse everything ?

Wouldn't want you getting the wrong message.

BTW, which direction do I face to talk to Audi ?