Labour’s way, origins December 9, 2012
Posted by Oireachtas Retort in The IMF Republic.trackback
Wonderful speech ahead of the 2011 budget and two months or so before taking office. Eamon Gilmore gives his and some other eminent views on the IMF program.
The Labour Party cannot be bound by what is contained in the document, not only for democratic reasons, but also because it will not work.
The Government is submitting a document and letters that are craven to the IMF and to the EU and which will not work.
There is a list of prominent economists who have written about this over the last 24 hours. Willem Buiter, the chief economist of Citigroup, stated that accessing external sources of funds will not mark the end of Ireland’s troubles.
Professor Eichengreen of Berkeley stated that the Irish rescue package finalised over the weekend is a disaster.
Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate in economics, stated that this deal amounts to reparations imposed on an innocent public.
That is what this is
the Labour Party, whoever else will want to be bound by this, will not be bound by this document.
Applause and everything
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Is this a sign of change:
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Sixone news saying he *confirmed* it wont be paid while nothing he says suggests anything has changed. Sloppy reporting by RTÉ.
The fact claims about this years note are still going unchallenged says it all.
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We ‘didn’t pay’ it this year, to the extent that, instead of taking the money out of the notional national piggy bank and giving it to the ECB, we replaced the previous IOU with a different one backed by a government bond. Is that right?
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yeah, changed it from an iou to gov debt and costing us an additional eighty million in the process.
http://www.notourdebt.ie/noonans-miracle-anglo-deal-didnt-stop-us-paying-in-full
They’ve had free reign to repeat the claim all year. Never once challenged despite people harder to ignore like Karl Whelan taking it apart within hours of the announcement (which was made ahead of or during the FG AF if I recall)
There has been a big hands off approach to Noonan.
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Last year’s bond was tacked onto the national debt via, essentially. They’ll do the same this year. However, Rabbite and the government will be hoist on their petards if they think this is going to work. Our saviours in ‘THE MARKETS’ who, to impress them before December 2013, we are crushing who swathes of the Irish citizenry will see through this ruse and they’ll factor in twenty or thirty basis points on any Irish bonds offered this next year, on the basis of the Anglo-bonds being deferred. Rabbite, Kenny, Gilmore can cod the political journalists and editors but coked up City and Frankfurt lads in the red braces will be an entirely different kettle of fish. Those boyos will have one look at the Irish debt to GNP ratio, the deferral of the Anglo bond payments, the unemployment rates etc and will be looking for at least 7% when we attempt to reach the pinnacle of the government’s efforts: the mythical ‘return to the markets’ in late 2013. We’ll then fall, like a French aristocrats head, into the Trioka’s trap and it’ll be austerity on angel dust. Pat will have his pension at that point in time and will bow out gracefully.
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FYI: might be of interest
http://campaignforlabourpolicies.weebly.com/press-statements.html
DECEMBER 9th: Labour Party members call on TDs to vote down Social Welfare Bill.
The Campaign for Labour Policies, the grassroots organisation of Labour Party members, has issued a call for Labour Party TDs to vote down the Social Welfare Bill.
The move followed a meeting of Campaign for Labour Policies (CLP) members on Saturday (8th December) in Liberty Hall, Dublin.
CLP spokesperson Neil Warner said: “We represent the view of hundreds of grassroots activists who believe in pro-growth, pro-equality policies. We are appalled at the regressive nature of Budget 2013. It takes a sledgehammer to Labour Party commitments on Child Benefit. It is a jobs destruction budget; the trade union think-tank, the Nevin Institute, has calculated that the austerity measures contained within Budget 2013 will cost 30,000 jobs. Budget 2013 is an an appalling hit on the incomes of ordinary people.”
“At our meeting, party members unanimously agreed that Labour TDs should not support Budget 2013. Any TD who votes against the Social Welfare Bill this week will have our full support.”
CLP spokesperson, Paul Dillon, said: ” You can not spin your way to a fair and just budget. This is the second regressive budget in a row. The Department of Finance says that a couple with an income of €25,000 will experience a drop in income of 1.1% , while a couple on a joint income €175,000 will experience a drop of .09%. The cut in respite care, the cut in the back to education allowance and the cut in benefits packages for the elderly add up to a budget that is a savage attack on the vulnerable, and can not be stood over.”
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Thanks PFPM.
Some very good statements there. I’m thinking back to the GP in the last government and the almost total lack of any organised opposition to what they were doing from within their own ranks (not that people didn’t agree but they seemed very isolated and tended to leave). This seems, at least potentially, to have somewhat more substance.
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the trade union think-tank, the Nevin Institute, has calculated that the austerity measures contained within Budget 2013 will cost 30,000 jobs.
Hmmm, God bless their crystal balls … the Nevin institute released their 30,000 job “calculation” nearly 3 months ago, way back in September, when the details of the budget 2013 cuts were still twinkles in Howlin and Burton’s eyes.
So perhaps “guesstimate” might be a better characterization?
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Are these “quesstimates any worse than those posed by the “experts” and the orthodoxy?
We’ve been hearing precise terminology from the orthodoxy such as a) soft landing b) green shoots and my absolute fav c) turning the corner (are we going in circles or just stuck in a maze without end?) for yonks now.
We’ve also been subject to “over optomistic” govt forecasts of growth during every budget for years now, and other forecasts about growth and what-not from various official bodies like the IMF and OECD that have been consistently “revised” downward for ages now.
We needn’t even go into the past revisionary techniques employed by various government bodies in assessing how inflation and employment stats are massaged in order to remain favourable in light of regressive govt policy for years now.
You’re incessant highlighting of any other non-orthodox “guesstimates” suggesting that they are all somehow suspect has just become rather mundane and tedious at this juncture in light of how wrong the so-called exports and orthodoxists have consistently been over the past few years.
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Fair play, lads. But, alas, you’re a racing certainty to have zero impact. I listened to my local ‘Labour’ TD (Ged Nash) defending this budget, tenaciously and aggressively, on local radio and it’s clear that the Labour parliamentary party are ad idem that the cuts, harsh and regressive as they are, are not only defensible but justified. If I were still a practising Catholic I’d be praying for the souls of the Labour Left like we used to pray for Christians in ‘Red’ China and the ‘godless’ Soviet Union. You have to admire their capacity to suffer and keep going despite being entirely beside the point in the contemporary Irish Labour Party. Rabbite, Howlin, Gilmore, Hannigan, Nash and the rest of them will take a rest now and come September to December next year will be dreaming up more misery ‘in the national interest’, of course.
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[…] can read it here (also PFPM put the text in comments earlier, for which many […]
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[…] ‘We are not gong to pay it next year’ (though if one reads the first four or five comments in this thread here one will get a real sense of how even that is ambiguous in terms of what is really happening… […]
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