The Bank Guarantee That Bankrupted Ireland

[marmar]

The Bank Guarantee That Bankrupted Ireland

Posted on Nov 2, 2013
By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt


The Irish have a long history of being tyrannized, exploited, and oppressed—from the forced conversion to Christianity in the Dark Ages, to slave trading of the natives in the 15th and 16th centuries, to the mid-nineteenth century “potato famine” that was really a holocaust. The British got Ireland’s food exports, while at least one million Irish died from starvation and related diseases, and another million or more emigrated.

Today, Ireland is under a different sort of tyranny, one imposed by the banks and the troika—the EU, ECB and IMF. The oppressors have demanded austerity and more austerity, forcing the public to pick up the tab for bills incurred by profligate private bankers.

The official unemployment rate is 13.5%—up from 5% in 2006—and this figure does not take into account the mass emigration of Ireland’s young people in search of better opportunities abroad. Job loss and a flood of foreclosures are leading to suicides. A raft of new taxes and charges has been sold as necessary to reduce the deficit, but they are simply a backdoor bailout of the banks.

At first, the Irish accepted the media explanation: these draconian measures were necessary to “balance the budget” and were in their best interests. But after five years of belt-tightening in which unemployment and living conditions have not improved, the people are slowly waking up. They are realizing that their assets are being grabbed simply to pay for the mistakes of the financial sector. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/ireland_ground_zero_for_the_austerity-driven_asset_grab_20131102?ln

[hobbit709]

1. It's what the banksters want to do all over the world.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. "repudiating its blanket bank guarantee as “odious” (obtained by fraud and under duress)"

except that would be untrue. The guarantee was freely made by the elected government, who decided they wanted to keep the Irish boom going, and thought this would do it.

Yes, they could do this - it might involve leaving the EU as well, since the rest of the eurozone might not like getting stuck with the bill via the ECB, and since there's no established procedure for leaving the eurozone, they can also do what they like if Ireland said it was leaving. But it would mark them as saying "debts incurred by a previous democratically-elected government may not be honoured by a new one", which will cause them problems with international investment. And the earlier prosperity Ireland had was largely based on being an English-speaking EU country in which multinationals could invest, and pay low corporate tax rates.

[xchrom]

3. du rec.

[sendero]

4. The only difference between them and us is that..

... we have the Republican Party trying to enforce austerity rather than the IMF.

The banks benefiting at a cost to everyone else is exactly the same.