Day 1398 of the Recession

In my last post I commented on the fact that Greece would be leaving the Euro and that Spain would be taking some Pain from the IMF, both clearly have not taken place. Yet the world is in no better shape and the Germans are using the tactic of delay in the hope that it will all improve if left alone. We have a new French Government in Place, the English are lost at see and have no focus, we are on the cover of Time for being good at taking abuse and Spain is in such a decline that I suspect that any amount of money is not going to prop it up. Fact being that if it was in anyway savable this would have happened already. Our much sought after separation of the sovereign debt from the bank debt deal, is now being pushed out to March of next year in the meantime we have to go through another painful budget with cuts around services and entitlements rather than with the people responsible for them, namely the civil servants. If we could get this deal across the line we would genuinely be in a better place and would make a much quicker recovery. Final note, the claim issued by the Central bank that it will take House prices 20 years to rise to Celtic Tiger levels, this is a load of bull, no one wants Celtic Tiger levels of house prices, we are all quite happy for a stable housing market where your house will appreciate in value along side inflation. Also it stated that wage cost are prohibitive, this is a direct reflection of the fact that we have the highest home ownership in Europe, it makes more sense in Germany for wage costs to be lower when over 50% of the population rent so a smaller % of your income goes out on living expenses than in Ireland.

Day 1278 of the Recession

As we head into the summer months, the world still finds itself troubled with Greece about to go its own way and Spain about to take some pain, how much is still to be decided. I am sure Christine Legarde of the IMF, who has been chiding Greeks for not paying tax while she enjoys a tax free salary, will decide how much pain to apply to Spain and Greece and leave Germany in a better position. Does it not dawn on people like Christine that the rest of us are the market place for German goods and if we have no money...... I am currently reading the biography of Harry S Truman, under the new deal that Roosevelt was implementing there were only 94 Republican Senators in the Senate and the house had less. He also had 4% of the population in 1935 controlled 80% of the money, so if Obama and America want to get a new deal in, they need to have less republicans around. Our own troubles in Ireland are compounded by the bank guarantee, we as a nation are now controlled by this debt, with no way to offset it. we have the faintest hope that NAMA will be able to sell off the 39B in assets and loans it now has at a small profit and only then will we be able to get out of the debt crisis we find ourselves in. This will prove to be a task too far, until we have debt forgiveness or indeed default we will not get rid of this debt. All those in favour of default stand up.......thought so, well you can sing for forgiveness.