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tuairimiocht

Listed below are comments made by tuairimiocht between Tuesday, 13th January 2009 and Friday, 27th February 2009.

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Obama's extravagant claims 10:34am on 27 Feb 2009 "As I say in my book on anti-Americanism, nobody really wants to be Chinese, or British, or Greek, or Saudi, who is not already."

A lot of people want to be British. Talk to any Iranian refugees / immigrants to this country. So I'm not really sure about the first claim either.
Innocent victims? 2:29pm on 13 Feb 2009 Whom do you blame? The binge drinker or the off-licence that sells him too much booze, too cheaply? I blame both.
Bonus buck stops with Brown 1:57pm on 06 Feb 2009 "
If contractually the banks have to pay a bonus - I think it should be paid at face value of the most toxic assets the bank has"

Good idea - I think Credit Suisse is already doing this.
Bonus buck stops with Brown 1:40pm on 06 Feb 2009 Isn't your salary meant to be the reward for doing your job? For many people who work in less cash-generative businesses than banking, rewards in addition to salary come from seeing the job well done (teachers, academics, nurses and so on). Anything else is a kind of blackmail:

"I won't do my job well unless you give me twice my salary in bonuses".

And senior bankers are meant to be the smart ones?
The pressure for protectionism 5:16pm on 30 Jan 2009 On GB again:

"I can't believe he is being allowed to represent our country. I never voted for him to do so and neither did anyone else."

Actually, the voters of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath have voted for him.

There was one post-war prime minister for whom no-one voted (except a smoky room of political bigwigs): Lord Douglas-Home.
The pressure for protectionism 5:13pm on 30 Jan 2009 "consider a gap year for at least 12 months "

Jokes about the competence of GB aside, how long should a gap year really be?
The euro: safety net or straitjacket? 5:08pm on 30 Jan 2009 Regarding the McWilliams interview and the Torygraph article, one should remember that he does tend to make up things. In spite of certain utterings to the contrary, one thing he did **not** make up is the phrase "Celtic Tiger".
The euro: safety net or straitjacket? 4:24pm on 30 Jan 2009 "Ireland's big problem was not that our exchange rate with the Euro was wrong- it wasn't- it was the low interest rate regime mandated by the mandarins in Frankfurt were toxic to the Irish economy and resulted in run-away inflation and asset price bubbles."

I take issue with the suggestion that low policy rates have been responsible for asset-price bubbles. Iceland had an 18% central bank policy rate before its financial crisis. It didn't help! Britain had a higher policy rate than the Eurozone and it is going to suffer the consequences of the financial crisis more than any other developed economy. If Ireland had had an independent monetary policy with rates set to target asset prices, such as house prices, we would have borrowed in euros instead! Better to cut out the middleman and to throw monetary stability into the deal.

Asset-price bubbles were financed by surplus countries "investing" in deficit countries. Investment sounds nice, but all this meant was that these countries poured their renminbis and euros into housing- and corporate-debt markets. It's not clear how interest rates could have prevented trade deficits associated with the export of manufacturing jobs, and mercantalist tricks that certain surplus countries use.

This issue needs to be fixed by having an active industrial policy on the part of the government, and having a counter-cyclical regulatory regime in place for the banks - having counter-cyclical capital adequacy ratios at the banks, for starters.
The euro: safety net or straitjacket? 4:13pm on 30 Jan 2009 Question: Why is the following joke wrong?

"What's the difference between Ireland and Iceland: One letter and six months".

Answer: The Euro, as evidenced by Iceland's desire to join.
End of the British carrot? 5:49pm on 13 Jan 2009 I resent a democratically-elected parliament telling me I cannot eat pesticide-laced food. In the name of freedom, I am now going home to poison myself with cyanide.

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