THE SIXTH MARCH – April 10TH 2011
We haven't gone away, we’re not going away – despite a number of factors that worked against us, the sixth Ballyhea Bondholder Bailout Protest march took place today. Our U-14 hurlers were playing in Cork, our intermediates were in league action, one of our farmers had a cow down, another was dehorning and castrating young bulls, while a third was taking advantage of the weather and spreading slurry, etc. etc. (that’s the kind of community this is), and still the numbers turned out, still we marched.
Again, we reiterate our aim – the deal done between our discredited government and the IMF/ECB last November wasn’t just unsustainable, it was plain wrong. To saddle a nation with the private debts that a few immensely stupid decision-makers with a few immensely stupid banks had negotiated with these bondholders, who themselves were immensely stupid to have made the loans in the first place, is unfair, unjust, immoral. That private debt MUST be decoupled from the nation’s sovereign debt then treated for what it is, a European problem.
In the RTE Freefall programme shown last week, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern held his hands out to the nation and claimed innocence – sure no-one told him he was setting the nation’s economy on fire; this to a backdrop of a series of respected economists warning of exactly that scenario, year after year, starting as far back as 2003. Since last November, when that deal was signed, those same economists have been saying – mistake, major mistake, potentially catastrophic mistake. In two years’ time, when the ECB has shovelled enough billions into our banks to have paid off the bondholders, thus leaving us with what will then be an unsustainable sovereign debt on which we will certainly default, will Enda Kenny and Michael Noonan be holding out their hands and saying – but, no-one warned us?
Let this government know our strength, let Europe know our anger. Contagion – spread the word.
Regards,
Diarmuid O'Flynn.
