NEW YEAR, OLD RESOLUTION

VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS

Since this coalition came to power our banks have paid out over €45bn in bonds, more than a third of that total unsecured. Who benefited? Have a read of this, for starters.

Our national debt is now over €200bn, has increased year-on-year at a frightening rate, up by over €10bn in 2013 alone and still rising.

There’s a line from a Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale I've used a few times – All the people standing by stood and cheered and cried, ‘Oh, how splendid are the Emperor's new clothes’.

Some, however, are not cheering. If you're not inclined to applaud the fact that the NTMA went back to the markets again this week and borrowed another €3.75bn, you might like to read the take of economist David McWilliams.

If you can take your medicine a little harder, a little meatier, if you're suspicious of the government’s claims of reducing unemployment, you might like to go to Constantin Gurdgiev’s blog and read some additional not-so-well-advertised facts. Constantin does mention emigration in this blog but couldn't input the actual numbers – imagine the picture it would show if he could.

This government repeatedly claims that the measures they have taken are progressive in nature, that they’ve hit hardest those who can most afford it – read this by economist Michael Taft and know in your heads what you already know in your hearts. Know also that those particular individual policies were NOT dictated by the Troika but rather were the very deliberate choices of this government.

If you're wondering what the hell we have to celebrate on ‘exiting’ this so-called ‘bailout’, read what this outside observer, Ambrose Evan-Pritchard, has to say.

ANOTHER YEAR OLDER, NOTHING LEARNED

We’re told our export figures are improving but even Michael Noonan admits this isn’t because of an increase in the export of goods – it’s an increase in services. And what are those? Well, think IFSC, think multinationals, then think of who and what got the world into this mess in the first place. The greedy and noxious element of the financial ‘services’ sector with the toxic trade in their toxic bonds, the multinationals using every rule in the book (most of which they helped to write in the last four deregulating decades) to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, thus increasingly skewing the capital/labour contribution figures.

Already indentured slaves to our European 'partners', Michael Noonan, Enda Kenny, Eamon Gilmore and Brendan Howlin want to see us put even more of our eggs in those two baskets, become even deeper in debt to the markets, even deeper in thrall to the multinationals.

What of investment in our own indigenous industries, what of encouraging and funding the growth of small and medium enterprise?

But no, instead this country is being slowly crushed. We’ve poured €70bn into our banks, most of that under coercion from our European 'partners' but do we now have a functioning banking system? Yes, if you're a bondholder; no if you're Irish and looking to start or maintain a new small business, no if you're looking to buy a new house and you don’t have 100% cast-iron security.

A TALE OF TWO NATIONS

In February 2011 we threw out the government that helped us into this hole of hell and elected the Fine Gael/Labour coalition, expecting they would take our fight to Europe. Instead they have taken Europe’s fight to us. In recognition of their success, at the end 2012 Enda Kenny was voted European Of The Year by a German magazine; a year later and Michael Noonan is voted Finance Minister Of The Year by European bankers (be certain though that this won’t be the end of their respective rewards from Europe).

Now, as we enter 2014, we have two Irelands, as put so eloquently and so poignantly in this letter to the Irish Times some weeks ago, the false front being presented to the world, and the real Ireland being slowly stripped of services, of working rights and conditions, of its own natural wealth and resources, an Ireland where people are being slowly crushed under the burden of increasing regressive universal taxes and charges.

NEW YEAR, OLD RESOLUTION

‘Hiding in plain sight’ is a well-known expression, a well-known tactic; in this case the truth is not hidden, it’s there for all to see. Some of us have known that truth for a long time. On March 2^nd, only six weeks away now, in Ballyhea we’ll be starting into our fourth year of weekly protest, our fourth year of campaigning against this injustice. To mark the occasion we will hold a conference at which we invite all those mentioned above to attend.

Our hope is that we will wake people up to what’s been happening to us; our hope also is that our media will stand back and take a full, objective look at what exactly has happened in Ireland since the launch of the euro, the damage that has been caused in this country since the launch of what was a fatally flawed currency.

In the meantime we resolve to continue our campaign. The austerity measures aside, whether we were Switzerland or Swaziland what was done to Ireland was wrong and we will not just let it pass. We are currently in the process of building a cross-party cross-society coalition that will join with us in taking this fight back to Europe. 

We have drawn up our own proposals for the lifting of the entire burden but right now our focus is on the Promissory Notes and the remaining €28.1bn in bonds that sit in the Central Bank awaiting sale to the markets. Those bonds represent a large portion of the most odious element of the banking debt; at this point, before they are sold into the markets, they are also the easiest element to destroy. The EU/ECB found the means to allow the issue of those Promissory Notes, they must now equally find the means of their destruction.

A happy, healthy and productive New Year to us all.

Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn.

THERE'S BEEN A CRASH...

You know those chilling words, “There’s been a crash…”; the sentence is left hanging, a pause as the unfortunate individual to whom the task of breaking the news has fallen allows those words sink in – just a few moments, but those moments are an eternity. 

We had it in our family 13 years ago; “It’s Tiger…”.

We had it again earlier this year – “Jack has collapsed at work…”; again those few moments, again that jolt in the pit of your guts. Your breath catches in your chest, your mind is in turmoil, your brain resisting, fearing the worst but hoping against hope. On both occasions it was the worst, two brothers gone.

IRELAND’S CRASH

As we come to the end of another year in Ballyhea of campaigning against the bank-debt, I have that same feeling. Forget the lies, the half-truths, the spin of this arrogant and ignorant government; there’s been a crash and this country was in the front seat, no safety-belt, is now in a coma and on life-support.

In the last three years, once the true extent of the damage was known there were real opportunities where we could have been saved, put on an early path to full recovery. One by one those opportunities were missed.

FORETELLING

It gives me absolutely no satisfaction in saying this, but so much that we in the various Says No campaigns have been saying is now proving correct. 

We said there could have and should have been burden-sharing with the banks and their bondholders; in the past week the IMF’s Ajai Chopra, centrally involved in the Troika agreement, confirmed that we were correct.

We said that Ireland could have and should have driven a much harder bargain than it did, that our negotiators were poor – that truth too has now emerged, confirmed by Ashoka Mody, a former IMF stalwart.

We said Ireland should have used the Fiscal Compact referendum to send a warning message to Europe, that we should have used it as leverage; instead the government couldn't wait to have it passed, another opportunity lost, trump card after trump card just thrown away. The ‘seismic’ deal trumpeted by Kenny/Gilmore/Noonan after the EU leader’s summit of June 2012? In tatters, as the EU now gives us the proverbial finger, repeatedly tells us it’s all too late, no retrospective payments.

During the last three years we’ve agreed with those who have vehemently and consistently argued against the austerity measures being imposed by this government, who have put forward fairer and better means of making cuts and of raising revenue, who have highlighted that the measures taken by this government were crushing the people, crushing the economy.

FOREBODING

Well it’s happening, and it’s happening right in front of our eyes. Insulated by their high salaries and expenses the members of this government live in a parallel universe, a world in which they believe that thanks to their superior vision, everything is on the up.

I don’t see it, I don’t feel it; what I have is this knot in the pit of my stomach, this foreboding. Government debt of over €200bn and rising, against stagnant GNP of €130bn; a growing mortgage crisis as more people stagger under a mountain of private debt; more and more cuts to vital public services; more and more regressive indirect taxation; a banking system which despite all the infusion of public billions is still not functional; depression and suicide rates on the increase; families and communities shattered as hundreds of thousands are forced to emigrate – nay, encouraged to emigrate; shamelessly masked unemployment rates; a fictitious Forbes rating, part of the propaganda spin to encourage outside investment.

QUESTION

Which brings me to a question:

The multinationals, through their practice of tax avoidance internationally, contribute hugely to the growing imbalance in the world’s wealth distribution;

The financial sector, through its greed-driven practices legal and illegal, contributed hugely to this current chaos worldwide;

Yet those are the very two sectors this government to which this government is turning for salvation – why? Where we should be trying to break from their crushing grasp this government is snuggling deeper and ever deeper.

Have we learned nothing? Surely now, rather than exposing ourselves further to the cold and merciless vagaries of global corporatism and finance we should be expending all our efforts, all our energy, in insulating ourselves against those very variations, encouraging native industry, native growth, native energy production?

HOPE, ALWAYS HOPE

I am still hoping against hope, there is still time to do the right thing. Our Central Bank is sitting on €28bn of Promissory Note debt bonds – those bonds must not be sold to the markets. That money has already been printed, it went to bail out two zombie banks, those bonds aren’t yet in private hands; given that it would be reducing our long-term debt destroying them now would have only a positive effect on Ireland’s ability to borrow money from the markets.

On the remainder of the bank bailout money what we need is unity, a national approach as we fight for Ireland’s interests in Europe. As Enda continues to run cooing to his new European 'partners' Barroso, Rehn, Van Rompuy, Merkel and co., they continute to impose this full crushing bank-debt burden on us, they continue to demand their full pound of flesh.

We need a cross-party all-party delegation of strong-willed strong-minded people (including from the Technical Group but not confined to politicians) to take those people on, a delegatin dedicated to securing bank-debt writeoff for Ireland. We need it now.

In the meantime, here in Ballyhea and in Charleville, in all the other Says No centres, we’ll keep marching every week, we’ll maintain our campaign. Happy Christmas to you all and thanks to anyone who has supported us during the past 147 weeks.

Regards,

Diarmuid O'Flynn.

EXITING THE FOG

On December 15^th 2010 entered the Troika programme; today, December 16^th 2013, we enter the fourth year of that bail-in. And make no mistake, a bail-in this was, €17.5bn immediately pillaged from our National Pension Reserve Fund and handed to the banks. To ensure we could meet our repayment ‘obligations’ we’ve had ‘extend and pretend’ arrangements in those three years but we haven’t had a cent of debt write-down, rather we’ve had bank-debt piled on sovereign debt so that now, three years on, we are over €60bn deeper in the red.

A PEOPLE BETRAYED

In March 2011, having run on a platform that there would be burden-sharing with the banks and their bondholders, that there would be openness, fairness and transparency, this government came to power. In every single facet they have betrayed that mandate, lying and spinning as they instead implemented in full the mandate of the market – socialisation of private debt, then austerity measures introduced to pay for that debt, those measures rammed through a now-redundant Dáil.

TOUGH DECISIONS

That new government did face several tough decisions:

• Challenge the EU/ECB on the bank-debt, on the Promissory Note debt in particular; 
• Draw up legislation requiring the multinationals to pay a minimum Corporate Tax rate; 
• Sign up to the Financial Transaction Tax and thus levy the sector that had caused this problem worldwide in the first instance, the finance industry; 
• Impose a third rate of tax to get a greater contribution from those who can most afford it, the high-earners; 
• For those in the public sector, including TDs and Ministers, reduce the top rates of public sector salaries, pensions and expenses (this and the previous measure could have been made temporary, until the country is out of the woods).

They ran from every one of those decisions, instead hit over and over again the soft targets. Theirs has been a fear-driven policy of appeasement – appeasement of the EU/ECB, of Germany, of the markets, all at the expense of its own people.

MASTERS OF SPIN

They have made a litany of false claims, the latest being to take credit for job creation. Do they claim ‘credit’ when jobs are lost? Not likely. Those jobs were created by the enterprise of the Irish people, by self-employed people in particular who – God knows – have been hung out to dry by this government. 

They have been creative though – in the way in which they've masked the true unemployment figure with all the various schemes that are now running, in the way in which they have encouraged people to emigrate, in the way they are destroying employment terms & conditions, in the way they claim to have maintained social welfare rates and income-tax rates while simultaneously dipping deeper and deeper into our pockets, in the way they spin and weave their web of lies and half-truths.

We’ve just been presented with a conveniently timed Forbes rating of ‘best country in which to do business’, the same Forbes who gave us the same rating in 2007, the same year Anglo Irish Bank was ranked World’s Best Bank. Economist Constantin Gurdgiev – a far more reliable source – blew that rating to smithereens in a recent blog.

NOTHING TO CELEBRATE - YET

I'm sorry I can’t join in the celebration of this day. 

Our people are leaving by the hundreds of thousands, depression and suicide is increasing by the year as the government implements its ‘slash & burn’ public service policy, imposes its regressive ever-increasing ‘indirect taxation’ policy of stealth levies and charges.

We’re told that the Troika are leaving – they are not. ONLY the IMF will be gone, and ONLY the IMF showed any hint of moderation in their dealings with us – evidence of that surfaced yet again this week in an interview given by former IMF chief in Ireland, Ashaka Mody. The IMF wanted to burn those bondholders and they have now admitted that the Austerity programme was wrong. 

We will be left with the EU/ECB, the same terrible twins who when they came back in December 2010, bullied and blackmailed Ireland into accepting in its entirety all bank debt as a condition for lending us money. These are the people Enda Kenny and this government now call our partners - classic Stockholm Syndrome. They are his partners, he has worked hand-in-glove with them. They are not ours.

DO NOT ACCEPT INJUSTICE IN ANY FORM; MAKE THE INJUSTICE VISIBLE - GHANDI

I implore the Irish people; don’t buy the lies, the spin. A classic tactic of an abuser is to make the victim feel guilty; we are the victims here, we are the ones who have been forced into accepting a debt that is not ours, a debt that sees us enslaved to Europe for at least the next four decades, €70bn transferred from our coffers to the accounts of the world’s financial elite.

What exactly are we exiting? Nothing. Rather, we are now firmly in the grip of our would-be European masters.

I am confident this country will recover, I have absolute faith in the Irish people. We will bounce back, not because of the policies of this government, but in spite of them.

A GLOBAL TALE

There was a great cartoon doing the rounds a few months ago with the caption: THE WORLD OWES $52 trillion - TO WHOM? For the answer, let's start back a couple of centuries. 

FIRST WORLD (USA/UK and their allies) V THE REST

• 1800: Three times richer 
• 1970: 35 times richer 
• 2013: 80 times richer.

How has this happened? Let’s look at another few numbers, and another question:

THIRD-WORLD AID OR THIRD-WORLD RAID?

Third-World Aid - the stream inward:

• €130bn annual ‘aid’:

Third-World Raid - the flood outward:

• €900bn Tax avoidance schemes by large corporations (‘Trade Mispricing’); 
• €600bn Debt-servicing to rich countries; 
• €500bn Estimated cost of Trade Rules drawn up and enforced by the first-world.

Net flow:

That’s €130bn going in, over €2tn (€2,000,000,000,000) flowing out from poor nations to rich, every year. Now, the picture begins to emerge, why it is the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, all of which leads to this:

DEBT DEFAULT – BUT WHOSE FAULT

You've heard of the ripple effect? That growing wave of debt in nations worldwide is resulting in a veritable tsunami of default. From a study by Ugo Panizza for the IMF in 2008, the following figures emerged.

Number of governments who have defaulted on any debts, including any kind of debt restructuring:

• 1941-1970: 6 
• 1971-2004: 129

Ireland is not a Third-World country, nor remotely near it, and those of us who live and work here should be both appreciative and grateful for the bounty that surrounds us. But we are now sucked into this debt-spiral, caught in this debt-web. True, the €70bn we've paid to 'bail out' our banks doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in a global sense, not when put against the numbers above, but in Irish terms it is a sizeable amount, over half our annual GNP - our contribution to their coffers.

SLIDING SCALE – SLIPPERY SLOPE

Where is the money going? For the answer, let's look at a few very startling facts on global wealth distribution (if you could call it that):

• 1% own 43%; 
• 50% own 1%.

On an individual basis, the richest 300 have the same wealth as the poorest 3bn (3,000,000,000 - more than the combined populations of India, China, USA & Brazil).

STATUS QUO

That's where we are now, in this year of our Lord 2013, that's the world we've made for ourselves, that obscene imbalance between the Haves and Have-Nots, an imbalance accelerating by the day never mind by the year.

This is neither incidental nor accidental; it is planned policy, very deliberate, it is those who are gathering all that wealth to themselves now dictating to those who supposedly make the rules and the laws - our governments.

STATE OF THE NATION

This Sunday Enda Kenny is going on national TV to give his version of The State Of The Nation. He’ll proclaim that we’re ‘EXITING THE BAILOUT!’, that we’re ‘RECLAIMING OUR SOVEREIGNTY!’ and his cheerleaders in the media will begin the spin.

All the people standing by cheered and cried, “Oh, how splendid are the Emperor's new clothes!”

The truth is that we never got a bailout and that we have surrendered our sovereignty indefinitely. 

Banks and bondholders across the globe got the bailout, we were the ones footing that bill. What we got was a bail-in, not a cent of writeoff, debt on debt. We are, in fact, entering the fourth year of that bail-in and for the next four decades (at least) we are debt-enslaved to Europe. 

We will emerge from this but we will do so in spite of this government, not because of them. In fact had they done what they were elected to do nearly three years ago and stood up to the EU/ECB on behalf of the people we would now be very firmly on the path to recovery.

GOVERNMENTS COWED AND COWARD

'We daren’t stand up to the markets – they’re so powerful, so threatening!’ that’s the cry of governments everywhere but of ours especially; ‘We've got to appease them, we have no choice but to impose austerity on you!' 

And so they make good the failed investments of bankers, brokers and financiers, they facilitate the tax avoidance schemes of the various multi-nationals, they refuse to put even a minimal tax on some of the dodgier financial transactions, they strip away employee rights, bending and changing the law to whatever shape is required, and all the while forcing that debt burden onto their own people, cutting and slashing services, piling on regressive stealth taxes.

Appeasing the people isn't a priority of this government nor of the EU/ECB. They have made their choice. 

We too have a choice. Do we accept this, or do we fight back.

At 2pm this Saturday, December 14^th, at the Opera House in Cork, a few of us from Ballyhea and Charleville who have been campaigning for nearly three years will join others who have started that fight-back. Stand up, be counted - join us.

Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn.