How Ireland Is Like AIG
This summarizes everything I’ve been hearing about the forced bailout of Ireland over the weekend.
The pressure for a bailout of Ireland did not come from Ireland itself—it came from Eurozone officials. If anything, Irish Finance Minister Brian Lehnihan’s announcement over the weekend that Ireland would seek a bailout was a concession to its European Union friends.So why would the Eurocrats demand a bailout of Ireland when Ireland insisted it didn’t need one?
The first reason is that much of Ireland’s debt—both its sovereign debt and the debt of its banks—is held by many of Europe’s largest financial institutions. The continued downward pressure on the market value of Ireland’s debt was causing balance sheet issues for these banks. Many of Europe’s banks had written credit default swaps on Irish debt, which was draining cash. Finally, the banks were finding it increasingly expensive to borrow against Irish debt—that is, other banks would not lend money in exchange for Irish debt as collateral, except at steep discounts—creating the potential for a credit crunch.
[snip]
Which means that this is not so much a bailout of Ireland—it’s a bailout of Ireland’s counterparties. That is to say, it’s a bit like Europe’s version of AIG: a backdoor bailout of invisible financial players who failed to manage their exposure to a shaky borrower.
But this is where things will get interesting. Ireland’s Greens have already called for a new election and the ruling Fianna Fail will surely be thrown out early next year. In fact, the government probably won’t last long enough to pass the budget with the further austerity requirements demanded by EU.
Unlike with AIG, we didn’t have much opportunity to refuse to pay the banksters bill (we were left solely with the opportunity to kick out the party that had made the AIG deal, though it didn’t get us much in terms of new players). But the Irish may well have that opportunity.
It almost makes me want to go take my Irish citizenship for a test drive…
How does one get Irish citizenship? Can you get it if your great-grandparents, or great-great-grandparents came here off the boat from Ireland?
Nah, the ties have to be closer than that. Me, I married me an Irish hubby before they changed the citizenship process to make it harder for “anchor babies” to get citizenshp.
And in any case, now is probably NOT the time to invest in Irish citizenship.
Oh well!! The only thing good about having Irish citizenship would be that it makes you able to work elsewhere in the EU. But you are right.
If your parent or grandparent was born in Ireland, then you can apply for Irish citizenship through descent by registering your foreign birth with Ireland. This allows for dual citizenship.
It may be passed on to each successive generation. Once you become an Irish citizen, any of your children born after the date you registered your foreign birth can become Irish citizens by descent, too. (This does not apply, however, to any of your children born prior to the date you register).
Citizenship through marriage changed in November 2005. Previously you qualified after so many years of marriage to an Irish citizen. This allowed for dual citizenship. Now to obtain Irish citizenship through marriage you take an oath of loyalty, and you qualify only after being married at least 3 years to an Irish citizen, living in Ireland with your spouse for at least 2 years in the previous 4 years–continuously in the last year–the year of application. You also announce your intention to continue live on the island after citizenship is granted.
I have two great-grandparents who immigrated from Ireland. Would I have a chance at emigrating to Ireland?
If either of your grandparents were born in Ireland with your great grandparents before they left Ireland, then you could apply for dual citizenship through that grandparent.
Great-grandparents born in Ireland would not qualify you for dual citizenship.
However, if you were planning to give up your current citizenship, you could contact your local Irish consulate to inquire about moving to Ireland to work (might be difficult to find a job there currently) and later apply for citizenship. Not sure if that is what you are asking.
I thought of two factors; one, an obscure news report two days ago intimating English banks stand to profit from the squeeze on Eire; the other, that Scribe reads German publications live online, those German bankers, you know. Though, I have no idea whether condominium mortgages are underwater where they speak Low German. Maybe that was part of why Ms. Merkel appeared slightly disaffected in the formal NATO photo two days ago.
Credit default swaps — I thought that those would only kick in if there was an actual default.
I’m not clear on whether the problem is that Eurocrats are holding Irish debt (bonds) and the market price of those bonds are going down, therefore the Eurocrats who are holding the bonds and using them as collateral are getting something similar to margin calls, requiring them to come up with more capital to prop up their collateral, or whether there are credit default swaps triggering due to the default on debt.
And WRT elections — when Ireland takes this bailout, won’t there be some kind of contract on the required austerity measures? What power would a new government have to push back against those austerity measures?
What a freaking mess. I would love to see a new govt throw off some of these banks though.
Probably this is not news to a lot of people. But it is news to me. Petey Peterson, Mr. Catfood is here, there, everywhere. AIG and China bought the Blackstone or Blackrock IPO. Catfood got a couple billion from AIG.
The story gets murky. Geithner hires Black Stone/Rock with a no bid contract. These people are incredibly smart in a creepy way. Blackrock and Peterson get to steal taxpayer hard earned money, and they give it to AIG for their “junk” and most of the other fraudster junk.
Ireland knows what it means to be ruled by foreign
depostsdespots!Ding!!
I’m not sure I follow. If the Greens win in a landslide, they can choose to undo any agreement to pay the bankster bills? Or prevent such an agreement from happening?
It will be interesting to watch Ireland as a test case of the capitalist order rolling out full-on neo-feudalism among a fully consumerized and potentially vocal populace. The Irish are at many disadvantages, however. Those include the traditional deferral to church and state authority, the shame and reticence about discussing money problems, and Ireland’s reportedly draconian bankruptcy laws.