Airijos bankų gelbėjimo krizė

Gru 1, 2010 by anarchistas

anarchistas.lt: Airijos gelbėjimo farsas

Paul Krugman: Not Waving But Drowning, The Irish Non-bailout

It’s hard to escape the sense that European policy makers are just completely out of their depth. They know how to deal with liquidity problems, but they cannot come to grips with the reality that this requires more than buying a bit more time. It’s as if we’re having the following dialogue:

“Ireland really can’t afford to pay these debts.”

“Here’s a credit line!”

“No, really, we just can’t afford to pay.”

“Here’s a credit line!”

It really is like watching a car wreck.

Bloomberg: ECB Tried to Force Ireland Into Bailout, Minister Says

Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) — European Central Bank officials tried to force Ireland to seek a bailout earlier this month and European officials are now trying to do the same to Portugal, Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said.

“Clearly there were people from outside this country who were trying to bounce us in as a sovereign state, into making an application, throwing in the towel before we had even considered it as a government,” he told Irish state broadcaster RTE in an interview today. “And if you notice, they are doing the same with Portugal now.”

New Deal 2.0, Marshall Auerback: Bankers Gone Wild in Ireland AND Germany

One of the traditional rationales for the creation of the euro was that a single currency and strict Maastricht criteria would keep the profligate Mediterraneans and their Celtic equivalents in line. Instead, critics, particularly in Germany, increasingly see the European Monetary Union as a means for freeloading nations to offload their liabilities onto fitter neighbors.

2010.06.30 Paul Krugman: The Icelandic Post-crisis Miracle

And a strange thing has happened: although Iceland is generally considered to have experienced the worst financial crisis in history, its punishment has actually been substantially less than that of other nations [...]

The moral of the story seems to be that if you’re going to have a crisis, it’s better to have a really, really bad one. Otherwise, you’ll end up taking the advice of people who assure you that even more suffering will cure what ails you.

2010.11.26 Bloomberg: Iceland Is No Ireland as State Kept Free of Bank Debt

Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) — Iceland’s President Olafur R. Grimsson said his country is better off than Ireland thanks to the government’s decision to allow the banks to fail two years ago and because the krona could be devalued.

“The difference is that in Iceland we allowed the banks to fail,” Grimsson said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Mark Barton today. “These were private banks and we didn’t pump money into them in order to keep them going; the state did not shoulder the responsibility of the failed private banks.”

Ireland’s Prime Minister Brian Cowen said this week his government has discussed an 85 billion-euro ($112 billion) bailout with the European Union and International Monetary Fund after the country’s banks threatened to bring the euro member to the brink of bankruptcy. Iceland’s banks, which still owe creditors about $85 billion, were split to create domestic units needed to keep the financial system running, while foreign liabilities remained within the failed lenders.

As a consequence, “Iceland is faring much better than anybody expected,” Grimsson said. The Icelandic state’s liability on foreign depositor claims stemming from Icesave accounts at failed Landsbanki Islands hf should be put to a national referendum, he said.

“How far can we ask ordinary people — farmers and fishermen and teachers and doctors and nurses — to shoulder the responsibility of failed private banks,” said Grimsson. “That question, which has been at the core of the Icesave issue, will now be the burning issue in many European countries.”

2010.11.24 Paul Krugman: Lands of Ice and Ire

I wrote about the surprising resilience of Iceland a while back. Since then, Ireland has had a bit of growth, while Iceland had a modest setback in the first half of 2010 (partly thanks to the volcano). Using Eurostat data, we now have this: [...]

Slightly worse (but within measurement error) GDP performance in Iceland, but substantially less bad employment performance. And don’t get me started on Latvia and Estonia.

The IMF’s latest report on Iceland is remarkably chipper:

Under the recovery program, Iceland’s recession has been shallower than expected, and no worse than in less hard-hit countries. At the same time, the krona has stabilized at a competitive level, inflation has come down from 18 to under 5 percent, and CDS spreads have dropped from around 1000 to about 300 basis points. Current account deficits have unwound, and international reserves have been built up, while private sector bankruptcies have led to a marked decline in external debt, to around 300 percent of GDP.

Oh, and while the IMF is demanding that Ireland cut minimum wages and reduce unemployment benefits, its mission to Iceland praised the “focus on preserving Iceland’s valued Nordic social welfare model.”

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Banksteriai bankų negelbėjimą tradiciškai bando tapatinti su pasaulio ir civilizacijos pabaiga. Islandijos pavyzdys rodo, kad nusimetus vampyrus nuo kupros, gyvenimas tik gerėja.