An independent Scotland?

[Svartalf]

The secession of the Southern states wasn't the cause of the war.

Ahem.
Keep that history-book money. Spend it on yourself. Be my guest.
Or else, try a library. It's a place where they let you borrow books. They usually have a history section.

Northern driven policy, and their getting abe elected was the cause of the war, secession, and their demanding that federal forces leave their territory, and reacting accordingly when they didn't were only the logical consequence.

[mistermack]

Northern driven policy, and their getting abe elected was the cause of the war, secession, and their demanding that federal forces leave their territory, and reacting accordingly when they didn't were only the logical consequence.

You don't even need a library book. Ask a teacher to get you the American civil war page on wikipedia.

The very very very very very very first sentence is :

The American Civil War (1861–1865), in the United States often referred to as simply the Civil War and sometimes called the "War Between the States", was a civil war fought over the secession of the Confederate States.

Perhaps you should apply to edit it? They can't leave such a glaring error at the top of the entire section, can they?

[Santa_Claus]

The secession of the Southern states wasn't the cause of the war.

Ahem.
Keep that history-book money. Spend it on yourself. Be my guest.
Or else, try a library. It's a place where they let you borrow books. They usually have a history section.

I think you are confusing a trigger event and the cause.

[Svartalf]

Northern driven policy, and their getting abe elected was the cause of the war, secession, and their demanding that federal forces leave their territory, and reacting accordingly when they didn't were only the logical consequence.

You don't even need a library book. Ask a teacher to get you the American civil war page on wikipedia.

The very very very very very very first sentence is :

The American Civil War (1861–1865), in the United States often referred to as simply the Civil War and sometimes called the "War Between the States", was a civil war fought over the secession of the Confederate States.

Perhaps you should apply to edit it? They can't leave such a glaring error at the top of the entire section, can they?

There's a reason the South seceded as soon as abe was elected, and it had been a long time in coming. the war comes back to before the actual secession.

and I ain't editing that kind of subject in an encyclopedia by consensus, I like my edits to still be there in a form I can recognize 6 months later, let alon 2 days.

[Red Celt]

Northern driven policy, and their getting abe elected was the cause of the war, secession, and their demanding that federal forces leave their territory, and reacting accordingly when they didn't were only the logical consequence.

You don't even need a library book. Ask a teacher to get you the American civil war page on wikipedia.

The very very very very very very first sentence is :

The American Civil War (1861–1865), in the United States often referred to as simply the Civil War and sometimes called the "War Between the States", was a civil war fought over the secession of the Confederate States.

Perhaps you should apply to edit it? They can't leave such a glaring error at the top of the entire section, can they?

Are you seriously providing Wikipedia as your source?



If I provided an essay that had a single line entry in the bibliography that said "wikipedia", I'd get a fail.

[Cormac]

Why would we NOT be able to make things better? People will be able to elect the government they want, on radical or timid manifestos.

Yeh, that's right.
A bit like Ireland and Iceland. And the SNP were hard-selling that comparison only a few short years ago.
Your above comment is ludicrously naiive.

What a marvellous job self determination does. How well the local government runs the economy.
Look how "in touch" they are with local needs.
Till they disastrously fuck it up.

But wait, it turns out, they were fucking it up the whole time.
It just took a while to show.

This would be a good point, if it were true about Ireland, but it isn't

Ireland is up the creek, fundamentally because of the Euro. Had we not joined, our government could have:

1. Adjusted the interest rate to slow our economy. Instead what we got was a sequence of lower and lower interest rates for years because this is what Germany and France needed and the ECB obliged.
2. Limited the flow of cheap money out of Germany - which we could not do because we joined the Euro.
3. Limited the activities of foreign banks - which drove the >100% mortgagee in Ireland


After all that, if we hadn't been forced by the ECB and the European Commission to nationalise unsecured private debt* Ireland would have been running a small deficit that we could have easily adjusted to a zero sum.

Instead, we paid German unsecured bondholders 100% of their initial stake plus their full profit, in addition to being forced to borrow from them at exhorbitant rates.

*The correct thing to have done would have been a debt for equity swap, which would have forced the bondholders to share in the I going risk.

The bottom line is that if we were still as independent as we were in 2001 we would not be in the shit now.

[Red Celt]

Ahaha... my home town wants in on the action.

Scottish independence: Corby 'should have vote'

[mistermack]

After all that, if we hadn't been forced by the ECB and the European Commission to nationalise unsecured private debt* Ireland would have been running a small deficit that we could have easily adjusted to a zero sum.

Instead, we paid German unsecured bondholders 100% of their initial stake plus their full profit, in addition to being forced to borrow from them at exhorbitant rates.

*The correct thing to have done would have been a debt for equity swap, which would have forced the bondholders to share in the I going risk.

I would disagree with the essence of all that. The Irish government has never been forced to do anything.
They have taken those kind of steps, because they WANTED something.

I can't force you to give me money. I can say, if you want my car, you have to give me £5,000.
That's what the Irish government have been doing. And they were lucky to get the offer.

Same with the Greeks. Nobody's forcing them to do anything.
If they want X, they have to pay the price of X.

[Cormac]

After all that, if we hadn't been forced by the ECB and the European Commission to nationalise unsecured private debt* Ireland would have been running a small deficit that we could have easily adjusted to a zero sum.

Instead, we paid German unsecured bondholders 100% of their initial stake plus their full profit, in addition to being forced to borrow from them at exhorbitant rates.

*The correct thing to have done would have been a debt for equity swap, which would have forced the bondholders to share in the I going risk.

I would disagree with the essence of all that. The Irish government has never been forced to do anything.
They have taken those kind of steps, because they WANTED something.

I can't force you to give me money. I can say, if you want my car, you have to give me £5,000.
That's what the Irish government have been doing. And they were lucky to get the offer.

Same with the Greeks. Nobody's forcing them to do anything.
If they want X, they have to pay the price of X.

Strictly, it is true that the government couldn't have been forced to not burn the bondholders, but here is how it ultimately played out: "an ultimatum from the ECB and EC that said: You must go into a "rescue package, and you must pay all bondholders or we will not provide any support whatsoever". They effectively said "if you burn the bondholders (as even the IMF was advising) Ireland will get no economic support. In the moment of crisis, our government, in my opinion, made the wrong choice in caving in. They should have called the bluff of the ECB, (which as usual was acting in Germany's interest - and in direct contravention of capitalist principles).

As for the implications of joining the Euro - all of that is factual. The overheating of the Irish economy and its flooding with cheap capital, primarily from Germany, is a historical fact - and it happened long before the global financial collapse.

The notion that our collossal debt arose due to the profligacy of the government or people is a lie. The government was naive (and stupid), and the people believed the hype. But the fundamental problem is that Iteland is on a reverse economic cycle from Germany and consequently will always be on the losing end of ECB fiscal policy.

[Santa_Claus]

The UK banks are also heavily into Ireland - and collectively beyond being able to shrug off a mass default.

[Cormac]

The UK banks are also heavily into Ireland - and collectively beyond being able to shrug off a mass default.

One in particular certainly is.

[mistermack]

The big problem with banks is that the executives don't get paid a penny for safety.
They get big bonuses for big gambles. It's a failure of regulation by governments.
If you're not going to properly regulate your banks, you should make it clear that people who lend to them are on their own.
I would make a law that all bank bonuses are deferred for at least ten years, and paid in bank shares.

But where has all that money gone? People have been getting very very rich on the rashly lent money.
Every penny that Ireland is in hock has gone to Irish gamblers who have made fortunes.

Ireland could levy a retrospective capital gain tax, and claw some of it back from the people who have it.

[Cormac]

The big problem with banks is that the executives don't get paid a penny for safety.
They get big bonuses for big gambles. It's a failure of regulation by governments.
If you're not going to properly regulate your banks, you should make it clear that people who lend to them are on their own.
I would make a law that all bank bonuses are deferred for at least ten years, and paid in bank shares.

But where has all that money gone? People have been getting very very rich on the rashly lent money.
Every penny that Ireland is in hock has gone to Irish gamblers who have made fortunes.

Ireland could levy a retrospective capital gain tax, and claw some of it back from the people who have it.

Sorry mistermack, this is not true.

I am qualified in the area of international financial services law, and spent the last few years implementing regulatory changes in banks.

The fundamental problem with banking regulation is that it cannot work in its current form. The primary reason for this has been explained very well by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his books "Fooled by Randomness" and "Black Swan". The issue is a fundamental failure to understand the nature of probability and risk. This problem is at the heart of the next round of the Basel Regulations.

Regulations only create more gaps for the slippery to slip through. And as for laying the blame for lax regulation at the sort of the Irish government - this is ridiculous. Banking regulations are set by the Bank for International Settlement in Switzerland and rolled out in the EU by the European Commission through EU Regulations. These regulations were enforced in Ireland, and you won't find a bank with the exception of the former Anglo Irish Bank that wasn't fully compliant with the same regulations that apply all across Europe and most of the world.
The debt in Ireland has not gone to greedy gamblers in Ireland. Their gambles now belong to the National Asset Management Agency where any profit has evaporated in substantial write downs in property value. The profits have been exported to German Bondholders and carpetbaggers who bought into those bonds on the strength of the government guarantee.

So, if you wish to see where the money has gone - look to rich German bankers and investment funds.

[mistermack]

I think you absolve successive Irish governments far to readily.
The Irish property bubble could have been stopped at any time by the government, just by taxation.

Every time I went to Ireland, people were shaking their heads, and saying it was madness, and couldn't go on for ever. They were talking about all the building, and the property inflation.
Farmers knew it, bin men knew it, hairdressers knew it.
Everybody knew it. The government just never had the bottle to do anything. Or maybe they all had their own deals going.

There are many ways you can prick a property bubble. It doesn't have to happen in Switzerland.
A massive increase in stamp duty would do it in an instant. But there are loads of other taxes you could impose. Once the price stops rising, you can relax things as you like.
A bubble needs to keep growing, otherwise it naturally subsides.

[Cormac]

I think you absolve successive Irish governments far to readily.
The Irish property bubble could have been stopped at any time by the government, just by taxation.

Every time I went to Ireland, people were shaking their heads, and saying it was madness, and couldn't go on for ever. They were talking about all the building, and the property inflation.
Farmers knew it, bin men knew it, hairdressers knew it.
Everybody knew it. The government just never had the bottle to do anything. Or maybe they all had their own deals going.

There are many ways you can prick a property bubble. It doesn't have to happen in Switzerland.
A massive increase in stamp duty would do it in an instant. But there are loads of other taxes you could impose. Once the price stops rising, you can relax things as you like.
A bubble needs to keep growing, otherwise it naturally subsides.

Now you're talking. And this is definitely where they failed.

I don't absolve them of responsibility. In fact, I know for a fact, (because I saw it myself) that the previous government was surrounded and shot through with people who were leading the property development charge.

Both of these are perfectly legit, and I think true, avenues of criticism for that government.

This current government (both parties) have their own hangers-on. Furthermore, they called for even more public expenditure during the life of the last government, declaring that borrowing should be increased on grounds of the historically low interest rates. Of course, now they play the opposite tune with convenient amnesia.

Clearly, some blame for the current situation lies in Ireland, but not ALL of it. And a great deal of it lies with Germany ,bad EU infrastructure that is heavily weighed towards Germany and France.