Ireland set to go bust, claims economic historian
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Independent Minds
A dire warning that the Republic is a prime candidate to go bust has come from one of the world's leading economic historians.
"The idea that countries don't go bust is a joke," said Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor and author of The Ascent of Money.
"The debt trap may be about to spring" he said, "for countries that have created large stimulus packages in order to stimulate their economies."
His chosen prime candidate to go bust is "Ireland, followed by Italy and Belgium, and UK is not too far behind".
Argentina is top of his list of shaky countries but "the argument that it can't happen in major western economies is nonsense".
Professor Ferguson believes the economists are ill qualified to analyse the current economic situation since they lack the overview of historians such as himself.
"There are economic professors in American universities who think they are masters of the universe, but they don't have any historical knowledge. I have never believed that markets are self correcting. No historian could."
The historian does not subscribe to the theory of the "Great Depression" repeating and says this scenario is unlikely because the Federal Reserve has "massively expanded the monetary base which is the opposite of what happened in the 1930s".
The problem now is what happens when current monetary policy collides with a policy of "vast government borrowing" on a scale unknown since the 1940s.
"We have the fiscal policy of a world war without a war."
Referring to the clash between inflation and deflation he added: "I don't know who is going to win but we know that while the struggle goes on ordinary people will get trampled. There will be more economic volatility and ordinary people will pay."
He has also warned that in Britain he expects "more riots in major cities this year" because of the economic situation and says the recent "drip feed" of the peccadilloes of British MPs and their expenses is "just the beginning of a crisis of political legitimacy that will be played out over the next 18 months".
Ferguson, a native of Glasgow, specialises in financial and economic history as well as the history of the British empire.
* This article is from The Belfast Telegraph.
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Comments
The sad thing is the Americans have been doing the above for most of last century and a half. What a surprise the Chinese want a world reserve currency. They are already buying their domestic gold production to add to reserves of the state bank. Next they will start buying overseas.
You can't mess with the laws of economics, and Keynesian monetary policy coupled with a fraudulent fractional-reserve cabal of bankers is NOT a law of economics, it's a way to fleece the population and turn them into indentured servants. For heaven's sake, quit re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic and do the right thing.
What marching orders did you receive from your banking masters ?
What twisted lies and spin will you try to propagate over the coming months ???
You are not fooling me you paid, obfuscator of the truth !!
Shame on you.
China and Russia seek a new economic order to oppose the New World Order of Israel-America.
Dare one look with sympathy on their first tentative efforts to escape from the unilateral economic system of debt and petro-backed currencies now ruling the world? Dare one hope that they may break the chains of constraint operated by the IMF, the World Bank and a dozen other agencies with diverse names but the same ruling oligarchy?
Well don't ket them bully you.
Tell them to go to hell as only the irish can!
Don't let them push you around Ireland. And, with a another vote coming up ...
Tell them to go to hell especially those complicit politicians!
While I am rabidly anti-Lisbon for various reasons, and the prevalent Liberal vision of the EU epitomised by the Services Directive, I am absolutely positive, like the vast majority of my countrymen, about the Idea of Europe. Without membership of the EU, which never forced us to vote for politicians payed by property developers who completely failed to regulate the banks, we would probably already have gone the way of Iceland. Indeed if anything it appears that the countrie most committed to the real vision of a deep economic and eventually political European Union, France and Germany, are amongst those best placed to weather the storm. Anglo-American principles of the free market and deregulation which have infected the EU via the UK and the US' Eastern European satellites are the real cancer at the heart of Europe.
However, Mr Ferguson should not be too smug as should Ireland go down it will doubtless be as part of a broader collapse encompassing the whole liberal western capitalist economic system. Workers of the World Unite, youe have nothing to lose but your chains (oh and there's this thing they do with some wire and a cheese grater)
Well, you are a moron, sir. Free markets are self correcting - but since the government and their central banks (well, the privately owned central banks) won't stop interfering and manipulating, we don't have a real free market.
If you are so well qualified, as a "historian" I'm sure you could've predicted this occuring... just as Ron Paul and Peter Schiff did - who also have viable solutions such as: DO NOTHING. LET THE DEBTERS LIQUIDATE AND LET THE MARKET CORRECT ITSELF WITHOUT HAVING THE IDIOTIC GOVERNMENTS AND CENTRAL BANKS PROLONG THE AGONY.
Ron Paul and Peter Schiff - two of the most important names the world needs to know. YouTube videos galore on them.
Markets have always existed, before there were ideologies, before there were nations and before there were kings. And before those things they were freer than they have ever been, and freer than they will probably ever be again, barring another dark age.
Duke ConDao
Europe spoke against speculators recently http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2060
After severing themselves from dependence on private banksters to supply currency at interest for national economies, these nations must institute systems of interest free federal notes issued by the government as it pays for military, social security, infrastructure and other federal expenses. The American Colonies issued "colonial script" in a manner calculated to avoid inflation and deflation while providing economic stability. This irritated the Crown no end when they were told by Franklin how Americans were so successful...hence the Revolutionary War.
Every United States president (Lincoln, McKinley and Kennedy), with the exception of Andrew Jackson, who attempted to free America from the iron grip of the criminal banksters was assassinated. Gee, I wonder if there is a connection? Millions will die if the nations do not free themselves from the ultimate dishonesty of the vampiric banking dynasties.
the reason why the broader money supply gauges collapsed anyway had nothing to do with the Fed failing to pump, it was the reserves outside of its purview that declined. there was also no deposit insurance at the time, so when banks went bust, the deposits in them went into a black hole too - they were simply destroyed.
so now that we have cleared up that broad money and economic activity both collapsed IN SPITE of heavy pumping up of the monetary base by the Fed in the 1930's, let's examine whether monetary pumping , even if seemingly 'successful' in the sense that broad money supply keeps rising, overall debt levels do not decrease, and prices fail to fall, can actually 'avert a depression'. the answer is of course a resounding NO. 'money' printed by the central bank is NOT wealth. it is not capital, it can not cure the capital consumption that has brought us to this juncture.
i do of course agree that many countries, including Ireland, will eventually go bankrupt, for precisely the same reason. their spending makes the economic situation worse, not better, as is widely, and erroneously, believed. it smothers all attempts to revivie true capital formation, as more and more resources are directed to wasteful uses. with every bankrupt bank that is bailed out, billions (and in some cases like the US, trillions) are gone and can now not be used anymore to do the useful things that may have been done had this money not be wasted.
a depression is most definitely possible, it is even likely. when entire nations go bankrupt - and they will - not even the modern-day the doctored unemployment statistics will be able to hide the true damage anymore.
there is nothing anyone can 'do' about it, contrary to what interventionist governments all over the world keep asserting day and night - it is too late. the biggest credit and asset bubble of all time has burst, and we will have to endure the bust. unfortunately, no-one has the sense to allow a fast, if painful correction by adopting a hands-off policy. instead they are all busy digging an even deeper hole. never mind that anyone with an ounce of common sense need only look at Japan to realize this.
Ireland could well go bust; whether it is in fact allowed to do so would be a political matter.
Well!
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