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Mandate To Default On The Unjust Bank Debt That Is Sinking Our Economy

category national | eu | opinion/analysis author Wednesday May 02, 2012 02:48author by Darcy - FARMERS FOR NO

The Fiscal Pact is equivalent to economic suicide

BUT WHAT HAPPENS IF WE VOTE NO?

COULD IRELAND’S ACCESS TO A FUTURE BAILOUT FROM THE ESM RESCUE FUND BE PUT AT JEOPARDY BY THAT DECISION?

This is the so-called ‘Blackmail Clause’ contained in Article 136 of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) Treaty.
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Quote of Constantin Gurdgiev, Economist Trinity College Dublin.

“The Fiscal Pact is equivalent to economic suicide”.

Former disgraced Taoiseach Albert Reynolds conned the Irish People into Voting Yes to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 which was about ditching the Irish Punt and NOT about IR£7 Billion in Structural Funds.

Ireland joined the Euro-zone in 1999 and within one decade the EURO had transformed our then thriving economy into the basketcase it is today.
JOINING THE EURO-ZONE CAUSED THE HOUSING BUBBLE WHICH IN TURN CRASHED THE ECONOMY.

This was caused by the destruction of National Currencies and the removal of exchange rates which enabled European Banks and most especially German Banks to engage in a lending splurge to Irish Banks which in turn re-packaged these loans into House Mortgages and Property Loans. And because we joined the Euro-zone the ECB lowered interest rates which further FUELLED House Prices and saddled young families with UNAFFORDABLE MORTGAGE DEBT.

Quote of Brian Lenihan TD, Minister for Finance during interview with Matt Cooper on Last Word Show on Today FM, June 25 2009 :

“Low euro interest rates and cheap labour from Eastern Europe after 2004 were the main reasons for the overheating of the Irish economy which led to the recession”.

Quote of Professor Edward Walsh :

“Ireland entered the euro in 1999 and lost control of the two vital monetary instruments : setting interest rates and setting currency exchange rates.
Had Ireland remained outside the euro, it’s bankers would not have gained access to the euro zone’s vast and low interest borrowing opportunities.
Without the outlandish credit available within the euro zone, the building bubble, the resultant government tax windfalls and Ahern’s, McCreevy’s and Cowen’s spending splurge would have been impossible.

The country would not now be in receivership … For Ireland there has not been a shared and equitable European solution. The banks, mainly German, which lent rashly, are receiving a 100 per cent bailout. Not from those who borrowed, but from the Irish tax payer. Apart altogether from the unfairness of the imposed solution, it will not work, because it cannot.”

– Professor Edward Walsh, founding President, University of Limerick, Beal na mBlath oration, Michael Collins commemoration as quoted in the – Irish Times, 22/08/2011

Quote of Paul Krugman:

“European leaders seem determined to drive their economy – and their society off a cliff. And the whole world will pay the price.”

- Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize Economist, Irish Times, April 17, 2012

In spite of the fact that more than two thirds of Irish exports are to countries that do NOT use the Euro, because we do NOT have our own currency we are unable to DEVALUE the currency we use, namely the Euro in order to increase our competitiveness.

For Irish Agriculture, up to 60% of our Beef exports are into the UK in spite of the fact that the Euro has gained 20% in it’s exchange rate with Sterling since we joined the Euro making Irish exports into the British market 20% MORE EXPENSIVE!

Despite this fact Irish Beef exports to the UK have increased in price by 45% in the last year! By Leaving the Euro and returning to the Punt, which could be DEVALUED, Irish Beef exports to the UK would go through the roof giving Irish cattle farmers increased profit on their work and investment.

On May 31 the Irish People will have the choice to accept or reject the “Permanent Austerity Treaty”, also known as the “Fiscal Compact Treaty”.

By accepting this Treaty we would handing over ABSOLUTE control of Fiscal Policy or the ability of elected Irish Governments to frame our own Budgets to the NEW ‘Troika’ of the European Commission, European Central Bank and the European Court of Justice.

BUT THIS ‘AUSTERITY’ TREATY IS ONLY FOR THE IRISH PEOPLE AND NOT FOR FOREIGN BANKS AND BONDHOLDERS WHO ARE EXEMPT FROM ANY AUSTERITY DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE EU IMPOSED A MASSIVE 50% HAIRCUT ON THE BONDHOLDERS OF GREEK DEBT!

THE FISCAL COMPACT POLICIES OF AUSTERITY WILL RESULT IN THE CLOSURE OF REGIONAL HOSPITALS, RURAL SCHOOLS AND GARDA STATIONS BUT WILL ENSURE THAT THE CURRENT AND FUTURE GENERATIONS OF IRISH TAX PAYERS WILL PAY EVERY LAST CENT PLUS INTEREST TO THE ECB FOR THAT LOAN OBTAINED BY THE PREVIOUS DISCREDITED FIANNA FAIL / GREEN GOVERNMENT TO REWARD THE FOREIGN BONDHOLDERS OF IRISH BANK DEBT!

MORE POWER FOR UNELECTED TECHNOCRATS

The Fiscal Compact Treaty gives wide-ranging powers to the UNELECTED EU Commission and European Court of Justice (ECJ).
Failure to implement the strict austerity conditions will result in the ECJ imposing fines of 0.1% of GDP or approximately Euro 200 Million per annum on Ireland.

GOODBYE ECONOMIC SOVEREIGNTY We lost our economic sovereignty because of our membership of the Euro-zone and because of the corrupt and incompetant decisions of Fianna Fail in Government.
If the Irish People are so foolish as to vote for the Fiscal Compact then we will be surrendering any chance of regaining economic sovereignty that is so necessary for our recovery.
Under the Fiscal Compact the EU Commission will SUPERVISE the setting up of “independent” institutions which will be responsible at National level for “monitoring the observance of the rules”.

Labour Party Leader and Tanaiste, Eamonn Gilmore TD, promised in last year’s General Election that “IT WOULD BE LABOUR’S WAY OR FRANKFURT’S WAY” and Labour entered Government on the back of that FALSE promise thus ensuring “FRANKFURT’S WAY”.

Now the same Eamonn Gilmore wants the same Irish People, who he lied to, to Vote Yes for the Fiscal Compact / Stability Treaty?

Quote of An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny TD in relation to Promissory Note Debt to ECB of
Euro 42 Billion over 10 years:

Enda Kenny told Bloomberg television that Ireland will not seek any write-down on it’s Bank Debt and will not impose losses on Bondholders.

“We’ll pay our dues in full and on time”, he told ‘In Business with Margaret Brennan in an interview on 08/02/2012.

BUT WHAT HAPPENS IF WE VOTE NO?

COULD IRELAND’S ACCESS TO A FUTURE BAILOUT FROM THE ESM RESCUE FUND BE PUT AT JEOPARDY BY THAT DECISION?

This is the so-called ‘Blackmail Clause’ contained in Article 136 of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) Treaty.

Firstly the ESM Treaty has not YET being Ratified and there is a Legal challenge being brought against it’s Ratification by Independent TD,Thomas Pringle.

Secondly the ESM Bailout Rescue LOAN Fund does NOT yet exist.

Thirdly the ESM Rescue Fund is a LOAN Fund that does not provide us with FREE money.

Fourthly the ESM Treaty requires Ireland to CONTRIBUTE Euro 11.1 Billion to that ‘Rescue’ Fund which we must BORROW with Euro 1.5 Billion of that BORROWED to be paid UPFRONT!

Fifthly and most importantly the ONLY reason that we ‘need’ a Bailout is because Ireland is locked out of the financial markets for borrowing because Irish Sovereign Bonds carry a high risk of Default as a direct result of the ‘Bank Guarantee’ of the previous Fianna Fail / Green Government that was the means of the Irish Tax payer BAILING OUT FOREIGN BONDHOLDERS who invested in the now bust Anglo-Irish Bank when gambling on the continuation of the ‘Building Bubble’.

If the Irish People Vote No on May 31, this democratic decision must be a MANDATE TO DEFAULT ON THE UNJUST BANK DEBT THAT IS SINKING OUR ECONOMY.
It is the loading of this ‘Bank Debt’ on top of the country’s Sovereign Debt that is PREVENTING Ireland from borrowing on the financial markets at low interest cost.

The Fiscal Compact will also put the CAP Budget Post – 2013, that Irish farm families depend on, at severe risk.

Quote of Professor Alan Matthews :

“Safeguarding the CAP Budget must be increasingly in doubt after last week’s fateful Brussels Summit”

Warning of European Agricultural Policy expert, Alan Matthews, Professor Emeritus of European Agricultural Policy, Trinity College Dublin, on EU Summit that decided on ESM ‘Firewall’ Fund of Euro 750 Billion, December, 2011.

“The growing likelihood of an EU recession next year, possibly inducing further economic turmoil beyond the continent, will lower demand for agricultural output and could lead to another collapse in output prices”.

Professor Matthews said in capreform.eu blog.

“Difficulties in Europe’s banking sector will curtail credit to farmers and to the small and medium-sized enterprises which make up the bulk of the EU’s food industry …the EU’s prized single market in agricultural and food products could come under threat”.

The Fiscal Compact will have a devastating impact on Irish and European Agriculture:

Prices for food and agricultural products will fall due to austerity throughout our export markets in Europe.

Taxes will continue rising because of bailing out foreign Banks.

Direct Payments will be cut.

Farm Family members working in off-farm employment will have their wages and salaries cut even more.

Social Welfare payments to farm families, such as old age pensions will have to be REDUCED and Income supports such as Farm Assist will be likely to be SCRAPPED.

Farmers must VOTE NO TO THE FISCAL COMPACT / STABILITY TREATY so as NOT to go the way of our Fishing and Sugar Beet Industries.

Already EU Hyper-Regulation is strangling to death our Agricultural Sector.

The EU Habitats Directive has BANNED Domestic Turfcutting on SAC Designated Bogs and the current Fine Gael / Labour Government is acting like EU Policemen in their attempts to have that EU Directive implemented.

See www.FarmersForNo.eu

Related Link: http://www.farmersforno.eu

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Caption: Video Id: gNa5k0KCVbw Type: Youtube Video
EU; Treaty of debt ESM stop it now!


Comments (11 of 11)

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author by urban dwellerpublication date Fri May 04, 2012 18:06author address author phone

It is great to see that not all farmers are like the ones with their snouts in the CAP trough. Finally a more honorable and decent type of farmer that the greedy money obsessed ones in the big farmers organisations such as the IFA is speaking out on the EU and the damage that it has done over the years to small farmers. Finally let me take this opportunity as a city dweller to offer congrats and best wishes to you and all in farmers for a no vote and please keep up the good work.

author by W. Finnertypublication date Sat May 05, 2012 08:46author address author phone

“Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.”

The above excerpt -- believed to be by Jean Monnet -- is from:
http://news-beacon-ireland.info/?p=4922

"Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnet (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ mɔnɛ]; 9 November 1888 – 16 March 1979) was a French political economist and diplomat. He is regarded by many as a chief architect of European Unity and is regarded as one of its founding fathers. Never elected to public office, Monnet worked behind the scenes of American and European governments as a well-connected pragmatic internationalist." (From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Monnet )

Related Link:
http://www.humanrightsireland.com/DrMiriamOCallaghan/4M...l.htm

author by the dispossessedpublication date Sat May 05, 2012 19:30author address author phone

My dad was forced to leave his farm by the EU and their policies like tens of thousands of other Irish small farmers. The EU destroyed his life and soon after he was forced to leave Ireland and go to work in England his spirit was broken and so was his health and he never recovered. The elite politicans who peddled their lies about the santa claus EU or Common market as they liked to call it back then have destroyed countless thousands of lives with their mad policies of greed and their factory farming and driving families off their small farms. It is payback time at last. Vote No for the disapeared small farms and families.

author by Green No Voterpublication date Sat May 05, 2012 19:51author address author phone

As a former Green Party voter I can identify with the sentiments expressed in the comments above. The EU has promoted unsustainable agricultural policies and practices. They dont care about the small farmer families who fell victim to those policies as long as the food mountain keeps getting higher and more and more food is produced and left to rot in order to keep prices high while people starve elsewhere. They also have no problems with their harmful farming methods and chemicals they require for this unsustainable high production. It is time to get rid of this Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) before it does any further harm.

author by unemployed artistpublication date Sun May 06, 2012 18:39author address author phone

The excellent artworks very impressive. It is the best that I have seen so far on the no side. Is it available to use by the No side? Is the artist going to produce more material for the no side? I hope so as it is really eye catching and makes a statement as well. The art work on the no side so far has been very bland just like the arguments they are using and they are failing to get the attention of the public.

author by anti 2nd bailoutpublication date Sun May 06, 2012 20:39author address author phone

I also found the artwork to be the best I have seen on either the yes or the no campaigns so far. But as well as the artwork the points raised in the article are a bit more original and a lot less boring than what the rest of the no campaigns are saying. Most people haven't been convinced by the weak points raised by the no campaigns on why we will get a second bailout. I don't want a second bailout! I am still paying for the first bailout!

author by new voterpublication date Sun May 06, 2012 21:57author address author phone

I have to agree with anti 2nd bailout that the various campaigns have been a bit unimaginative to say the least. At least FARMERS FOR NO has added some colour to the debate. In addition to this they have tackled issues that the political parties of the left as well as the right refuse to touch.

author by leftypublication date Sun May 06, 2012 22:53author address author phone

Its not a bailout.

Its a gift of money at 1% interest to the banks who promptly use it to buy government bonds at 5-6% interest trousering the difference.

It's supposed to give them "liquidity" to give loans, but why would any bankster in his right mind loan money to risky small business, house buyers or ordinary people when they can bet on a sure thing by buying soverign debt bonds guaranteed by the state and policed by the troika and the other financial terrorists and lackys from goldman sachs.

It's all a big scam. Bailout it certainly is not. Call it what it is:
Scam loans to banksters to bet on a sure thing paid for by the great unwashed through austerity and social misery.

With the added bonus of causing countries like greece and ourselves to have to sell off and privatise our lucrative state assets and utilities such as water, electricity roads and telecommunications to vulture capitalists at firesale prices.

Also,labour rights are damaged and wages are pushed down. Always good for a laugh for corporate scum.

Kudos for farmers for coming out on this issue. Keep those GM pushing Labelling law undermining EU fuckers out and don't let them destroy the potential of organic agriculture in Ireland, and our clean water, in favour of large scale chemically pumped low nutrition value corporate monoculture farming. It's all we have left.

author by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite partypublication date Mon May 07, 2012 09:36author address author phone

..its just that its US, the working creators of the national wealth, who are bailing out the busted property gamblers and absentee offshore landlords who broke their own casino with unrestrained greed.

And we will continue bailing them into further 'growth', their carcinogenic addiction, with our hospitals, education and social services and infrastructure for the foreseeable future, and beyond.

The direction of travel is Greece-wards...and any Irish government with a clue what is going on would be talking to Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy to organise a breaking of the neo-liberal sidetrack Europe has been hijacked onto. Scandanavia is the direction we should be focused on. Instead we have a serial musical-chair rotation of deferential anal-osculators down on their knees behind the obese parasitic global bankers pillaging the planet for their abstracted coffers. A rotation of home-grown mercenary viceroys on the corporate, as well as the public, payroll.

This treaty is just one more nail in the shredded remains of our democratic rights over our national future. It is the culmination of the PD program of extraction of maximal monetised resources from the island, and from all national entities resisting their post-national oligopoly.

Thats why they prefer to see our young, educated population economically deported rather than stay and demand their rightful share of the national wealth...it would mean the redistribution of the accumulated pillage of centuries of dynasty-building accretion. And it would require that Britannia, source of most of our debts, make reparations for its centuries of predation, not just here but across the globe it still vampires on.

I'll suggest, again, that people check out http:www.treasureislands.org for a sketch of the parasitic, white-collar, criminal networks.

author by truth tellerpublication date Tue May 08, 2012 14:34author address author phone

Yes absolutely kudos to the farmers for coming out. It is refreshing to hear one group at least having the courage to name the euro as being the problem. It is a pity that none of our political parties have the courage to do likewise.

author by farmer and former yes voterpublication date Wed May 09, 2012 15:42author address author phone

As a Farmer, I used to take on board the views of our representative organisations such as the IFA and vote accordingly. However on this occasion I have big doubts about voting yes. I feel that the euro is an unstable currency and while political parties may believe that politically it is a good idea, economically it is just not working. At the end of the day it will be the economics that will determine it one way or another. The politicans have their interests to consider and I understand this but farmers dont have to listen to the politicans on this occasion.


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