Blogging from the Bog

   Who wouldn’t want to throw a shoe at George Bush?  The President and Commander in Chief of the country that embodies capitalism and free enterprise shows his leadership abilities and understanding of the situation during this time of financial difficulty by saying, "I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system."  This is about the same as saying that, "We will be taking away your inalienable rights to protect our free society."  What a gobshite…

   These bailouts for badly run financial institutions, car manufacturers, and semi-state home mortgage bodies is the worst course of action to take and will only insure deeper economic miseries over a longer period of time.  The open market system should be allowed to operate and weed out the mismanaged and incompetant companies by take overs, distribution of assets, and bankruptcies just as any other industry.

   It may bring you a little holiday humour to have your very own chance to fling a shoe at George Dubya for whatever reasons that might occur to you so click on this link and have a go!  You’ll be glad you did!

 Throw a shoe at this fool!

   Having all the necessary ingredients at hand, in the proper quantities, and of high quality, is usually essential when making tasty dinners and desserts.  The same can be said for creating an atmosphere of optimism for recovery in an economy which is spiralling downward into lower and lower regions day after day without a bottom in sight.  Haphazardly throwing whatever is at hand into a pot just to fill it up is a chancey approach to making a stew and so it is with tossing billions in bail-out money at the financial institutions to "force" an economic recovery.

   We talked before on this blog, back in March, about the money machine in a five part series of how currency, wealth, and values have changed.  Not much has happened in the financial or political circles since then that has convinced me that the Irish government would be doing anything proactive or constructive to remedy our own situation.  The mismanagement of the public finances over the past 15 years has put us in an extremely bad position to weather out this economic perfect storm. 

   David "indigestion" McWilliams is grasping at optimistic straws in his article in the Sunday Business Post today; but, if it’s cheerleading you think you should be doing David, then go for it…just remember cheerleaders don’t win the games…it’s the players who have to make the points, and our side has forgotten who they are playing for.  A quote from the article reads, "House prices and accomodation costs in general will collapse, unemployment will force wage rates down, transport prices will get lower and, more to the point, Science Foundation Ireland will spend €7 billion on education and training in the years ahead."  The Science Foundation?  That’s a joke right?  And the funding for the "brutal infrastructure"? is to be paid for…by whom? the entrepreneurs we hope to "suck in" from all over Europe?

   The only ones that will be getting sucked-in is us the taxpayers, the home owners, the skilled work force and the students, apart from that I cannot see anyone contributing to the black hole the politicians have made of Irish fiscal policy.  Oh wait!  How many billions will be promised if we get it right next time on the Lisbon Treaty referendum? 

   You can read David’s blog here.