Propaganda – Orwellian Newspeak !
May 25, 2012
More balance is required in the Referendum campaign. Speaking of balance, The Judge Feeney Propaganda Campaign is in full swing at the moment, but its been there for quite a while already:
“Describing the Fiscal Stability Treaty, Judge Feeney said, “The Treaty is about strengthening the rules designed to make governments keep a balance between their income and their spending. There are already EU rules about this which apply to Ireland. The Treaty aims to strengthen these rules and requires countries to put some of them into national law.”
It’s on their website and on the airwaves supported with public money that supposedly was earmarked to be spent on objectivity and balance. Its not apparent from bombast and the oxymoron implicit in the above, but let me elaborate
Consider “The Treaty aims to strengthen these rules and requires countries to put some of them into national law”.
Who the heck objects to good housekeeping rules? The Orwellian Newspeak of deliberately ambiguous and contradictory language used to mislead and manipulate the public has its mind bending fulcrom in the word, ’strengthen’.
You are not informed that the Irish Constitution will be weakened; that excessive and dangerous powers are proposed to be handed over to European bureaucrats and technocrats who will police Ireland’s debt with powers requiring a Referendum:
Just maybe AG Marie Whelan noticed the following in our constitution and saw the stranglehold of the treaty’s hands on 2.1:
2. 1° The sole and exclusive power of making laws for the State is hereby vested in the Oireachtas: no other legislative authority has power to make laws for the State.”
Its completely misleading not to point out to the public that proposed changes under the FC will make national law subservient to ECB/ESM law. It deliberately conceals this subservience as many readers assume, even with the insertion of the FC into the Irish Constitution, that the Irish Constitution will take precedence in our courts.
Such propaganda now extends to an attempt by some to promote the view that no changes to the Irish Constitution are contemplated at all deliberately misleading and conconcealing the reality external ESM/FC will now comply to external decision makers over which we have powers of debt peonage only; a system by which debtors are bound in servitude to their creditors until their debts are paid.
On goes the propaganda on TV/Radio and newspapers:
For example, http://www.irishexaminer.com/analysis/who-is-right-about-the-fiscal-treaty-194708.html
“Let’s start with the new rules on the deficit. The legal basis for these have been present since the treaty on the functioning of the EU came into force in Mar 2010.
This was made possible by the Lisbon Treaty coming in to force on Dec 1, 2009.
Articles 121 and 126 do allow for surveillance of EU states that are in “excessive deficit” and ultimately allows fines to be imposed on them if they don’t reduce it. It also empowers the EU to demand that money be lodged with it by the non-compliant state. So the Government is right to assert that the legal basis for the present treaty rules on the deficit did already exist.”
Consider the phrase, “the legal basis for the present treaty rules on the deficit did already exist..”
Oh, why are we having a Referendum then ? Please don’t say, ” The Treaty aims to strengthen these rules and requires countries to put some of them into national law ”
I won’t frighten you more by telling you what those austerity rules are doing to this country; or, who and what rules will be applied, when cap in hand they look for Bailout 11.
Another Propaganda falsehood is Corporation Tax, the Y campaign refuse to discuss FTT (Financial Transaction Tax). Its as safe as a house apparently. We will retain our veto. I won’t right now delve into how safe our veto is, suffice it to say our veto re Corporation Tax is about as safe as a house on fire.
There is a strong move across Europe for a harmonisation of the tax base,
http://www.ceps.eu/content/harmonising-corporate-tax-bases-europe
But here’s the deal. That’s not where CT is vulnerable. Where CT is highly vulnerable is already implicit in the rules governing our present bailout and any future bailout under ESM.
Its simple arithmetic. If there is no debt writedown under ELA/PN and none is proposed; if we are to meet our deficit reduction and debt repayment obligations under current and future FC/ESM rules, if taxpayers have no more to give, or if they come visiting Dáil Éireann like protestors on the way to Dracula’s Castle, or if they are peeved with our present incumbents like Romanians under Nicolae Ceaușescu, who similarly tried to pay off all foreign debt, then, we won’t be using the veto. We’ll be delighted to comply in order to save our scalps. We’ll insert another ECB/ESM/Troika suction tube into the IFSC and Corporation Tax along with the next round of cuts to budgets for health and education.
It’s better to be confused than to be misinformed. But this is rather simple. We are being asked to make an omelette with a bunch of rotten eggs.
The chicken from which the golden eggs came is ailing; it hasn’t the political or economic means to succeed because it was born with a condition that meant, it was built to fail. We didn’t know about this until recently.
Next time we can fail better but meanwhile we need to take the chicken out of its misery and not extend the agony. Most of all, we shouldn’t try to make an omelette out of those rotten ESM eggs. You can help the chicken out of its agony by voting No.
The country has a lot going for itself outside the euro. There are plenty other options beyond the Y blinkers such as PuntNUA, sterling or dollar, better than the coffin being prepared under ESM bailiffs for this country. Our biggest deficit is one of leadership, which makes the outlook not good. If the Y win the Referendum convincingly, our options above will be reduced and the weather outlook in that scenario, will not be good. Debt peonage will be our destiny for the foreseeable future. Smart people will leave and prosper elsewhere.
EnuForNow.
Vote No!
May 18, 2012
I’ve said before Der Euro Ist Fertig, the euro is finished. the question is, can it be fixed and by whom? Its suggested its in the power of Hollande/Merkel to make or break the euro. I agree they can break the euro, but I don’t believe they can make as in fix the euro. In fact, the power of politicians to influence the currency events we are now witnessing, is both limited and much over estimated. We see politicians both surprised and wrong footed by unfolding events.
Some politicians I’m sure think the answer to the euro’s problems is the genie in the bottle financial equivalent FC that can be compared to Christina Anguelera’s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoi4MQO_swA
The problem lies deeper in the global economic system than any single set of countries in the EMU can hope to solve.
There will need to be a global solution to the volatility created by the debt genie over the past 30 yrs. Debt in the EMU is revealing fissures, uncertainties, fault lines in the very design of the euro. Unregulated out of control debt will wreak more havoc in global currencies until the fiat system itself is made much safer than it presently is.
Water is rushing in, the euro ballast holes are compromised and breached. The euro will sink.
Members of the EMU need to abandon the euro and make sure the national lifeboats they travel in are as safe and as fit for purpose as possible.
http://namawinelake.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/french-president-set-to-maroon-irish-government/
“France’s new administration is set to cause a major headache for the Irish government. Not only have they announced a 30% pay cut to the salary of their head of state and ministers, but they are insisting that the Fiscal Compact be redrafted to include a “chapter” on growth and growth strategy. This morning, the new French finance minister, Pierre Moscovici said the new French government would not ratify the existing Fiscal Compact. Of course the German position seems to remain a stubborn resistance to any change to the Fiscal Compact but you would have to say there is a good chance of some Entente between the two countries. Where will that leave Ireland?”
Compare the French leadership to defend the interests of French people to the leadership provided by our own embarrassing vassals. Simon Coveney TD, director of elections for the Referendum ludicrous campaign was on radio re Richard Bruton’s gaffe and again denied the substance of Bruton’s gaffe:
Not only have the present Govt failed to negotiate a responsible bailout for Ireland, not only have they chosen to hold a referendum that undermines the efforts of decent people to negotiate terms for a decent bailout be it based on ‘growth’ or other measure, not only do they wish us to ratify a Treaty that sells off our constitutional right to self determination, not only does it bind us to unconscionable and odious debt under sanction of ECJ, not only does it bind us to a Treaty that everyone in Europe expects to be binned, but, wait for it (I’m getting there ), this is a real howler:
If the Treaty is not passed, and the FC is amended to contain substantial Hollande changes to its wording, or even minor protocol changes, the’ve made it so that the Irish people will be denied opportunity to vote even on a revised version of the FC?
I mean this is ludicrous nonsense and incompetence of the lowest order. Its almost as embarrassing as the mess they’ve made on negotiating substantial changes to our bailout
No doubt the propaganda machine will whip up more threats as time goes and the above is only the tip of the iceberg.
Are our politicians in contact with the real world? We are left with the dilemma deciding whether the present Govt are incompetent, or they are liars in which case they will hold a referendum again if we vote No.
Take Your Hands Off Our Constitution!
May 2, 2012
Part 11
Why should this treaty be asked to take its hands off our constitution? Perhaps it may have something to do with giving authority over our budget to Court of Justice of the European Union who can impose huge fines on us if we do not comply to the Borg.
“In Ireland, it falls to the Attorney General to advise the government on a whether a treaty’s ratification requires a referendum because of the 4.6 Constitutional clause. AG Marie Whelan has advised the government that it is best for Ireland to hold a referendum before ratifying the Fiscal Compact Treaty.”
Click to access st00tscg26_en12.pdf
Click to access 20120319fiscalcompact.pdf
NOTING that compliance with the Contracting Parties’ obligation to transpose the “balanced budget rule” into their national legal systems, through binding, permanent and preferably constitutional provisions, should be subject to the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union, in accordance with Article 273 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union; RECALLING that Article 260 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union empowers the Court of Justice of the European Union to impose a lump sum or penalty payment on a Member State of the European Union which has failed to comply with one of its judgments and RECALLING that the European Commission has established criteria for determining the lump sum or penalty payment to be imposed in the framework of that Article;
“Why are we holding a referendum? Under Article 46 of the Irish Constitution, any change to the Constitution requires a referendum being put to the people. The Attorney General must determine whether any proposed amendments are significant enough that they require a referendum for approval before being introduced into the Constitution. The new treaty’s text appeared to allow for members to adopt the treaty without it being incorporated into their constitutions. In Ireland, it falls to the Attorney General to advise the government on a whether a treaty’s ratification requires a referendum because of the above Constitutional clause. AG Marie Whelan has advised the government that it is best for Ireland to hold a referendum before ratifying the Fiscal Compact Treaty. On foot of that advice, the Taoiseach and Tánaiste announced yesterday that a referendum would be held on the issue, and that the treaty will be debated over the coming weeks. No date has yet been set for the treaty referendum.”
http://www.thejournal.ie/the-fiscal-compact-referendum-what-are-we-voting-on-and-why-368490-Feb2012/
Irish Constitution:
“Article 46 1. Any provision of this Constitution may be amended, whether by way of variation, addition, or repeal, in the manner provided by this Article. 2. Every proposal for an amendment of this Constitution shall be initiated in Dáil Éireann as a Bill, and shall upon having been passed or deemed to have been passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas, be submitted by Referendum to the decision of the people in accordance with the law for the time being in force relating to the Referendum. 3. Every such Bill shall be expressed to be “An Act to amend the Constitution”. 4. A Bill containing a proposal or proposals for the amendment of this Constitution shall not contain any other proposal. 5. A Bill containing a proposal for the amendment of this Constitution shall be signed by the President forthwith upon his being satisfied that the provisions of this Article have been complied with in respect thereof and that such proposal has been duly approved by the people in accordance with the provisions of section 1 of Article 47 of this Constitution and shall be duly promulgated by the President as a law. ”
Perhaps people need to read the treaty before deciding whether we should ratify it.
Just maybe AG Marie Whelan noticed the following in our constitution and saw the stranglehold of the treaty’s hands on 2.1:
2. 1° The sole and exclusive power of making laws for the State
is hereby vested in the Oireachtas: no other legislative
authority has power to make laws for the State.
Part 111
Re Professor Terence McDonagh
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0502/1224315452125.html
Let me go through a number of the points he raises:
“A fourth possibility is the restructuring of debt. The Anglo-Irish promissory note payments alone constitute €3 billion in any given year. Most commentators outside Ireland believe restructuring of some sort will eventually take place in any event.”
This is the most disgraceful aspect of the Compact. The Irish negotiating team have been humiliated in negotiations on any attempt to have this written down. Latest news on this is the possibility of an EFSF bond to replace ELA/PN but the view is extended maturity dates and lower annual cost will nevertheless be offset by a higher overall cost than the current ELA/PN arrangements. They will probably mid May try to bribe taxpayers with this news mid May. The whole odious debt of the IBRC mess should be written off by EFSF.
“A fifth, under-discussed, possibility is the issuance of innovative debt instruments. It would be possible to make Irish bonds acceptable in payment of taxes in the event of any default. This should eliminate the risk premium which makes it difficult for Ireland to re-enter the markets at this time.”
Excellent suggestion that could potentially release a huge quantity of savings that wont be spent in the economy otherwise
” The implementation of the 0.5 per cent structural deficit rule in the new treaty is considerably more stringent than any of the existing “six-pack” regulations, which are themselves unwise. Eventually, a shortage of government bonds will emerge, forcing conservative investors such as pension funds into less safe investments, risking the reappearance of dangerous asset bubbles.”
All these rules are driven by bankers with hair shirts making sure to get their money back. They can all be reduced on one rule, spend less and give us the savings you make on this in the form of interest on the loans you currently have or on those we can foolishly persuade you to take out to pay back your previous loans
“2. Debt should be 60 per cent of GDP. If debt is greater than 60 per cent, it will be reduced by 1/20 per year over the next 20 years. This would start in 2018, when the bailout terms expire, and could require up to €5 billion a year in savings to 2038.”
I’m sorry, but I’m afraid the version of Orwell’s Newspeak, deliberately impoverished language, practiced by FG/LB and the Y campaign means we cannot speak of that. We cannot describe the target of the €5 billion in 2018. Some have said in 2018, having dried the marrow from the bone of the taxpayers, the IFSC and Corporation Tax will then be raised, but discussion on this is verboten.
“The “common sense” regarding the fiscal treaty retailed by the Government is at direct right angles to reality. There will be no disaster in the event of the need for a second bailout. It is the adoption of the budget provisions of the treaty which is a risky and perilous experiment.”
Why is prof Terrence McDonough not negotiating our bailout? Why are people like Michael O Leary relegated to the sidelines. We have the blind leading the blind in official Ireland who got us into the mess making a bigger mess of getting out of it. Now the same lot are making a bigger mess than the ‘guarantee’ and are giving away the keys to the Constitution ? The bankers even have the European Court of Justice turned into a bailiff !
Its long past the time to leave the euro mess behind !
ends
Global Recession !
May 1, 2012
Re http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2012/04/30/fiscal-causes-and-consequences/#comment-275254
I think John McHale is misdiagnosing both the euro zone crisis and the Irish property bubble crisis eg “think most of us can agree that the Irish crisis was predominantly the result of an interacting property and credit bubble”. This is a fairly common mistake. Unfortunately, with misdiagnosis comes the cure based error of a wrong prescription from both euro zone and Ireland leading to the imminent financial death of both the euro zone and the Irish economy. The prescription of austerity is killing the patient?
For an answer to the conundrum we’ve no further to look to our esteemed President, Michael D Higgins, affectionately known as Michael D. In speeches in New York and Boston last night, he used the phrase, referring to the Irish economic crisis, “self located in a global recession based on speculation’. In fact, John McHale’s use of the word ‘credit bubble’ may also be brought into the equation providing an answer.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0501/breaking6.html
So what has really caused the European and Irish economic crisis? One word, speculation.
Since the dollars floatation in the 1970’s with the easing of regulatory controls in the global financial system combined with the rise of shadow banking, there has been a phenomenal growth in the financial services industry spurred by the creation of a host of financial credit instruments aiding speculation in a vast array of financial instruments promising amazing returns on OTC’s, derivatives, CDS, the list goes on with variants of these custom made to the imagination of Enron’s Berni Madoff; unlimited to Goldmann Sach’s CEO Lloyd Craig Blankfein and former CEO Henry Paulson; helped by the growing power of a small number of Wall street banks and the disappearance or takeover of the competition.
Lured by opportunities provided by a vast array of new financial instruments offering returns far in excess of what could be gained by business in the real economy of food, pharmaceuticals, motor industry, manufacturing, business enterprise, investment banks and institutions have redirected their investments into this new matrix virtual economy. The consequence of this in economic terms has been to make the relationship between speculation based on new financial instruments and the real economy increasingly less fungible( A good or asset’s interchangeability with other individual goods/assets of the same type ).
This has led to a number of bubbles. We had the internet bubble and crash. We had the 1929, October 24, Black Thursday threatened mirror in mid September 2008 on foot of an ignored $8trn housing bubble. We’ve had housing bubbles in Spain and Ireland.
The financialisation of loose credit instruments feeding upon the inward flow of investment in US Treasury bonds feeding into loose regulation of the financial services industry, the financial services industry tapped into a revenue source for large private banking conglomerates in the US that enabled it to trip wire the economic system itself.
Speculation injected and fueled with the means to produce vast quantities of new financial paper instruments in a low regulatory environment has given rise to similar conditions that existed pre 1929. At that time, vast profits were offered to the American middle class to cash in on loose credit and investment returns based on ponzi economics, profits to first in used to gather in the lates who would pay for the collapse. From wiki,
“The crash followed a speculative boom that had taken hold in the late 1920s, which had led hundreds of thousands of Americans to invest heavily in the stock market. A significant number of them were borrowing money to buy more stocks. By August 1929, brokers were routinely lending small investors more than two-thirds of the face value of the stocks they were buying. Over $8.5 billion was out on loan,[17] more than the entire amount of currency circulating in the U.S. at the time.”
President Higgins is exactly right. We are being sucked upward into a tornado of global speculation. Debt levels are rising to astronomical levels to feed the global economic system infected by a a new virtual speculative environment fed by debt and its proxy, the financial services industry. Connectivity between the real and the virtual is becoming more and more fragile. The passing around of toxic derivatives, OTC’s based on subprime in 2008 among the banks before the collapse of Lehman’s in 2008, was a mere symptom of an ailing global financial system based on speculation.
There are a number of remedies to bring the global economy back to reality based on a fairer system of market economics.
1. Bring back the gold standard. Its abandonment has led to the destruction of manufacturing in the US and the destruction of the US middle class who’ve been ransacked under financialisation in a manner similar to the way european taxpayers are being hoovered of their resources to pay the profits of the 1% of speculators gaining from the above.
2. Break up the large investment banks across the world into smaller banks mandated to support business and communities on policies similar to the independent and public state banks in the US, eg The Bank of North Dakota
3. Sterilise financial instruments of economic destruction. Reduce the amount of speculation that can occur around these instruments.
4. Impose strict auditing and rules for accountability, registration and transparency on financial instruments and all financial bodies (especially toxic institutions eg NAMA)
5. Oppose the troika Goldman Sachs policies of unlimited fuel for financial institutions paid for by taxpayers.
6.Oppose the troika European directives on SIFI (Systemically Important Financial Institutions). Banks made toxic by speculation need to be closed.
7. “Keep You Hands Off Our Constitution” Do not let the financial institutions and their unelected ESM minions control your children’s future and your country’s budget.
Create a financial system built to serve the needs of the people whose lifeblood has not been vampired into to provide unlimited profit for financial speculators, unelected bank officials and political cronies.
So, lets not blame entirely Irish banks, property developers, property speculators, lack of Regulation at DoF or Irish Central Bank, or ECB level for the credit bubble. It is rather more wisely put by President Higgins, as “self located in a global recession based on speculation’ . That speculation continues to be unaddressed at global and european level. Current responses based on austerity and more QE and LTRO fuel for the banks, is more fuel to burn down the global economic system.
ends
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