PS Property Scam
July 27, 2014
An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, has told us there is no property bubble. Over the past year property prices in Dublin have risen by 20-25% . A professional couple with 3 times the main salary plus salary of the other salary won’t hack it. They are being outbid by cash buyers.
Of these how many are local and how many represent vulture fund capital of domestic or foreign based interests, no one knows.
Reasonable property valuations of around the €200,000 mark have disappeared with prices skyrocketing far beyond the ceiling that can be afforded by most young people aiming to start a family.
Let’s think about this problem and approach it from a new angle. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of why we are not building the 15000 housing units annually, why the government is slow to act, why planning permission for these units is in the hands of developers cocooned by their problems with the banks, NAMA and the courts, might there be other reasons for the debacle?
Property tax is resented in Ireland and regarded as a bondholders and banker tax to fund repayment of odious debt. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/resentment-over-property-tax-is-palpable-1.1793551
However it has been mooted by tripling the amount of property tax, in excess of €2bn could be raised that would allow taxation to be reduced. Alarmists have pointed out, this would be akin to giving with one hand and taking it away with the other and have derided and scorned the proposal.
However, there is method in this madness. Consider the following scenario: with QE providing plenty of collateral for banks to purchase/invest in property in Ireland with money from abroad, let’s say this money rushes to Ireland to purchase vast portfolios of land/commercial property from NAMA and property in the domestic private market?
Add to this, the savings of those unaffected by the recent property bubble wishing to cash in on rising rents to avoid low-interest rates. Add in lack of supply, and voila, we have our housing bubble?
Who gains? The banks gain. In oncoming stress tests due this fall, Irish banks will be scrutinised on their capital balances, how secure their lending is. Banks will point to rising property values as security against their lending return on domestic loans. Falling property values would lead to more falling into negative equity to tarnish the loan book of Irish banks.
Rising property charges will mean government can reduce taxes if these taxes can be offset and levied against property owners instead.
Cash rich buyers and external vulture funds can swoop in and control the market. Unable to compete, domestic buyers, young people hoping to start a family, will be priced out of the market and forced to rent.
Rental prices increase with domestic property charges handed on by a new slave class forced to pay whatever rent is decided by a new rentier class. Divisions between rich and poor increase.
Is there an alliance between government, the banks, vulture fund capital, a new rentier class of local and foreign capital with a Greek chorus of ECB, bondholders, to scam young people betrayed in the recent housing bubble collapse?
There is no commitment to bring down housing prices to reasonable levels. Instead there is a denial this problem even exists.
So, first you sign up all Irish taxpayers to pay for odious debt. In order to keep property prices high and safeguard the capital base of banks and continue to make returns on bondholders odious debt, you flood the market with vulture fund money: for example, purchase anything on NAMA’s books. You need to force young people out of the property market and into the rentier controlled sector.
Once you have young people there, you can make them pay any rent you like. Government can force any amount of property charges it wants. Landlords simply raise the rents and the new class of young Irish rent slaves will pay whatever is asked of them. Troika is happy, their odious lending has been securitised.
Those with a fertile imagination can imagine Mr Magoo with his puppet strings controlling Mr Kenny and all his rent slaves in a world without private property, everything in Mr Magoo’s ownership.
Mr Magoo may turn out to be much more unkindly than George Orwell’s Big Brother!
End.
Another Fine Mess You Got Us Into, Mr Kenny!
July 9, 2014
I’m not a fan of Garth Brooks and bought no tickets for his concerts in Dublin. But I do respect the 400,000 disappointed fans who purchased tickets for his concerts in Dublin. They’ve suddenly received notice the shows are cancelled.
Poor licensing regulation in this area led to a lot of mistakes being made by various bodies involved in the organisation of the concerts. I will not go into the detail of evaluating or enunciating the opposing rights and perceived infringements. They all point to greater clarity and clearer rules for all concerned for future venues.
An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, has stated intervention by him to save the expected loss of 
revenue of €50m to the city with cancellation of the concerts would expose him to, “certainly be accused of coming the heavy on an issue like this”.
Failure to act means he is coming the heavy on 400,000 people who’ve purchased tickets.
A smarter option would have been to acknowledge that a mess has been made; facilitate legislation that enables the concerts to go ahead on a one time basis; compensate the local residents in a big way for their inconvenience; guarantee this was only a once-off subject to clearer licensing rules in this area.
This would gain kudos for An Taoiseach who has squandered this opportunity once again to show leadership that is worthwhile and not less than worthless.
This is but more evidence of Kenny’s blindfold mess of eg property charges that discriminate against city dwellers, water charges that discriminate against everyone, privatisation of refuse collection that has ended in the Greyhound mess, expulsion of key party members on their conscientious objection to certain aspects of party policy, medical cards debacle, water debacle, energy grid mess.
But most of all dunce failure to deliver on a debt deal for Ireland that is not less than derisory. But you will often hear him in self-congratulatory mood as he deliberates on the crumbs the ECB has bought him with.
Happily the result of the European elections showed a rejection of the Irish public of FF/FG policies in spite of massive propaganda to persuade them otherwise of the Kenny agenda. Blind indifference to Kenny’s agenda informs most of the electorate who experience another world of falling standards of education and public health, increasing taxes, emigration and few jobs.
In a vacuous way the Kenny agenda is to ignore the debt ridden nature of Irish state’s private and public liabilities, to pretend these are sustainable, that a trickle of new jobs can be nurtured into a river of growth. To celebrate when there is no cause for celebration. To bestow confidence with a smile wherever caution signals action required more than a smile.
Kenny’s is a light weight, shallow, head in the sand agenda, that hopes against hope that a rising tide will lift all boats: Even when there is no tide.
Ireland requires a growth rate of 8% to be sustainable under its present conditions of odious debt. But growth rates above 2% would be cause for celebration. Inflation has turned into deflation and growth will be sponged up to pay for increasing incapacity to repay debt.
Austerity is the name of the game led by Germany. This is aimed to suck the marrow from the bone of peripheral countries such as Ireland. Austerity requires puppet governments to be bailiffs and Kenny’s certainly serves the mark.
“Enda’s strategy in Europe has been to align with Germany, which is bizarre as economically we are faced with different circumstances entirely to Germany. Enda has failed to make any case for Ireland and has instead bought into Germany’s own misconception of the Irish people and the Irish economy.”
A little over 2 years ago the writer of that letter wrote ” Last night I attended the launch of the FF Futures Group in Dublin and it stuck out a mile who the real Taoiseach is. We need to get a Cork man back in the driving seat, it seems.
Would that we could elect Micheál Martin to the job. He would do us all proud.”
On the contrary, both Martin and Kenny are joined at the hip when it comes to Europe. Both need to be replaced by leaders of more depth and insight who will not disappoint in leading this country through difficult times ahead.
But even Micheal Martin has the wit and insight to this week suggest enabling legislation to allow the Garth Brooks concerts proceed. Clearly FF/FG are worse than FF.
It’s a curious case of deja vu that the ‘come the heavy’ argument from Kenny has been heard before. It was used to defend the rights of bondholders over the rights of the people of Ireland, its taxpayers and public services, who were levied with the liabilities of bankers and bondholders and the €67.5 bn odious debt levied on the people of Ireland by the troika.
These arguments should be examined in another forum, the Banking Inquiry promised by Kenny. It too is currently embroiled in a mess.
Kenny cannot learn from mistakes made in the past. Ireland joined up to a flawed EMU with its flawed euro currency that did not suit our needs and was poorly if not recklessly administered in favour of Germany.
While EMU peripheral countries sold the fool’s gold of debt by Germany are witnessing the painful legacy and extraction of their liabilities, Germany continues to grow with enviable growth rates of 4% +. Germany’s bondholders safely secured against the liabilities of Irish taxpayers.
The original European Union was an aircraft carrier with all members having a say in its running. That ship was sunk 6 years ago. In its place is a poorly defended and organised convoy led by a German battleship towing with fraying tow ropes the economies of peripheral zone members.
So far, Kenny’s reign is mindful of a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Tomorrow Enda Kenny reshuffles his pack. Its difficult not to be indifferent and to regard this as nothing more than the swapping of seats of another orchestra on another titanic.
End
http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/tomorrow-tomorrow-tomorrow
Macbeth:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Colmbrazel's Blog 