QEconomics!
June 22, 2020
The proposed coalition in Ireland wearily is attempting to stand on its feet. Following a long period of aimless and vague negotiations that have so far been extended since early February with similarities to a very long game of Blind Man’s buff, we now have the proposed watered-down program for government.
We have three parties with records of proven failure, perhaps we should compare them to a rubber dinghy filled with too many dissident voices with different expectations and a track record of mistrust, heading off to worse weather conditions than the Titanic faced on its inaugural voyage.
The document is filled with vague uncosted detritus leftover from the previous coalition. Housing is vaguely left in the hands of local authorities. Like builders facing the prospect of building houses too costly to build because of land prices and build pricing, faced with the certainty, the cohort they serve, cannot nor will be able to afford them: local authorities will not risk the expense of ultimate cost falling on their books.
Last March Minister Harris announced a recruitment campaign luring health workers back to Ireland, https://www.thejournal.ie/over-20000-people-contact-hse-in-response-to-government-call-out-for-health-care-workers-5050181-Mar2020/
“Harris also announced a nurses recruitment call throughout Ireland with the message “your country needs you”.”
“Doctors returning to fight Covid-19 feel betrayed, says IMO
Organisation says medics who responded to ‘all hands on deck’ campaign are now being told there is no work for them
…Of those who returned, Dr Hillery said they were put on three-month contracts and many who want to stay on in Ireland are being told there is no work for them.”
Nurses who returned found no jobs except agency jobs and these were often hard or impossible to find.
There is no plan in the program for government to expand the health service with enough professional men and women and hospital beds to provide a decent health service to end the ongoing trolley service and deal with the long waiting lists of hospital appointments, that have been put on hold over the past few months.
The program for government is filled with vague, uncosted waffle designed at best to pull the wool over our eyes. Michael Martin has finally joined FF to FG, at the hip. The plan looks to have the fingerprints of Fine Gael on it rather than those of FF. Say goodbye to the FF of old.
Will the dinghy Programme for Government with all the holes in it even get inflated and launched!
Voters vote for people not just plans. These people were voted out. This plan is why we voted them out!
Click to access Programme_for_Partnership_Government.pdf
Action Plan on housing has the ludicrous and farcical plan to
“… publish within the first 100 days a new Action Plan for Housing, to include, but not be
limited to, the actions laid out in this document. The drafting of the new Action Plan will be
a collaborative process with opportunities for all stakeholders, including local authorities,
housing agencies, and the voluntary sector, to contribute ideas through submissions to the
Minister and a new Oireachtas Committee on Housing. When completed, each action will be
assigned to a specific organisation with published timelines for implementation. (First 100
Days Action)”
On Saturday 8 February, the Irish people voted out FG and FF. Nearly 5 months of negotiation later, the plan is to create an Action Plan for housing! For 10 years FF and FG have been formulating and executing action plans on housing and we are where we are. This will leave housing in a worse state than it was before.
Lets set aside other aspects of this document that has no detail on costings for anything. Never mind the fact that the document is predicated on a deal with the UK for Brexit that will have UK, EU and IE joined in a trade deal one for one the same as now exists.
The fact is the document is an unmitigated disaster for Ireland and its economic future. The plan is littered with vague junk with no real plan to do anything about anything. Perhaps its a plan for universal health care and World Peace and jobs for all joining the coalition of the blind.
Global Currency Crisis Looming:
The Fed has 1. “..$2.3 trillion in lending to support households, employers, financial markets, and state and local governments…””On June 10, however, the Fed said it would stop tapering and would buy at least $80 billion a month in Treasuries and $40 billion in residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities until further notice. Between mid-March and mid-June, the Fed’s portfolio of securities held outright grew from $3.9 trillion to $6.1 trillion.”
Once again the rich are getting bailed out and the ballooned and inflated mortgage-backed securities market will keep inflated prices in the market place. Instead of the laws of supply and demand driving a capitalist based economy, the Fed as lender of last resort is now 
inflating the market place with money conjured out of nothing. Its QE suppressing supply and demand and manipulating a broken economy to favour those who’ve been largely responsible for breaking it.
“2On March 18, the ECB launched the €750 billion Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program (PEPP), which will last until the coronavirus crisis period is over but, in any case, at least until the end of 2020. The assets to be bought under the PEPP are mostly the same: the biggest chunk goes to national and regional government bonds, including for the first time Greek sovereign debt, supra-national debt, and various types of private-sector bonds. Unlike the APP, it will also buy commercial paper issued by non-financial corporations. The PEPP is “exceptional,” designed specifically “to address the issue of the pandemic,” the ECB said. On June 4, the ECB increased the maximum size of its purchases of government bonds under PEPP by €600 billion to €1350 billion and extended the horizon for those purchases at least to the end of June 2021. The ECB also emphasized that it wants to maintain flexibility in the purchases across asset classes and among jurisdictions.”
There are EU rules that prevent direct financing of government spending but the opaque nature of the rules means, for example, the purchase of Greek debt fly under the radar. So too the provision of lending to banks and businesses is predicated on the untested assumption of a return to growth post Covid when lending can be repaid. Or even demand for borrowing stimulated. In a post-Brexit world, any embers of economic health may not so easily turn to flame.
It’s ironic that Ireland’s share of EU QE is calculated at approx €3bn to help us through the COVID crisis is almost one for one Ireland’s increased contribution to the EU also calculated at €3bn.
Leo Varadkar has spent the weekend negotiating this trifling amount with his EU counterparts. He’s also trying to stave off the proposed move at European level to create a digital currency that would erode and deprive Ireland collecting its Corporation tax receipts from MNC companies resident in Ireland and restore tax payment to payment at source meaning sales source, not source location of the main office of MNC.
There is a growing demand in Europe to deprive Ireland of what is widely regarded as unfair and unequal treatment of member states in tax rules depriving them of revenue from local sales of MNC products.
The continuing love affair with Europe belies the fact that Varadkar’s head is on the block when it comes to European support in the above matters.
…till again
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