It didn’t and that is a key factor on a slow work day – we have not exited recession – so we cannot be back in it !

The same reason that if I punch you now you know about it straight away but it’s not on the crime stats for a couple of months, information takes time to collate!

Rockets also blow up Richard.

There was no attempt to tax us out of a recession. We’re being taxed out of bond holder debt. Recession is an unfortunate by product of being fiscally raped!

Can we once and for all drop this myth. The vast majority of the debt we will be paying back is from our overspending and not from the banks. FACT.

The goal of austerity is to shrink public expenditure and repair the tax base so that we can have a balanced budget an sustainable economic growth.

The policy during the boom was to erode the tax base and increase public expenditure (to buy votes) and replace it with taxes grown from unsustainable economic growth (property).

What do you think austerity is designed to do? Do you think its to raise taxes, cut spending, and then there’ll be growth? I’m afraid not. It’s designed to shrink public expenditure, close the budget deficit, so that we’ll be in a position to borrow money and invest it strategically (through tax incentives or otherwise) in sustainable growth industries (not new houses and offices).

The model is to:
1. Repair the tax base, in so much as this can be borne. We’re probably close to the limits of what can be achieved. Increasing taxes while jobs are being lost, resulting in a reasonably static tax income, is probably a pretty good result.

2. Cut public spending, in a controlled manner, with the support of external loans. If we’re cutting public spending and taking 3-4 billion out of the economy every year, with the economy flip-flopping between small contraction and small growth – then this is the best result we can hope for.

3. Boost FDI and export-driven growth. Exports are robust. There has been a blip in Europe and the US of late, and this is translating into lower GDP growth, which has been carrying the can for our poor GNP as the internal economy (which included construction) imploded.

Austerity sucks:
- It sucks for you and me, as we can look forward to a lower standard of living with less net income and more expensive basics
- It sucks for young graduates, as many will emigrate
- It sucks for middle class parents, paying college fees for their emigrating kids and servicing big mortgages from the property bubble
- It sucks for public sector workers, who will be forced to accept lower gross income as well as net income
- It will suck afterwards for private sector workers, whose wages will become more competitive

Austerity sucks, no one likes it, but….
If we balance the budget by the end of 2015, flip-flopping in and out of recession, with no net GDP growth/contraction over the 4 years, and without creating/losing a single net new job, then austerity will have been a roaring success. We will have balanced the books, we’ll be able to borrow normally, and we can begin growing the economy on a sustainable path, carefully selecting where to give incentives.

This is the goal of austerity, not putting borrowed (by your employer, government, you yourself) money back in your pocket.

Nope, austerity is an attempt to bleed every penny out of the country to pay off the debts of foreign bond speculators and private banks

And it is wholeheartedly approved by the Germans as its keeping the euro artificially low and handing their large manufacturing firms record exports

@Joseph

I think you’ll find that a deal on the bank debt will first require that we balance our books. Everyone is complaining that bankers are still getting paid when the country is broke, but so are many others. But there are three groups getting paid beyond our means:
1. Bank bondholders
2. Public sector workers, welfare recipients, any other recipient of public money
3. Sovereign bondholders

If we don’t pay 1, the owners of 3 are in trouble and put pressure on us. If we don’t pay 2, we’ll have anarchy (it’s clear 2. If we pay 2 and not 1, 3 will stop giving us cash and we can’t pay any of them. While many admire the Greek resistance, I’d personally rather not have violence on our streets. I would say 2 are in the complaining but putting up with it phase.

When we couldn’t source 3 ourselves, the troika stepped in and provided money. Unfortunately this comes with strings. Now, when they looked at it again, they reduced our interest.

We’ve hopefully just negotiated the beginning of a deal to turn 1 into 3. This is significant, as paying promissory notes would have amounted to current expenditure. If we can turn this into 3, for now, we are closer to balancing the budget (albeit shifting would-be current expenditure into long term debt)

2, above, can only be addressed through austerity. We’re making it as gradual as possible, in the hope that the global picture will improve, and our repaired tax base will take off with people getting back into work and business/exports beginning to thrive.

Getting out of trouble ultimately will depend on getting a deal on all three groups.
- Austerity will force a deal on group 2, those paid from the public purse, and the taxpayers in general, as we’re emotional turkeys who won’t vote for Christmas.
- When group 2 have been forced to take their share, and the government have shown they can balance the books, we’re likely to be facilitated in a deal with group 3. By the time this happens there will be no group 1 (bank debt), only sovereign debt.

As we play by the big boys’ rules, we will be allowed to convert the bank debt into long term bonds (war reparations), which we will ultimately get a deal on. What would be the point in giving us a deal on debt now? It’d only encourage us to keep spending money we don’t have on services we can’t afford.

Austerity sucks, but while we’re gonna be the first to pay, we won’t be the last. Remember, once we have the books balanced, we can tell our creditors to fook off!

Ronan, im impressed with your take on this, i don’t fully understand the problem like the vast majority of the ordinary joe soaps, can i ask what your back ground is?

Will the Irish people ever learn is a bigger and better question in my opinion.

And there’d be no harm in it.

No harm? Ok then, cut people’s pay further and then watch the banks go cap in hand to us taxpayers again when their balance sheets crumble as a result of people not being able to pay their mortgages. Trust me, there are a large number of public sector workers who will have to default if pay is cut any further. The pay cuts for the majority in the public sector have been harsh in the extreme. By the way, do you know that there are more millionaires in Ireland now than there were in the Celtic Tiger years? Why not see if they’ll start coughing up a more amenable amount to help the country they make their millions in out of recession?

Im talking fat cats, pen pushers, paper chasing idiots with jobs for life milking it for all its worth while being as inefficent as they can be. Im not refering to gardai, nurses etc etc.

While that is certainly food for thought, it lets the banking sector and elite, responsible for a massive part of this crisis, completely off the hook. It also ignores the substantial savings held in Irish banks (you said we didnt save) and the fact that people in every bloody country spend in the good times, its not just an Irish phenomenon. You also Ignore the fact that it was banking debt that broke the camel’s back and forced an alleged bailout which will prolong, rather than shorten, the misery. While I admire your ethic of personal responsibility, and accept some of what you say is true, I feel your points are one sided and ignore a huge part of the current difficulties.