indirectapproach

"Would a lack of trust allow ..." Ho ho.

Yes, obviously, because you would have just done that which is anathema to international companies. If you rip up the balance sheet .... once ..... shame on you .... if you rip up the balance sheet twice ..... shame on me. Who wants that risk? And although past performance is no guarantee, it's a good guide. If you think you are gonna get any business if you rip up the balance sheet and then present yourself at the door of anyone who can pay, suited, booted, bright eyed and bushy tailed, next Monday morning and say, "But it's all different now," I think you are wrong. And international companies will not much care what language your work force speaks. It's not as if they want to speak to them.

"If Irish companies have something at the right price that people want to buy, people will buy." Where are Irish companies going to get the capital to compete with the emerging (low cost) economies if Ireland spits in the face of the international money markets?

I think that those who participated in the winter of discontent might recall it slightly differently.

Nah, don't worry about it. It's all secured on the best performing real estate in the world. It's a gold mine this island of ours. A diamond. Ask the Chinese and they're clever people. They invented paper and gambling.

I think it's worth remembering the UK had an IMF bail out in 1976. These things are unfortunate but they're less bad than a war. But it seems the government is suffering an utter collapse of ability to negotiate sensibly and the people are panicked into this Sinn Fein nonsense and there is no steady hand on the tiller of the ECB or the IMF. What a mess.

Well, I try to avoid doing business with people I don't trust.

How do you know you're getting a good deal? How do you know what you've bought will be fit for purpose tomorrow or next week? How do you know the person you've paid won't issue a writ for further payment and tie you up vexatious litigation? How do you know you have not done business with someone of ill will that is just waiting to stab you in your back just as soon as you turn it? How much does it cost you to pay someone to watch your back, always? Do you have eyes in the back of your head? Do they ever sleep? You think you know. You think you trust no one. I don't think you do.

A truism of that ilk does not require examples.

It may well not cause inflation. Inflation is "too much money chasing too few goods". The newly printed money will just disappear in to some balance sheet black hole and the emergence of the BRICS et al means that we now have more goods than we can shake a stick at.

"Trade. When there's people willing to buy, there will always be someone willing to sell to them. As it has always been." People do not buy from people that cannot be trusted. And, "there's who owes you your money, now get 'em working....." Is hardly a trust creating negotiating position. And trade requires a market. We're not talking about some spud farmer here. We're talking about a fully developed Western nation that's toying with the idea of trying to dig itself out of its hole.

Then with what will you pay for the things you need but do not produce?

Well this is another very sad thing, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/26/ireland-hurries-bailout-portugal-spain The Irish elect someone from Sinn Fein so the interest rates being talked about for their bail out jump from 6.75% to 9%.

"cancel all mortgages, give every family their own house, debt free. 5) Get rid of all taxes and welfare and replace with a land value tax/citizen's income to pay for a basic public service of healthcare and essential services. 7) Allow small home grown businesses to thrive and form the new economy." Oh look, the year zero proposal, how quaint.

"I have often wondered whether the whole EU experiment started because of Germany's guilt about their behaviour in the 1930s and 1940s." I suspect it all had far more to do with the Hun creating and accessing markets for his nik naks than his guilt.

The version I got was, "I am worried that Germany's authorities are just losing sight of what's good for me," said Jean-Claude Juncker, chair of Eurogroup finance ministers.

That's an interesting prediction but I find it a bit optimistic. I do not feel the Germans have the capacity, let alone the will to impose fiscal discipline on the Latins and Irish. So even if we do have ein this, ein that and ein the other, it won't last. There are loadsa people all over claiming unemployment benefit who are working and in Greece, apparently, lots of people claiming salaries that aren't. There aren't enough people to check the dodgy numbers that the gamers from the fringe are sending in. The dudes on the edge are just not going to discover and abide by Teutonic rectitude, which sure has its sham side too, just because some Herman in Frankfurt tells them he'll take the money away if they don't. It's a house built on sand and the rains are coming.

I think it's worth pointing out we just had an earnings season where (I think) > 70% of reports beat expectations. It seems to me, earnings have outstripped price such that equities look interesting value at the moment. China, Canada, Mexico and Japan are far more important for the US than the weak links in the euro chain. Even if the US sets the tune for the European markets. All this euro chaos could help corporate America, by weakening euro competition in US markets, overseas and domestic. Same with the international companies quoted on FTSE 350 like SAB. The CAC especially and the DAX have both recovered far less from the March 09 low than the Anglo-Saxon indices, so pressure against them takes longer to build.

"Do you think Spain, Greece, Portugal or Ireland are in denial, any more than our Government are?" Yes. For various reasons the most easily verifiable is that they joined the euro and we didn't. As for the Germans, yes again. It is delusional to believe you can, by hook or crook, impose fiscal discipline on the congenitally ill-disciplined. Of course the UK has its own problems too and when/if the euro fails that will be another real big one but it will be less bad for us than them.

Things are grim in the UK but I think a balance of the population realise something has to be done about it. On the continent I think they are in denial. And I suppose it may well be institutional mal-investment that finally busts the euro and if it isn't that I am, sadly, coming round to the view it will be the structural deficits.

Although the bankers bonuses are an obscene mickey take, aren't they quite small compared to the structural deficits and accumulated national debts of Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and France? Don't these nations have healthcare systems, unemployment, welfare and pension provision and state bureaucracies they can't afford? The failure of these nations to recognise that and their delusion that taxing their already over taxed rich is the answer, when their social provision already renders them uncompetitive in a global low wage, low benefit economy, is why they will go bankrupt. Whose fault it is doesn't matter so much. The poor and the middling sort are no saints even if they are not as ghastly as the rich but fair or not they will pay for this either through austerity, which will be bad (probably very) or bankruptcy, which will be worse.

It seems pretty clear that the euro zone spends more than it can afford. This will cease, eventually. Whether this happens because of some controlled restructuring or chaotic default and euro collapse remains to be seen. But it's looking like default and collapse because everyone is saying "it's not my fault" and "I won't pay."

I don't think it does. We're in the post, post war consensus.

Sure, that's why Argentine interest rates are 17% not 70%.

Ireland is bankrupt. Stuffed whichever way. Interest rates in Argentina in 2002 were what? 67% What are they now? 17% Last year? 20% If Ireland goes the Argentina route .... it's stuffed. If it goes the ECB, IMF austerity route, it's stuffed. That's a pity.