Madam, – Morgan Kelly in his article, which made for terrifying reading, states as a fact that “Ireland is heading for bankruptcy” (Opinion and Analysis, May 7th).
Prof Kelly’s advice actually pertains to only a tiny fraction of your readers, so my question is simply, “What can the ordinary person do?” What advice does he have for those of us working, paying our taxes, looking for a job, studying, raising our families and – if we’re one of the lucky ones – saving every penny we have for that rainy day? Is it best to change our spare euro into dollars or sterling? Do we take to the streets en masse demanding our Government places its economic plans before us in the form of a referendum? I, for one feel, disempowered, disillusioned and very afraid. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Morgan Kelly has confirmed my belief that banks such as AIB and Bank of Ireland were run by “faintly dim former rugby players”. Now is the time to replace them with the business intelligentsia of the GAA. – Yours, etc, –
Madam, – While watching Alec Guinness in Bridge on the River Kwaion RTÉ 2 recently, I kept being reminded of Patrick Honohan in his role as the Irish member of the ECB council. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I greatly respect Prof Morgan Kelly’s opinion but I do not agree with him on walking away from the EU/ECB/IMF agreement – yet. It could be our “Get out of jail card”. It could also be a one-way ticket to the Stone Age. We simply don’t know. Therefore it is too risky.
Our best bet is to try to achieve an agreed restructuring, unless the burden becomes so great that it would make little difference for ordinary working people. Meanwhile we shouldn’t sit on our hands. We should embark on a radical growth plan. The savings ratio has risen from 2.7 per cent in 2007 to nearly 13 per cent, driven by fear.
The danger of home repossession, where people are genuinely trying to repay their debts, should be completely removed. Steps can also be taken to reassure people in occupational pension schemes in the private sector.
Simultaneously the investment deficit must be tackled. (Gross fixed capital investment has fallen from over €46 billion in 2007 to less than €19 billion.) The Strategic Investment Bank (SIB) should be established immediately, using the residue of the National Pension Reserve Fund to enable it to create venture capital funds.
The SIB should liaise with Enterprise Ireland, using these funds to establish job-generating new enterprises and extend existing ones. The funds and the individual projects should issue bonds to attract some of the Irish pension industry’s €85 billion.
They should also be augmented by a temporary levy on all income over €100,000 per annum to raise a further €1 billion each year for three years. Those who are levied should receive a dividend on the performance of the fund and could ultimately expect to get their money back.
We need to think outside the box. Prof Kelly is correct in one fundamental respect: conventional thinking is the route to perdition. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – The theatre of the media is where we have been finding opinion and popular fiction masquerading as fact, so I suppose it is in some way refreshing now to find fact masquerading as opinion.
To be fair to Prof Kelly, that is not his pretence — the “opinion” label was stuck on by your editorial staff. He took on the role of reporter, and gave us a factual account of the goings-on at that bailout event that started our severest winter on record.
He gave us verbatim accounts of what Mr Lenihan said to the IMF and what an IMF staffer said behind Mr Lenihan’s back. He recounted how our defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory by the intervention of US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, despite the support of UK chancellor George Osborne, and how the IMF team found itself outplayed by that of the ECB.
Prof Kelly is not, or was not, a media man, so we must grant him the presumption that he is a truthful reporter. Given his equally truthful admission that he is vastly overpaid in his present position, perhaps you would take him on as a reporter? In direct exchange, UCD could take on Fintan O’Toole as professor of economics. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Prof Kelly wrote an article some years ago correctly predicting the property crash. Fair play to him. Since then, his opinions have been published internationally, greatly boosting Prof Kelly’s own reputation while having the opposite effect on his country’s. His latest piece on Saturday, ranging from well-presented facts to flippant hyperbole to personalised invective, was more of the same.
Of course we need to hear all sides of the debate, but let’s not revere Prof Kelly as so omniscient that we lose all faith in our ability to get out of this lest his prophecies become self-fulfilling. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I have just read in detail the devastating commentary on Ireland’s present economic plight by Morgan Kelly.
He is a brave and patriotic man, as well as clever, and this is a vital combination for a nation’s leaders at any point in its history. No doubt he will be quickly challenged by vested interests. But surely if there was ever a time for Ireland to assert its sovereignty as a nation (and without recourse to arms) it is now.
May I urge once again that there be a referendum on the ECB-IMF bailout? We need to confer some kind of democratic legitimacy on economic suicide. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Morgan Kelly (a modern-day Cassandra with a proven track record) has a habit of spoiling one’s weekend. His latest chilling and cogent prognosis for our moribund economy is enough to send a shiver down the spine of even the most eternal optimist.
If he is right in his contention that the country is facing “national bankruptcy” – and there’s precious little evidence to suggest he isn’t – why on Earth are we pursuing our present economic strategy?
Are the lunatics still running the asylum? It would appear so. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Prof Kelly’s analysis is correct, as far as it goes. However, when he suggests a remedy, he loses perspective. We are in the midst of a European crisis, not just an Irish one.
Ireland is fully paid-up, if wayward, member of the euro zone, and the ECB has a plan to solve the euro-zone problem – a plan which has not yet been totally revealed. The part we can see now is that Greece, Ireland and Portugal are on “the naughty step”.
It’s not pleasant, but beggars can’t be choosers – we are suffering the results of our national mismanagement.
It seems to me that the Greek problem is the most urgent, and the ECB’s cure, when it emerges, will be designed to deal with the Irish and the Portuguese problems too, and any others which may crop up later on.
I believe that it will not involve default on debts, because the ECB has set its face against anything of that nature for the present, at least.
We signed up for the euro and joined the European Union and we thereby agreed to pool our sovereignty. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Morgan Kelly is right. Ireland must extract a default, which raises the question of where will the money come from?
There is one thing he and most other economists are forgetting.Ireland has a huge diaspora. These people are mostly employed in well-paying positions and this figure does not include those who have an ancestral connection to our land.
This is a huge source of wealth that can be tapped into easily, given the right conditions.
Firstly, that Ireland stops pouring money into the black hole that is the banks and defaults on this debt.
Secondly, that public service reforms, which include political salaries, return our State to a level reasonable for a country our size.
You will find that if Ireland then looks for investment, any bond issue, even at a low 3 per cent or less, will be taken up as the diaspora unites to get our country back on its feet. – Yours, etc,