Madam, – Successive commentators, including Garret FitzGerald (Opinion, August 29th), have referred to the “doomsday scenario” of the International Monetary Fund intervening to balance our books as something to be avoided if at all possible.
I wonder would this necessarily be a bad thing – at least we could count on the IMF to rectify the outrageous salaries and expenses paid to our politicians and top public servants, which would hopefully be the first step in reforming our failed political system. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Anybody with a respect for language and clarity of meaning cannot help but be both fascinated and frustrated by the verbal offerings offered to us in contemporary political and economic discourses. On a daily basis we are confronted with such euphemistic oxymorons as “bad assets” and such unpleasant sounding gerunds as “bottoming out”. However, it’s the creation of a the new phrasal verb “to Nama loans”, frequently used in the passive voice, as in “if loans are Nama-ed” and “which loans should be Nama-ed”, which has this reader suggesting we snip this jargon in line with general cutbacks and call a spade a spade, particularly where financial dig-outs involving taxpayers’ money might be concerned. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I write as a long-time Green Party voter. I was uneasy but kept an open mind when the Green Party joined Fianna Fáil to form the present Government. I could see some merit at the time in the realpolitik of a party of conscience tempering the special sectorial interests of Fianna Fáil and to promote a much-needed green agenda.
Then history intervened. I have watched aghast as waves of international events came crashing over our country and washed away the house of cards that was our property based economy. I was even more horrified as the Government stumbled, stuck in the headlights. A hasty, ill thought-out decision was made to guarantee the banks. And now we have the next debacle, Nama.
I don’t trust the people who got us into this mess to get us out. I certainly don’t think Nama will work – in the sense of restoring liquidity. The banks will just hoard the cash as long as they can.
More importantly, I think this is a moral issue: the structure of Nama will load the failures of the speculators onto society; it will beggar the public finances for a decade and longer. It is simply not acceptable.
I cannot but suspect that the true agenda is to assist property values in the hope that the “game” can start again. But plainly, as a nation, our property values were (and still are) detached from any long-term sustainable international reality.
The net effect of the past decade of the bubble was a transfer of wealth from the young to the old and from the middle classes to the wealthy, with a dirty wake of bad planning.
The actions taken in the coming weeks will have huge significance. The consequences of the Nama gamble are so great, I fear deeply for this country if it goes ahead. – Yours, etc,