Madam, – Irrespective of who is right and who is wrong, this is just another case of a well-paid spectator, sheltered from the current climate by a very well-paid and tenured position, shouting abuse from the terraces at the man in the middle.
I would prefer if Messrs Morgan and Honohan would work together to deliver a more pragmatic solution instead of exchanging theoretical academic minutiae in public, and recognise that a significant reduction in public-sector pay is the one thing that can help this country. They probably agree on this, but I’m sure it would only be in private. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – John Bruton (Opinion Analysis, May 10th) rightly castigates Morgan Kelly’s proposed stratagem for dealing with this crisis. Respected academics such as John McHale of NUI Galway have been equally dismissive. And yet it has gripped the popular media, with RTÉ in particular playing endless replays of how Prof Kelly got it right in 2007 and 2008. This is doing enormous damage at home and abroad.
What is needed is a clear statement from Prof Kelly’s peers that what he proposes is totally ill-conceived and would indeed deliver that lethal injection to the economy so colourfully described by Enda Kenny. Some time ago, 48 academics wrote an open letter to your paper condemning Nama. A follow-up letter explaining how ill-founded and dangerous Prof Kelly’s proposals are could help stem the collapse in public morale that he has triggered. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Taoiseach Enda Kenny announced that he would not deliver a “lethal injection” to the Irish economy. Is it his preference instead that the Irish economy endures a death by a thousand cuts? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Could it be that our own political and administrative elite have decided that it would be better to avoid the difficult decision to renegotiate our ill-founded obligations, as this would likely involve the top strata of the country taking significant salary cuts and suffering a reduced standard of living? Renegotiation and debt restructuring of our non-sovereign obligations would put the focus back on what the Irish are doing to tighten their belts, and clearly this would mean that exorbitant salaries and packages for public employees would no longer be tolerated.
By going along with the hard line of the ECB and IMF they are guaranteeing that their own particular nests will be well-lined as the State continues to borrow massive sums to keep our bankrupt country ticking along and pour more funds into banks that should have been closed years ago.
This class of people are in the main over 50, well-paid and have a vested interest in maintaining things as they are, when in fact radical change is needed.
As Morgan Kelly has pointed out so well, if Ireland does not reform and learn to live on less, others will do this for us.
Our politicians and elite are still bleating about the interest rates we are paying, as if this were the problem, when in fact a tiny country with 1.8 million workers will never be able to pay off these vast debts in the first place. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – If we take borders out of the equation and speak in terms of population, Ireland, Greece, and Portugal have a combined population of 26.1 million and the population of the euro zone is roughly 328.5 million people. Thus, at present, 7.9 per cent of the euro zone’s population are residing in what Reuters has recently termed economically “quarantined” regions.
The real crisis still looms on the horizon. If Spain seeks a bailout, that would put 21.98 per cent of the euro zone (14.4 per cent of the entire population of the EU) in economic quarantine. The bailout nations need to realise that they are no longer isolated anomalies, and if Spain seeks European assistance, more than one in seven Europeans will be living in bailed-out zones.
Peripheral economies need to band together and bargain collectively to end this national “shoulder to the wheel” myth being sold from Brussels.
Bailed-out nations should not be made feel that they are paying war reparations in what is clearly a pan-European crisis. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Deirdre Craig’s despair (May 11th) “at the extreme diversity of opinion among our eminent economists” brings to mind the famous lament of US president Harry Truman, who wished that he had a one-armed economist because he was tired of experts telling him “On the one hand, this” and “On the other hand, that”. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Prof Kelly may be good at analysis but his immediate solutions are simply reckless. After this effort, I'm afraid it's Morgan Kelly that needs the bailout. His admission in The Irish Timeslast year that he had no solution appears to be nearer the truth. – Yours, etc,