The Irish economic crisis and the EU: did they lead us over a cliff ?

May 27, 2009 by Infowars Ireland

This article is an attempt to articulate a view that our EU, and particularly Monetary Union, membership has not been beneficial – and in fact ruinous – with respect to the current economic crisis. It is hoped by this to answer some of the criticisms of the Lisbon No campaign from commentators who claim that the opposite is the case (1).

It seems to this observer that there are two particular aspects to that membership which have contributed enormously to the dire economic straits that Ireland now finds itself in. These are the increasing globalisation of the Irish economy, that the EU has imposed on us, and secondly the negative consequences of having our exchange and interest rates set by Brussels according to the needs of the German and not the Irish economy:

1. Anyway simply put Ireland, under EU influence, has become a hugely open economy which naturally means that we experience the highs and lows of the world economy to a greater extent now than when we had more control over our economic destiny. For example during the last great depression we were largely unaffected because so much of the Irish economy was produced, controlled, financed, and manned by Irish people in Ireland that trouble in the boardrooms of New York didn’t impact on us. Now obviously all that has changed and we seem to be dying of pneumonia in large measure because America has caught a cold, as the saying goes. Of course most people look upon this ‘globalisation process’ (to quote Peter Sutherland (2)) as an inevitable part of a changing world but I respectfully submit that this isn’t true, this process is being driven by the EU quite deliberately and in a way that has banjaxed us now. For example:
a) As part of joining monetary union we were compelled to abolish all our exchange and capital controls. These are the traditional, and very effective (3), methods that sovereign governments use to stop international speculators from deliberately crushing selected currencies or companies. Don’t forget that a lot of the international financial movements have exactly that origin, international hedge funds deliberately holding to ransom currencies or companies e.g. this has been rumoured to be the real story behind the Icelandic situation (4), was true of George Soros and sterling, and can be seen working on companies like Volkswagen recently. Furthermore the lack of capital controls has meant that the Irish Stock Exchange has become the plaything of these international financial gamblers. Its obvious now that much of the Celtic Tiger rise in Irish bank stocks, and money that came into the banks via international bond issues, must have been down to an inflow of this highly leveraged funny money which has placed our banking industry into a ruinous global casino like boom and bust cycle, to the ruin of so many Irish share and householders. Obviously at the time of the last depression the money in the Irish banking system came from Irish savers and businesses and as such was much more stable and couldn’t have led to too great a bubble in Irish house prices etc. This was the situation up until we joined the euro when the Irish banks were flooded with cheap internationally sourced money which has led to the disaster we are in now.
In fact these international bond holders might now be the source of even more of our difficulties. Dark hints are being expressed by Irish economists that the huge figure for the Irish bank bailouts, and the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank, is down to the necessity for the government to bailout these international financial houses, not in fact to bail out Irish savers or businesses (5). One wonders if the over the top criticism of Irish bankers and developers in the media might be deliberately disguising the fact that so much of the bailout money is designed to help out these international bond holders. Might it also be pertinent to wonder if the hold that the EU has over Ireland might not be central to this wish to assist these, probably mostly German, bondholders ?

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