Failing Fianna Fail is heading for China

Taoiseach Brian Cowen was due to leave for China today, heading a large delegation of politicians and businessmen from Ireland.

But the crisis he and his Finance Minister Brian Lenihan caused with the 2009 Budget made him to stay home for another while. And at lunchtime he appeared on This Week, a Sunday current affairs programme on RTE Radio 1, trying to defend his policies and the budget.

He did a bad job, defending the indefensible, and demonstrated once again that he does not derseve the title Taoiseach, which is the Irish word for leader.

Meanwhile the delegation left for China without Cowen and is now headed by his Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe.

It is rumoured that the happy Corkman and former teacher will not only negotiate with the Chinese about trade issues, which is the main purpose of the trip. O'Keeffe may also explore if China is willing to give political asylum to leading Fianna Fail politicians in case they are losing power in Ireland, a possibility ever more likely now.

The Big World Crisis

If you or I have a company and make the wrong business decisions, we will go to the wall. We'll lose a lot of money, and in the worst scenario we'll go bankrupt.
No-one would give a hoot for us, and if we're lucky we might qualify for some social welfare money.

If you are a farmer, you can mess up as often as you like. No matter how bad your mistakes might be, the government and the EU will keep you afloat with plenty of subsidies and compensation pay.

But if you are a banker, you are really in luck. You are the jackpot winner of all jackpots! No matter how stupid, selfish and greedy you are; no matter how much money you lost through speculation or hazardous gambling on the 'international markets' (which have nothing to buy and nothing to sell and are just huge casinos for the super-rich and their agents); and no matter how much you cooked your books and lied to everyone - you are safe.
Governments need you, as they borrow money all the time. If they let you go bust, who's going to lend them the money?
So they will bail you out, lucky bankers, no matter what and no matter how much it costs.

Ireland has just pledged the nominal value of the whole country - about € 400 billion - as 100% guarantee for the Irish banks and all their deposits and loans.
Holy shit! Just imagine something goes wrong again...

What would happen? Would we be all collectively bankrupt?
Fall into anarchy and become a failed state, something like Somalia?
Or would we perhaps end up being ruled by the English again?

They'd love that. And there are plenty of idiots here who'd love to have a Queen anyway. (Just check the Irish sales figures for the UK glamour magazines full of royals and other wasters...)

But we are small fry really. In the USA they want to give the failed banks on Wall Street $ 700 billion of John Doe's tax money, in exchange for bad debts and 'toxic' loans and mortgages. Now that's a great idea and shows what a sensible and prudent investor 'Dubya' really is...
Having wasted more than $ 600 billion (and counting) on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he's now going out with a real bang, robbing the US taxpayers of another $ 700 billion and giving it to his friends.

But where's that money coming from? Not even the US Federal Reserve would get away with printing such a vast sum of new money. It would put the value of the US Dollar into free-fall, and it could play catch-up with the Zimbabwe Dollar.

No, this money has to be real. So who has such sums sitting around in ready cash? There's only one country at present, and that's China. After we have outsourced almost all our manufacturing to China, they now produce everything we need. And we pay them for it handsomely.

But as they have no real need for our cash, they've been hoarding it for years. Now they use it for loans to the US government. Which means that sooner or later the Chinese could be the real masters of America.

I don't know which would be worse - Chinese communists in the White House, or Ireland back under the Queen of England...

Next time I come across a banker, I'll give him a good hiding. This won't change anything, but I will feel a lot better afterwards.