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The markets keep picking off the countries where sovereign debt risks are perceived to be real one by one. After Ireland last year and Greece over recent months, attention seems to have moved on to Portugal. In fiscal crises, contagion leads to countries being guilty by association, which is why the PIIGS acronym (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) is a somewhat unfortunate association for the countries involved.

It is also an association that is difficult to shake off, although Ireland has done a pretty good job over the past twelve months, as it is has shown real political will to tackle the problems in the public finances. There is no doubt that all of these five countries have issues to deal with at the current time, but there are also a few important features that differentiate them.

The similarity is that all of the countries, bar Italy, will experience budget deficits in the range of 8%-11% of GDP in 2010. Starting debt levels differ though with Greece already well over 100% of GDP, while Ireland stands at 65% and Spain at 55%. These two variables are often cited as the main gauges of sovereign risk, but they ignore the wider balance sheet for the economy as a whole - the balance of payments. The balance of payments records transactions with the rest of the world, while within this one can look at the private sector and public sector balances. This is where the differences really become apparent between the countries mentioned above. Portugal will run a current account deficit of 10% of GDP in 2010, while Ireland may run a small surplus, according to the latest estimates.

For Ireland, this means that the large public deficit is being offset by a significant private sector surplus, as households and businesses have slashed spending in the recession. Greece will run a current account deficit of 8% of GDP, while Spain is expected to run a deficit of 5%. In this regard, Portugal and Greece look to be in the most vulnerable position. While spreads on ten-year Irish bonds relative to bunds are still larger than that of Portugal, we would not be surprised if this changes in the very near future, as it has already occurred at shorter maturities. With fiscal consolidation progressing at different speeds in the different countries, a further differentiation is likely at some stage. For now though, fear rules the roost.

Or hot air from slow burners?

Labour prepares to tear up 12 years of energy policy

The Government is drawing up plans for a wholesale reform of Britain's energy markets that could wind back the clock on 12 years of deregulation.

In an interview with The Times, Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said that Britain's existing, highly liberalised market regime, introduced under Labour in 1998, was failing to deliver the investment needed to cut UK carbon emissions by more than a third by 2020.

A market structure was being designed to boost long-term investment in low-carbon sources of electricity, including wind parks, nuclear reactors and fossil fuel stations equipped with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

Mr Miliband said: "We are going to need a more interventionist energy policy to deliver the low-carbon investment we need."

frontpaged - Nomad

Now also available in Orange and on Boo.

The received wisdom in mainstream US political discourse appears to be that Martha Coakley lost the Massachusetts special Senate election (to replace Ted Kennedy) because Obama's policies were too liberal even for the most liberal state in the Union. The US people, even in Massachusetts, it is said, want Obama to go back to the centre and govern in concert with moderate Republican and Democrat legislators.

I'm not usually all that enamoured of polls which appear to be designed to confirm a particular thesis, but the Research 2000 poll of Obama Voters in Massachusetts still makes compelling reading.  Obama won the state with 62% of the vote in 2008, so how could Martha Coakley lose a seat which had been held by Ted Kennedy with such distinction for so long?  This poll attempts to find out why.

Research 2000 Massachusetts Poll Results

The Research 2000 Massachusetts Poll was conducted for three organizations -- the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America, and MoveOn.org -- on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 after polls closed in the special election for Senate.

500 Obama voters who did NOT vote in the special election were asked one set of questions. 500 Obama voters who DID vote -- and voted for Republican Scott Brown -- were asked another set of questions. Each has a margin of error of 4.5%.

2774 Obama voters from 2008 who voted Tuesday were reached -- of which 2274 (82%) voted for Democrat Martha Coakley and 500 (18%) voted against her.

Research 2000 is a reputable pollster, and the results appears to present clear evidence that Coakley lost because the vast majority of Obama voters felt that Obama had not been radical enough in pursuing his agenda and either stayed at home or voted for the Republican candidate in protest.  So lets start with those Obama voters who switched their vote to the Republican Candidate:

Despite his admittedly dismal record of economic forecasting, the Times' Anatole Kaletsky is again engaging in a bit of doom porn over the fate of the Euro in 2010:

Disappointment ahead for UK -- and big test for euro

The world's weakest currency is likely to be the euro as US exporters increase their global market share mainly at the expense of European rivals, while Chinese and Japanese manufacturers divert to Europe many of the goods that they can no longer sell in the US.

Again, this is really an extension of a somewhat premature suggestion I made last year, when I said that the focus of global economic troubles would shift from America to Europe. This did not quite happen in 2009, although the falls in output and industrial production were much steeper in Europe than the US. But German government labour subsidies will soon expire and the financial pressures on Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Central Europe can only intensify.

I therefore repeat a point I made last year: before this crisis is completely finished, the cohesion of the eurozone will be tested to near-destruction.

Meanwhile, in Ireland, economist David McWilliams has been making the case that Ireland should never have joined the Euro in the first place, and should certainly leave now:

Brian Lenihan has only been a cabinet Minister for two and a half years: firstly as Minister for Justice, and latterly as Minister for Finance in Brian Cowen's first - and likely only - Government.  As such he does not quite share the opprobrium heaped upon his immediate predecessor (and current Taoiseach) Brian Cowen for Ireland's economic and fiscal crises.  Indeed he his widely seen as having inherited the most unenviable task to have faced any Finance Minister in the history of the state.

I don't do Christmas cards or even the e-Christmas cards available from some websites.  I don't do Christmas circular letters or emails containing annual summaries of family events to enlighten family friends and relations.  That doesn't mean I don't appreciate receiving them from others.  It's just that I don't ever seem to get it together to reciprocate. I am such a bad housekeeper that the run-up to Christmas always seems to be consumed with catching up with the chores I should have been doing on an ongoing basis!

Sometimes I wonder why I do this blogging thing.  I never write about stuff that I should know an awful lot more about - about the stuff I worked at in 25 years of gainful employment.  Instead I write about politics, social issues, climate change - subjects I have an interest in, would like to learn more about, but about which I can hardly claim to be an expert.  Why, for instance, should anyone care about my take on Obama's escalation in Afghanistan?

Crossposted from Think About It

[Update]This is an updated version of my earlier diary Popularising climate change in which I sought feedback from ETers and Th!nkers on my proposed script for an interview with Bulgarian National Television on the Think About It Climate Change blogging forum.

They have now broadcast the programme and an extract containing the dubbed interview is available here. As far as I can see they have used the interview in full and overlain it with some relevant footage on the impacts of and solutions to climate change. The interviewer is Think about it member  Hristo Hristov. [End Update]

I've been asked to do a Skype interview with Bulgarian National Television because of my involvement with the Think About IT Climate Change Blogging forum as part of their build up to the Copenhagen COP 15 Climate Change conference.

I've been given the broad outline of the questions in advance and what follows is roughly what I plan to say in the few minutes available.  I make no claims to being an expert on climate science, but believe we all have a responsibility to try and make the key issues more accessible for all.  

There is a political battle being fought against the status quo, the vested interests, and the climate change deniers who see no reason why they - or anyone else - should take any responsibility for the unsustainable exploitation of Earth currently being whitewashed as "growth", "development" and the unalienable right of man to plunder all he purveys.

I would welcome the assistance of ETers to refine the points which can, and should be, made in the course of a short interview to a general audience.

Archbishops McQuaid, Ryan, McNamara and Cardinal Connell

We have already heard much about the pervasiveness of child sexual abuse in Church run institutions, the oppression of women in Magdalen laundrys, and the physical brutality with which many "Christian Brothers" and priests carried out their "educational" role. Now a Commission of Enquiry has listed the abuses perpetrated by the Church Hierarchy in covering up such abuses in only one Diocese, the Diocese of Dublin.

Commission finds Church covered up child sex abuse - Thu, Nov 26, 2009

The Commission of Investigation into Dublin's Catholic Archdiocese has concluded that there is "no doubt" that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the archdiocese and other Church authorities.

The commission's report covers the period between January 1st 1975 and April 30th 2004. It said there cover-ups took place over much of this period.

In its report, published this afternoon, it has also found that "the structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up."

It also found that "the State authorities facilitated the cover-up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes."

Over the period within its remit "the welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early stages," it said.

"Instead the focus was on the avoidance of scandal and the preservation of the good name, status and assets of the institution and of what the institution regarded as its most important members - the priests," it said.

In making its main findings, the report it concluded that "it is the responsibility of the State to ensure that no similar institutional immunity is ever allowed to occur again. This can be ensured only if all institutions are open to scrutiny and not accorded an exempted status by any organs of the State."

Cross-posted from Think about it

A breaking news story on the Huffington Post quotes an anonymous official as saying that Obama is going to the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit prior to accepting his Nobel Prize and will present a concrete target for US emissions reductions.

Obama To Copenhagen For Climate Talks (BREAKING)

A White House official says President Barack Obama will travel to Copenhagen next month for a global climate conference.

The official says the president will be in Copenhagen on Dec. 9 before heading to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama's attendance had been in question until now.

At least 65 world leaders will attend and seek to lay out the framework for a new global warming treaty. Obama has said the goal at the Copenhagen meeting should be an agreement that has "immediate operational effect," not just a political declaration. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the formal announcement has not been made.

France 1, Ireland 1.  France win 2:1 on aggregate

France controversially knocked Ireland out of the World Cup Finals tonight with a "goal" scored by Thierry Henry.  There were two French players off-side when the ball was played in, then Richard Dunne was fouled as he tried to head it away, and finally Thierry Henry handled the ball not once, but twice in plain view of everyone bar the referee and his officials before guiding the ball across goal for Gallas to score the winning goal.

Keane hits out at authorities - The Irish Times - Thu, Nov 19, 2009

Henry admitted the ball did strike his hand and claims he told the referee, who chose to allow the goal to stand.

The Barcelona striker said: “The ball hit my hand, I will be honest. It was a handball, you can clearly see it. (Sebastien) Squillaci went to jump with two Irish players, I was behind him and the next thing I know the ball hit my hand.

“It was a handball, but I’m not the ref. I told (the referee) but he said to

me the same: ‘You are not the ref.”’

An Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, has nominated Máire Geoghegan-Quinn to be the Irish nominee to the next EU Commission.  As she retired from Irish politics over 12 years ago, many in Ireland, too, will be asking: Máire who?

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn has been the Irish nominee to the European Court of Auditors for the past 10 years: not exactly a high profile position, and many will be asking why she got the gig ahead of much more high profile politicians like Pat Cox (former President of the EU Parliament), John Bruton (former Taoiseach and current EU Ambassador to the US) and Mary Robinson (former President and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) and current campaigner on climate change and human rights.

So why did she get the job, and is she qualified for the post?  European readers will be concerned at some of the skeletons she has in her cupboard... particularly as she was found by the Irish Courts to have abused her position as Minister for Justice to subvert the rule of law.

(Cross posted from climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu and amended in response to a comment by Migeru below)

All prospects of a substantial, legally binding agreement in Copenhagen have now been buried at the Asia-Pacific Summit with Obama and the other leaders accepting that no agreement is possible in the remaining time available.  Thus not even Greenpeace's fears of a "greenwash" have been realised: there will be nothing to show for all the effort put in to date.

The prime minister of Denmark, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the UN-sponsored climate conference's chairman, is currently engaged in damage limitation, and seeking to rescue some sort of non legal but "politically binding" or operational agreement from the ruins of the process, but the omens are not good:

Cross-posted from climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu

The purpose of carbon taxes is to shift consumption from carbon based to sustainable sources, not to act as another revenue source for Governments seeking to fund bank bail-outs and other unpopular policies.  We must not allow the climate change issue to be hijacked by Governments intent on using any excuse to raise revenue for other purposes - because otherwise Climate Change will become just another issue in the mix of left-right politics as usual.  There is no reason why the promotion of carbon neutrality should not also be tax neutral, with revenues from taxes on carbon consumption being used to fund the promotion of cheaper and more widespread availability of sustainable energy, products and services.

It's not as if voters aren't already sceptical enough of what climate change is really all about...

Originally published on October 14th

I have been planning a follow-up to my "We need a revolution"diary for some time now.  Then I read Morgan Kelly's opinion piece in the Irish Times today and I felt why bother when someone else can say it so much better...

Turning bank debt into equity will save us from Nama ruin - The Irish Times - Tue, Oct 13, 2009

WHILE MOST economists by now simply dismiss Brian Lenihan's utterances on the economy as "not even wrong", this is to miss the Minister's almost eerie ability to predict exactly the opposite of what is going to happen. Merely to contradict Brian Lenihan is virtually to guarantee that you will later be credited with supernatural prescience.

Who else, as Irish bank shares plunged 13 months ago, could conclude: "Our banks uniquely have weathered this storm . . . We are in a zone of financial stability in a very troubled financial world."? Two weeks later, having been panicked into his catastrophic bank liability guarantee, the Minister assured us that we had "the cheapest bailout in the world so far", and six weeks later averred that: "It is not the function of the Government to fund or bail out the banks."

The effortless miscalculations, the assured non sequiturs, the lofty indifference to facts: all reveal Brian Lenihan as a master of what Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined succinctly in his 1986 paper, On Bullshit .

The Nama legislation, as expected, piles up this material on an Augean scale. Prices have fallen 47 per cent; the long-term economic value of property is 30 per cent below its peak value; the loan-to-value ratio is 77 per cent; prices only need to rise by 10 per cent in 10 years for the State to break even.

To subject these almost poetic flights of ministerial imagination to any sort of rational analysis will seem to many like vandalism, but that is what God made economists for.

Diary rescue by Migeru

OK - a slightly ambitious title for a short diary - I will concede.  But I want to talk about a few inter-related factors which I think are emblematic and symbolic of the state of world politics today.  

1. Where stands Obama a year after his election?

2. Where stands the EU after Lisbon is finally ratified? and

3. What are the prospects for the major challenges ahead - particularly for Climate Change post Kyoto?

frontpaged with minor edit - Nomad

Madam, - The Minister (Nov. 9th.) is to be congratulated for responding publicly to the excellent letter by Thomas Erbsloh (November 5th) expressing concern at the proposed rationalisation of the Local Development Social Inclusion Programme (LDSIP) and the Community Development Programme projects (CDP) by his Department.

Unfortunately his response contains much Departmental management speak - for example "My overall aim is to ensure that, from 2010, having regard to the budgetary position, disadvantaged communities will benefit from a more focused programme with clear objectives, simplified and streamlined delivery structures and better-integrated actions, leading to significant administrative savings"

What on earth does he think these programmes have been doing, often with shoe string budgets and relying on a huge amount of voluntary effort to achieve their objectives?

As a voluntary member of the management board of three Charities - two within his constituency providing services to disadvantaged members of his community - I can assure him that clear objectives, streamlined delivery structures, and better integrated actions have been our guiding principles all these years.

Moreover we have also striven to ensure that local communities share a sense of involvement, ownership and pride in these programmes, which is why they have been so successful in improving social conditions and community relations in first place.

The proposed top down rationalisation of these services, without any consultation or regard to the voluntary and community dimension of these services - will simply result in more expensive, bureaucratic and ineffective state quangos providing well paid jobs for administrators, but no community identification, participation and voluntary effort whatsoever.

I have not been giving my professional time voluntarily to these groups just to see them taken over by a state bureaucracy which has become synonymous with cost overruns, inefficiency, inflexibility, and unresponsiveness to real local and community needs.

The notion that Community Development can be carried out without real community participation at all levels is one that only a Department remote from the communities it is meant to serve could have arrived at.

Originally published October 1, 2009

Now also available in Orange

Wait, no electronic bracelets?  No manacles? Terrorists left to roam free and go shopping? Given free lessons in civics and cookery?  The end of civilisation in Ireland is nigh...

Whilst US politicians are apparently terrified at the prospect of Guantánamo inmates being transferred to supermax security prisons in their State, the Irish government is letting former inmates roam free and treating them <shock, horror> as human beings!

Former US detainees begin Irish integration - The Irish Times - Thu, Oct 01, 2009

TWO FORMER Guantánamo Bay detainees who arrived in Ireland for resettlement last weekend have begun a 10-week integration programme and are adjusting slowly to their new environment, according to a Government official.

The Uzbeks, Oybek Jabbarov (31) and Shakhrukh Hamiduva, who is in his mid-20s, travelled to Ireland last Saturday after spending seven years in the US-run detention centre in Cuba.

To help them prepare for their new lives in Ireland, the Department of Justice has organised a 10-week series of intensive courses in civics, cookery and other subjects.

Diary rescue by Migeru

Given that I have taken to campaigning for a Mary Robinson Presidency I though it only prudent to make an enquiry as to whether she would be interested in the post.  So I sent an email to her Realising Rights Initiative as follows, and got an interesting response:

From: Frank Schnittger
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 6:56 PM
To: infoEGI
Subject: Mary Robinson

I have written a blog proposing Mary Robinson for the new post of President of the European Council at http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2009/10/20/11029/450.  There is also a Facebook group supporting her for the post which has reached 6000 members in just a few days.  We have also organised a Stop Blair petition opposing his appointment which has reached 38,000 signatories in recent days.

It would be really helpful to the campaign if we knew whether she was interested in the post or not.  Obviously there is no point in proposing her if she would simply turn it down if the opportunity was offered.  On the other hand, even a relatively non-committal statement saying that she would be interested in discussing the post with the relevant heads of Government, would offer real encouragement to what is rapidly becoming a popular pan-European campaign to draft her for the job.

As I don't have an e-mail address for her, I was hoping you might forward this e-mail to her with the request that she respond whenever she can find the time!

PS My late wife, Muriel Boothman, and I met her when she was President of Ireland and opened Muriel's Community Education Centre in Blessington.

Kinds regards,

Frank Schnittger

To which I got the following reply:

Front-paged by afew

Also available in Orange, on Boo and at Th!nk About it

Tony Blair is being widely touted in the British media as the obvious and only choice for the Presidency of the European Council - a new full time post created under the Lisbon Treaty.  But there is another potential candidate, Mary Robinson, currently co-Chair of the Road to Copenhagen, who has far better credentials as an environmentalist, human rights activist, and embodiment of the European ideal.  Watch her in the video above making the link between human rights and climate change.  Look at her credentials and those of Tony Blair, and make your own choice.

Promoted by afew

See also Does Mary Robinson want to be President of the EU Council? and "Appointing Blair would be a hostile act" - Hague.

EU job for Blair would be hostile act, says Hague - The Irish Times - Thu, Oct 22, 2009

WILLIAM HAGUE has intensified a Tory campaign against Tony Blair by warning the EU that his appointment as president of the European Council would be seen in Britain as a hostile act.

The shadow foreign secretary, who has said in private that Mr Blair will only be appointed "over my dead body", told the 26 EU ambassadors in London that they should think carefully before choosing the former prime minister.

I really wish he would get off the fence and just sign the StopBlair Petition