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wWy do you assume that Ireland will always be in recession, never grow again and never be able to balance it's budget? And never gain to able to get lower interest rates?
Do you really think a hedge fund - or any private lender woulds give a credit to the irish banks at 1.75%?
The current negotiated rate for the bailout loan is 5.8%, which looks pretty damn punitive to me - and certainly if you want a country to get out of a depression, loan sharking isn't the most effective way to do it.
Unless you're arguing the case for the loan sharks, of course.
I suppose someone has to.
Burn the ECB! 1.75% is usury!
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
Belgium had a debt of 115.5% to gdp in 1996 and 73,3% in 2007. So there is real example not that far away.
So why should be impossible to balance the budget in five years or so?
"Austerity Now" is the Brussels Consensus, though it might well be a remake of a famous Coppola movie from the 70s, starring Marlon Brando. Keynesianism is intellectually hard, as evidenced by the inability of many trained economists to get it - Paul Krugman
If the ECB and IMF were not demanding Austerity Now!, then we wouldn't be having this discussion, because Ireland would be perfectly able to repay the debt in due time. But Austerity Now! is what is being demanded, and what will cause Ireland to default. Well, better to default now, and let the people who are demanding Austerity Now! eat the losses, than first crash the Irish economy and then default, leaving the Irish public in a smoking crater and the people who are demanding Austerity Now! still eating very nearly the same losses.
Defaulting is a zero-sum game. Not defaulting is a negative-sum game.
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