Saturday, July 25, 2009

Pat, "the cope" Gallagher: dishonest or just an idiot?

In his letter to the Indo calling for a "yes" to Lisbon, Pat defends our membership of the Euro. I think there are upsides and downsides to it but for Pat even the downsides are upsides. He happily points out that

The eurozone has ensured that billions of euro have been made available to Irish banks via the operation of the European Central Bank.
and that
As a member of the eurozone, Ireland has benefited from very low interest rates, notwithstanding the very difficult economic situation that faces us.

Surely he must know that these 2 things are the root cause of our massive bubble. The IMF and even Brian Lenihan have said as much. So if he knows this, then to list them as upsides of eurozone membership is basically swearing that black is white and up is down. There is of course that odd "notwithstanding the very difficult economic situation that faces us" which seems to be an attempt to cover all angles - as if to say "yes I know this is what fucked up the country but still it was great craic at the time."

Of course maybe he truly disagrees with me and thinks that the oversupply of cheap credit was an entirely positive thing and we should be thankful for it. This would certainly be compatible with FF's policy over the last decade, right up the point where the shit hit the fan.

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