Cowen's 5 years to correct state's finances politically unfeasible

[jpc]

So basically another nod to the trade unions that FF will sacrifise the country rather than endanger themselves politically. Idiots.

They would soil themselves publically rather than make the decisions that are going to be needed.
We don't have five months.
The buffoon was blithely mentioning that we need to borrow up yo 20 billion the other day.

[cyberianpan]

Politicians like grand, grand plans ... the grander the plans the greater the reflected grandness of the politician. The longer the term of the plan the more meaningless it is.

I've been involved several times in formulation of long term, complex (e.g. multi billion) plans - you can never put any useful detail beyond year 3 - things are just too uncertain - and indeed more than 50% of the change needs to occur in year 1.

[COLOR=Red]Cowen's grand , grand plan is in fact a forecast[/COLOR] - I've read all material to date and we've yet to see a plan.

cYp

[FutureTaoiseach]

No. Even now, FF are fudging the issue and caving-in to protest groups.

[patslatt]

Cowen is grasping at straws, he doesn't know what he's at. Take the 'Smart Economy' BS. It's like the captain of a sinking ship saying he will save the passengers by building an aeroplane.

FF have been in government 11 years and only now they are talking about diversifying into IT, etc. Anyone would think Cowen wasn't at the cabinet table the last 11 years.

Cowen as minister for finance and Taoiseach has presided over the sinking of the Irish economy and has proved unable to save it. He has offered no leadership whatsoever. He has for example provided no incentive through short term taxation reform to encourage the creation and retention of jobs.

He has no economic philosophy from what I can see. At least Charlie McCreevy had an economic philosophy which encouraged job creation. Instead he sits on the sidelines and watches as everything crashes and burns and feels its not his position to intervene.

His raising of the VAT rate was a typical ill concieved knee jerk decision which has spectacularly backfired with people going up the north. The result is we have lost 2.5 billion in VAT, not increased the take.

I hate to say it but the guy is just to slow to react and not dynamic enough.

THe budget had the unimaginative civil service stamp all over it. It was bad enough to increase VAT tax which was already 4 percentage points higher than VAT in our next door neighbour NI and the UK,worse still was the timing of the VAT increase in a very rapid downwards recessionary spiral. Finance Minister Lenihan needs to get advice from a wide variety of sources outside the civil service clique.

Hopefully,Cowen and Lenihan will learn from their mistakes and there may still be time to provide strong leadership,assuming the public needs more time to understand the gravity of the state's dire financial situation.

[Seos]

There is no 'don't know' option on this poll, indeed, the last one I looked at
(about Hilary Clinton) did not have that option either. Is this a recession thing,
or a polarisation thing?

It's very cut and dried with no middle ground.

It's probably done on the logic that if you don't know you don't vote. This logic is faulty however, as people have an innate urge to push buttons if you put them in front of them.

As illustrated by YOU: http://www.85qm.de/up/BigRedButton.swf

[Odyessus]

Since joining the EMU,Ireland yielded control of monetary policy to Brussels,giving up the historic option of inflating its way out of budgetary deficits and excessive debt burdens. So the state is now just like a big business that has to balance its books. Leaving the Euro could be technically very difficult and considered only as the last desperate resort if the ECB imposed too harsh and humiliating austerity as the price for a bailout.

THe EMU brought a huge advantage of very cheap capital at very low interest rates but unfortunately the government let the economy rip on low interest rates when instead it should have been raising taxes to restrain unsustainable economic growth. Finance Minister McCreevey raised the stamp duty to about 8% on new commercial property but he should also have raised it to 20% or more on houses and eliminated all the tax incentives on houses except for depressed areas.

Even if it were politically feasible, what good would that have done? The whole country, including the opposition, were complaining that houses were too expensive. How would a 20% stamp duty have helped, even if the government could have ignored the screams of protest?

Employers were constantly complaining that their costs were too high; how would increasing taxes (while the opposition was demanding cuts) have helped the situation?

How would your policies if pursued, have left us in a better position today?