Saturday, January 15, 2011

15/01/2011: Austerity and structural deficits

In recent days, there have been some questioning responses to a series of posts I did earlier this month on Irish Exchequer results for 2010. In particular, some queried my concerns with the long-term deficits and the dynamics of Irish Exchequer deficit.

Well, here's an EU official confirmation of my analysis: "As displayed in Graph 12, the distance of the deficit – corrected for the business cycle and one-off measures, i.e. structural deficit – from the medium-term budgetary objective (MTO) is particularly large (more than five percentage points of GDP) in twelve Member States." (from Brussels, 12.1.2011 COM(2011): GROWTH SURVEY, ANNEX 2, MACRO-ECONOMIC REPORT)

As the chart below clearly shows - Ireland's structural - recession effects-adjusted - deficits are in the league of their own:
Austerity, folks, or not - we are still living beyond our means when it comes to public expenditure. And when it comes to our austerity metrics (the blue bar), it is clear that much more remains to be done and that the worst Budget is yet to come.

5 comments:

Georg r. Baumann said...

Austerity (without ditching fraudulent debts) = destruction of jobs = cheap future labour

The true reasons for the policy failures on national as well as EU level can only be described as lack of knowledge last minute resorts or, a deliberate torpedoing from within.

Fungus the Photo! said...

Georg
I wholeheartedly agree!

I have said so for some time now. But since I went against my honourable colleagues in exposing the ties between the Revenue and tax evasion in the banks, I am clearly not to be trusted.

Constantin, they continue to need to be told the truth even though it is not what they wish to hear. Taxes will need to be doubled as the economy continues to crumble. Not a bad thing given that they have no desire to remove all the mal-investments made over the last 15 years. But disorganized and just possibly de-stabilizing?

Anonymous said...

all is well - it seems we can now print our own (all 51 billion) Euro's, which begs the question what is the ECB/EMU function? - merely a political tool to enforce a low cost federal eurostate?

Fungus the Photo! said...

Anon
Sadly you are wrong and should not believe all you hear and then extrapolate. More magical thinking!

We are not in any way sovereign. We print only what we are allowed to print. Credit is the problem as I suspect you will agree. More of it will only shift the losses to the unwary and honourable.

Ireland is destined to default.

End of and get used to it. Plan for an austere future and believe what is on TV and msm at your peril!

Fungus the Photo! said...

Anon
Sadly you are wrong and should not believe all you hear and then extrapolate. More magical thinking!

We are not in any way sovereign. We print only what we are allowed to print. Credit is the problem as I suspect you will agree. More of it will only shift the losses to the unwary and honourable.

Ireland is destined to default.

End of and get used to it. Plan for an austere future and believe what is on TV and msm at your peril!