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All very worrying Dr. G. It seems that the gov't's response is more insulation, windmills and a dose of Chairman Mao's innovation in every village and hamlet. Our budget deficit for 2009 may well be greater than the UK's. Is anyone going to want to buy Irish gov't debt? Cowen is talking to the social(ist) partners so what can possibly go wrong? Next will come the leftist public policy wonks calling for more emigration as a solution to the fact that the fascist experiment in dividing the spoils amongst the client-socialist partners has gone off the rails. It is truly fascinating to watch the rapid changes of skin colour in the reptilian faces of the government as they deny, evade and eventually issue reports....and 'statements'. I mean we've been talking about how their measures to date - VAT increases, income levies etc. - are 'wrong'. But the real problem isn't that they are wrong. Afterall the situation is so dire that a 5% increase in income tax makes no difference now. The government knows this and just as loft insulation and 'innovation' won't save us neither will increases in income tax - if only for the reason that things already can't really be any worse for 2009. Hence expect increases in income tax in the interests of 'equity' and 'sharing the burden'. In its response so far the government is like a maurading army returning to the site of the mass grave of some its earlier victims whose bodies they are, for some reason, digging up shooting again. What's striking about it is not so much the lack of respect for the dead as the irrelevance to any conceivable rational end.
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