The war is fought between the rich and their competitors. The poor will actually benefit, over time, as the income inequality rectifies slightly, now that the scum at the top can't steal from them so easily. Rentier is so much more dignified than thief? The losers will be wiped out as they still owe $$ and their assets will eventually meet the real as opposed to financial market! So, no sympathy for the used to be rich! They lost and those who understand money and have bags of it, will have won. As in every DEPRESSION! Look up Kondratieff. That name hnas been banned on many po-faced economy sites. Spit on an economist every day!

Whistleblower IRL Fair play.

In David McWilliams book " Follow The Money " he tells of how he met with Lenihan & explained to him the realities of Ireland's banking fiasco, because basically the man hadn't got a clue, after all his expertise was in the law. I think I am right in thinking that his successor used to be a school teacher. Lenihan chose to ignore McWilliams advise anyway & I honestly think that like the panellists on " 10 o'clock live " most politicians don't have much of a clue, & the vast majority of people still think because of the exalted positions of these so called public servants,that they know what they are doing.

As for Libya, there seems to be a new threat to liberty, your country can now be invaded by a bank.

The first public person who had the guts to stand up for me was Senator David Norris. To paraphrase on Norris' words, he said "Even I, who knows very little about finance, can see that there is something very seriously wrong here". When I first met Senator Norris, he told me that it had been his impression all along that the Irish banking crisis was not a natural disaster, but a man-made one.

It is rather interesting that the very senior Fine Gael deputy with whom I had met last year, and who has now been appointed a minister, has remained so silent about the whole affair.

Senator Norris has officially launched his campaign for Ireland's presidency; I sincerely hope he becomes our president.

I agree entirely. Admittedly it's a high pressure format, Mitchell chucking in barbs every third word and lots of "yoof" guffawing to hide their lack of opinions.

I still find I have cognitive dissonance when I see an Economist (Noreena Hertz) so apparently clueless when on her own turf.

The third guest was Noreena Hertz. She wrote a book in 2002 predicting the problems that would arise from large financial institutions operating in unregulated markets.

I thought she made some good points on the programme, in particular pointing out that deficits are not problems in themselves, and that we should be investing now in infrastructure rather than cutting jobs and deflating demand.

Finkelstein couldn't cope at all with the simple facts she was explaining about how western economies operate deficits, the difference between us and Greece, and so on. That's why he was left stuttering banal assertions, with nothing to back them up other than his simple and simplistic opinion.

Honestly! How dare you make these comments about our 'Dear Leaders'? Just because Mr. Noonan, our new Finance Minister made a speech yesterday in defence of 'Stress Test 5' that sounded like it was written by our previous corrupt government, you should not be so unkind. Mr. Noonan suffers from the occasional convenient amnesia you see, and I have proof of it.

I think the Americans are a bit behind. We, the Irish, don't bother amending the law as the Americans are busy doing for their debt ceilings, we just issue new ones and pretend the old ones don't exist. If you visit my blog, you will find the links to the Irish Financial Regulator's liquidity regulations over which I resigned in 2007. During the summer of that year, in my capacity as UniCredit Ireland's Risk Manager, I made sure that the Regulator's office was officially notified of a breach of 1900% (YES, one thousand and nine hundred percent). What did the Regulator's office do? NOTHING.

A year later, in Sept. 2008, the whole Irish banking system ran completely dry of liquidity and neared total collapse. All of us, taxpayers through-out the EU and beyond (via the 'kind' ECB & IMF) are still paying for it. However, neither a single banking executive, nor a single civil servant, has faced the criminal proceedings as stipulated by the regulations. WHY? because the regulations were re-issued in 2009, as if they never existed before. No one bothered with amendments/additions/annexes etc', they simply issued new ones which made reference to Banking Acts as far back as 1942(!), but never mention 2007. Check out the links and see with your own eyes.

It is a simple exercise – lookup section '9.4- Implementation' in the 2006 document, then try and see if you can find section 9.4, or any reference to the year 2007 in the new regulation issued in 2009. I know it beggars belief, but at this stage, a sufficiently convincing number of copies have been printed in legal practices in Dublin and elsewhere to hold proof of that.

Here are some of the articles that have appeared about my story:

The finance manager who tried to play by the rules – The Irish Times

Still waiting for the truth from the regulator – Village Magazine

New probe into liquidity breaches – Sunday Business Post

Regards,
WhistleblowerIRL
UniCredit Ireland's EX Risk-Manager

I don't honestly know – but during this debate I noticed that danny finkelstein (Times journalist – who's often one of the experts wheeled in for Newsnight on bbc2) – seemed very flustered and confused, like a rabbit in the headlamps. The other 2 guests put him on the spot, and he panicked. Ironically I thought the other 2 were talking rubbish as well!

This was live TV – so it seemed more genuine than usual.

When we have professional (serious) journalists, who work for leading newspapers, confused about the deficit, the causes, the logic of the cuts, then it makes me realise that even they don't know what's right or wrong. They're recycling propaganda but they dont really understand the subject.

I dont think in general it's willful ignorance – they're confused, ill-informed.

Do you think it is willful ignorance or is it that the propaganda is just so ubiquitous that people don't realize they have been lied to?