November 22, 2011
Aldo Ferrer: Speculative Attacks & Sovereign Debt, a voice of experience
I translated part of an Interview with the Octogenarian Dr. Aldo Ferrer (mini bio. below), November 2011 at the University of Buenos Aires an interviewer for the Argentine Times ("El Tiempo") asked Ambassador Ferrer whether he ever might have expected to see Europe in the state that it is in today? His reply demonstrates Ferrer's experience in the defense of his nation against the international speculative bond markets...
Ferrer's response was very revealing:
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Posted by Tony Phillips at 01:14 PM | Comments (2)
March 18, 2011
Saint Patrick in Saigon
Corporate city Vietnam, 2011: This "Patrick's" day of ritualized alcohol consumption has long since become dissociated from the mythical man who gave this day his name. Patrick was a Roman Britain who wandered dangerously close to the edge of empire being snatched from a British beach by the corporate raiders of the 5th. century, an independent consulting firm known by the charming brand: "Niall of the nine hostages."
Niall was no fisherman! His team captured slaves from the coastline of Roman Britain selling them on as forced labour to a rural Irish economy. The legend says that Patrick was sold on as a pig farming slave to an animist Celtic Chieftain on the island the Romans called "Hibernia", on or about the year of our lord 450AD.
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Posted by Tony Phillips at 01:52 AM | Comments (1)
December 09, 2010
“Scream early and scream loud”: An Argentine perspective on the Irish bailout
December 9, 2010 by Tony Phillips
Tony Phillips is an Irish researcher in the University of Buenos Aires, Faculty of Economics. He specialises in alternative development, sovereign debt issues and ecological economics.
Ireland in December 2010 shows many parallels with Argentina in December 2001. This phase of the negotiations cost Argentina dear; riots, deaths, banking collapse and frozen accounts (the notorious “Corralito”). The peso was all but destroyed (a 75% depreciation) prompting the largest sovereign default in the history of modern finance.
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Posted by Tony Phillips at 07:51 PM | Comments (1)
November 29, 2010
Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die
UPDATED: Buenos Aires, Argentina: Dec 6, 2010: Does the new 5.8% rescue fund interest rate demonstrate European solidarity with Ireland? Is the European Union abandoning the Irish people? What about the IMF, will they save Ireland? Why are voices in the media mentioning a deal when a budget has yet to be approved?
What follows is a realistic Argentine perspective on this critical phase of debt negotiation. The hindsight offered by historical comparisons with Argentina in 2002 is not 20/20 but Argentina’s experiences may provide some general guid-ance. If only one thing can be made clear it is that the IMF and the ECB are in Dublin for systemic global financial stability (of creditors). They are not there to protect the Irish taxpayer.
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Posted by Tony Phillips at 03:36 PM | Comments (1)
November 26, 2010
Bailout, Intervention and Political Collapse
150 protestors shouting "Cowen, Cowen, Cowen, Out, Out, Out" pushed open the gates of Government Buildings in Dublin on Nov. 22nd after a €100Bn.[1] bailout and IMF intervention the day before.
Avoiding answering allegations of his own involvement, Brian Cowen, Prime Minister (Taoiseach) declared he would dissolve parliament (calling elections) but only after "passing the budget" (a statesman to the last). One has to suppose that the Taoiseach still believes that he shall be able to pass the proposed budget. Financial times commentator, John Authers, in an interview with Vincent Browne has his doubts.
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Posted by Tony Phillips at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2010
Speaking Truthiness to the Irish Times
The Irish Times "Opinion" section has spoken. It welcomes the IMF to Ireland. Maybe the Irish Times should ask Latin America why they decided to pay back all of their debt to the IMF so as to kick their consultants out of their national Ministries of Economics, and then again, maybe not. The IMF is a fait acompli for now, I beg a moment of your time to point out a true flaw in the Times analysis.
To do that it is necessary to focus on the problem (foreign bond exposure) behind the problem (the banking crisis) behind the problem (speculative investments)?
Donal Donovan writes that a "Firm hand of the IMF will keep [Ireland] steering in right direction" His analysis is that:
"While psychologically [the Irish taxpayers] may feel put upon, the arrival of the International Monetary Fund is really not all that bad"
Is that so Mr. Donovan?
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Posted by Tony Phillips at 01:16 PM | Comments (2)
October 29, 2010
RIP Nestor Kirchner
Buenos Aires Thursday Oct 28, 2010 Thirty five thousand Argentines, mainly supporters of Nestor Kirchner's "Peronist" party, waited patiently in front of the Presidential Palace, The Pink House or "Casa Rosada". They were there to pay their respects. In the closed coffin is the body of a sixty year old man who died the day before, census day, in his home town in Patagonia. Former President Nestor Kirchner, husband of the current Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was dead. Nestor died early on Wednesday morning of a massive heart attack after he refused to scale back his political activities against the advise of his doctors. He had recently had two cardiac surgeries.
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Posted by Tony Phillips at 04:25 AM | Comments (2)
May 22, 2010
Happy 200th Argentina
This week is Bicentenary week in Buenos Aires. As I sit here sucking my Guarani tea (mate) from a straw/bombilla, I reflect on the bombastic inventiveness of history. I now have the good fortune to be present at my second such party.
Back in the eighties I spent my first Bicentenary in Sydney, Australia. Contrary to many myths, neither America nor Australia were “empty” before their “discovery” by “us.” In Australia the Indians / Autochthonous / Native Peoples / Aboriginals or simply the non-white folk that the white folk had to remove, were impolitely but descriptively referred to as the “Black Fella’s”. Here the tribes are collectively referred to as “originals”, "indigenous" but it is more common to hear the non indigenous refer to these americans as “Negros” in Buenos Aires “Porteno” slang.
I ask myself: “Who am I to decide their name”. ”We” brought our languages and our religions from Europe, re-labeling and revaluing all things! Here river water had more value than a Gold mine, it still has. Spanish and Portuguese replaced the language of the Incans and the Aztecs and the labels and the religions changed to support the export trade.
Buenos Aires, Sydney and Dublin all had the dubious pleasure of being the seat of empire for an occupying imperial force. For a couple of hundreds of years their function was to impose control over the land, the resources and the workforce to extract, extract, extract sending the “valuable” stuff to London and Madrid. Not much has changed. A trip to the European clubs in Buenos Aires might leave one with the question as to why exactly they bothered having a revolution at all?
In Sydney the exports were gold, wool and coal. Dublin too exported sheep but possibly more important was a steady supply of poor Irish men, adventurers and thugs to feed the armies, navies and later the air-forces of the British Empire. We like the Scots and the Gurkas fed the regiments to fight the wars with the other empirical powers and to subjugate the rebellious indigenous who didn't want to be British slaves. I lost some of my family, loyal soldiers of Empire, in World War I, not to mention an uncle in the British air force in the 1950’s.
Buenos Aires, the “Porteno” capital: a port facing north and east to Europe accomplishing its role, sending a steady stream of exports in exchange for debt forgiveness. The Spanish conned the immigrants like the Danes with the "Green"land. They called the river twelve blocks from my house “Plate or Plata" implying that it lead to some wondrous mountains of silver which it did not. In fact there was little silver to sent “home” but the Pampa was, and still is, a grand resource, on of the world's largest fertile plains which was exploited for meat! Before coal-fired ships, the meat was dried and sent North to feed the Portuguese African Brazilian slaves. Their work too was in export but they specialized in the smaller more portable stuff like the gold from the mines of Minas Gerais or sugar and coffee. Beef was later sent to Europe, refrigerated or canned to feed (and win) European wars. "Bully" was the name given to the canned stuff fed to army troops. It came from Fray Bentos, a small Uruguayan town just across the river plate not far from here which is still famous for its slaughterhouses.
So the calendar declares that is time to celebrate the separation of Argentina from Spain. Well sort of! Back on the 25th of May (1810) some declarations were made in the Buenos Aires Plaza de Mayo which proclaimed allegiance to a new King: Ferdinand II, of Spain. Napoleon had taken out the Bourbon kings and sent the Portuguese crown (accompanied by a British naval escort) across the Atlantic to Rio de Janeiro. The Spanish-speaking parts of Mexico, Central and South America are now celebrating a plethora of Bicentenaries. Napoleon’s invasion gave the managers of empire a free hand to expel the Inquisition and reduce taxes while the land of their mother tongue was at war. Later the same families invented nations to consolidate or legitimate their power and built their own armies to exterminate and consolidate the all-important ownership of land.
We Irish had similar tactics. We too took advantage of an even more disastrous Imperial war in 1916. It stuck in the throats of our founding fathers to pledge allegiance to the British King. So even after partial victory (and even more defeats) our patriots were shot to a man --all but one, that is, the one with the US passport. The invention of the Irish nation like that of Hungary is also somewhat false an incomplete. In Argentina in 1810 the patriots/”proceres” --a kind of founding father Latin style-- signed allegiance to a Spanish King. Not much of a revolution, 1810 was, at best, a partial declaration of post-colonialism; an attempt to stabilize what was at best an incomplete national idea, the profitable business of maintaining control of the vast pampa lands by the Rio Plata in the hands of a few “old” families. Goodly King Ferdinand was a self-proclaimed liberal so the Argentine-Spanish families championed him, he had declared himself a non-absolutist and a liberal which made him more palatable. Ferdinand later changed his mind reestablishing absolute control which prompted the real wars of “independence” in South America and the eventual defeat of the Spanish in Ayacucho (now Peruvian territory) a town named after an Incan rebel to the Spanish crown. We can celebrate that one in a few years time. The Spanish armies were finally defeated by the Masonic warlords: San Martin and Bolivar, the latter with the help of an Irishman to lead his forces.
Latin America is free "and she shall be British" as one wag British ambassador was to put it. In the case of Argentina he was "not half wrong". So let’s leave the last words to the original people whose bad luck it was to be wiped out by the muskets and the plagues brought by the smelly invaders from Europe: a motley crew of professional killers, diplomats, priests and vagabonds.
In Sydney, back in the 80's, the Aboriginals reminded the English that they had been in the same territory for two hundred bicentenaries --2002 or 40,000 years of continuous culture. The aboriginal tribes of South America haven't been quite so long on this continent but it is fair to say that they have been here much longer than the Iberians, the British and much much longer than this Irishman who sits here sipping his mate. And here they shall remain when we are all gone.
As the Indian and mestizo movements march on Buenos Aires from la Quiaca in the North close to Bolivia I bid my Argentine Spanish "Feliz cumpleanos, America" or should I say? Happy Birthday "Abya Yala."
Posted by Tony Phillips at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)
April 30, 2010
From the Good Guys for the Bad Guys
An unprecedented theft from the Irish people by a small elite of less than 100 patriots with their global network of property and other speculative investments culminated in the 2009 legalization, absolution or amnesty by a complicit Fianna Fáil government. This masked illegal financial speculation behind four little capital letters: N.A.M.A. Unfortunately the "euro-crisis" means the ugly face behind this little mask is morphing; it is taking on other monstrous guises.
Using the imminent collapse of the banking sector as an excuse, NAMA was an enormous rescue, a transfer of private debt rich-to-poor equivalent, in worst case scenarios, to maybe ten years of Irish government tax revenues —not current revenues but the revenues of the surplus tears of 2007. Now it seems the banks will collapse anyway and the rescue will now most likely bankrupt the current as well as future generations. The generosity is mind-boggling.
NAMA was a clumsy reaction; an ultra-orthodox rescue attempt trying to reverse a decade of speculative excess —too much, too late. NAMA is a debt gamble gone sour. It is also an extremely regressive tax transferring an exaggerated quantity of Irish money (that never really existed) from the future tax-payer to an already rich elite with a fondness for stashing funds in offshore accounts. This state welfare has saved the same souls who have run the chilly banana republic since they muddled their treacherous way through the civil war less than a century ago. Now the thugs wear suits and discuss their property deals in the Shelbourne bar with a nod and a wink. No more for them the virgins on the crossroads dancing to diddly-idle music. Gobbling back a few twenty euro cocktails in a business chat with your friend in the Dáil works wonders. Then pour oneself into the beamer to sleep soundly in the sound knowledge that your personal financial nightmares will be sorted out by those same councillors (now member of the Dáil) who you paid off in brown paper bags for Malahide land concession back in the good ole' days of Haughey.
The unwinding of Ireland's debt gamble has just begun. NAMA shifted the bankrupt private financial suicide of property investments to the public coffers. The problem is that these coffers that are not only empty, they are in the red and now interest rates will rise, the lenders taking advantage of borrower risk. Now the citizenry of a small Euro-nation that for just over a decade thought that they could do no wrong need to "tighten their belts." The unwinding of this generous giveaway to a scurrilous Irish private sector will mean more than tightening belts, it might merit an Athens style revolution.
The global speculative attack on Euro government debt has already made this situation exponentially worse and might well have brought forward the date of a possible Irish default. Not to worry though, you won't see any rise in corporate taxation levels. The government will save at any and all costs those precious jobs in the "manufacturing/assembly/value-added tax dodge" sector (or what is left of it). Taxes on the rich and the transnational corporate sector will be protected even if my mother's pension needs to be shaved to do so.
Ireland; You are very welcome to the beyond PIGS club! Please stand in line. To your right you will find Argentina and Turkey, on your left Greece, Iceland, Spain and Portugal. Smile for the cameras everybody!
The NAMA plan may have made the Irish government one of the largest owner of golf courses on the planet but at the cost of taking on a public debt that is becoming more unsustainable ever day. While the rich take budget flights to relax in their hidden apartments on the Riviera. Not to worry lads the government didn't take everything I still have the properties I hid behind the trust investments with my offshore partners.Thank God I still have enough cash on hand to pay the crew of my yacht.
The discourse in International media continues to be whether the euro will stand but this is a non-discussion; the Euro is here to stay. The Germans need it to devalue to regain first place in the export league above China. Does one really wish to return to the 'punt' or maybe it might be more fun to go back to the pound sterling collapsing nicely alongside? Euro-dangers is a discourse is used to hide the rude facts that Ireland is one of the leading nations on the planet in the index of thievery from its own people.
Oh wait they haven't invented that index yet!
Take a look at some of the numbers and decide for yourself. The poor UK is close to financial collapse but at least one other country can feel the pain worse than Britain. Yes you guessed it good ole' Ireland is playing the role as incompetent west brit!
Notes on the worst case scenario:
1. Check this out, Ouch! FT Britain second only to Ireland in size of cuts required (11.2% of GDP)
2. 
Posted by Tony Phillips at 01:29 AM | Comments (0)
