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"The pain being inflicted on Ireland by the ECB/IMF is completely unnecessary. If the ECB committed itself to make loans available to Ireland at low interest rates, a mechanism entirely within its power, then Ireland would have no serious budget problem.
AND: "The decision to make Ireland's workers, along with workers in Spain, Portugal, Latvia and elsewhere, pay for the recklessness of their country's bankers is entirely a political one. There is no economic imperative that says that workers must pay; this is a political decision being imposed by the ECB and IMF."
AND: "Back in the 2001, the IMF was pushing Argentina to pursue ever more stringent austerity measures... By the end of the 2001, it was politically impossible for the Argentine government to agree to more austerity." It DEFAULTED on its debt." The immediate effect was to make the economy worse, but by the second half of 2002, the economy was again growing. This was the start of five and a half years of solid growth."
ANOTHER GUARDIAN OPINION, LARRY ELLIOT: on an "unworkable euro":
" The underlying problem today is the inherent unworkability of the euro. The single currency only works if all its members chug along at much the same rate – with growth, productivity and inflation rates all in synch. If that does not happen, the countries with lower costs and higher productivity run big trade surpluses and countries that have higher costs and lower productivity run big deficits. Over time this leads to big problems in competitiveness that cannot be tackled in the traditional way, through a depreciation of the currency."
SEE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/22/ireland-bailout-european-debt-crisis
