Oldtent Archives 2010

CAL

Nova Gold

Canadian Zinc

Gold Canyon

Can it back up there? Looking good.

A double from here and I will be back to even after 8 long years…Yahoo..I can’t believe some of these are springing back to life.

Just 1 more dollar (+33%) and I will be back to even after 3 long years!!! Yahoo Mr. Iron hand on the tiller Dines!

The Donkey
Young Paddy bought a donkey from a farmer for £100.
The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day…
The next day he drove up and said, ‘Sorry son, but I have some bad news. The Donkey has died.’
Paddy replied, ‘Well then just give me my money back.’
The farmer said, ‘Can’t do that. I’ve already spent it.’
Paddy said, ‘OK, then, just bring me the dead donkey.’
The farmer asked, ‘What are you going to do with him?’
Paddy said, ‘I’m going to raffle him off.’
The farmer said, ‘You can’t raffle a dead donkey!’
Paddy said, ‘Sure I can. Watch me. I just won’t tell anybody he’s dead.’
A month later, the farmer met up with Paddy and asked, ‘What happened with that dead donkey?’
Paddy said, ‘I raffled him off.
I sold 500 tickets at two pounds a piece and made a profit of £898′
The farmer said, ‘Didn’t anyone complain?’
Paddy said, ‘Just the guy who won.
So I gave him his two pounds back.’
Paddy now works for Anglo Irish Bank.

black and white, right and wrong. You need to take some sensitivity training

from the libertarian party platform:

“We oppose the government’s use of secret classifications to
keep from the public information that it should have, especially that which shows that the
government has violated the law.”

if the government doesn’t want the public to know it has committed an embarrassing outrage, it seems to me that the easiest course would be to not commit that particular outrage.

any and all information held by the government was collected at the expense of the taxpayers (the people). to my way of thinking, that means that it belongs to the taxpayers (the people).

should be afforded protection of Whistleblower Laws, if what he exposes is the truth ,if not there are libel laws .  If we had his sources available to us when our Politicians were SELLING US OUT and we lost millions of Jobs,we wouldent be in the situation we are in today.  He is a courages man and risks his life.

Gerry Adams should be the one to negotiate Irish DEBTS without any pre-conditions for any Bank solution.The Irish people didn’t get themselves into debt …the BANKS did it ,and they did it Fraudulently .He is the only one the Banks would Fear .! The Banks have NO standing to represent the Irish People .They have a conflict of interest.!

Fractal Gold Report for December 1, 2010

By David Nichols

Throughout this long bull market in gold, it seems like you can always count on a nice surge of energy to hit the gold market on Tuesday, particularly if it’s been relatively quiet heading into that day of the week.

On this particular Tuesday gold has made a pivotal breakout above the previous high. This is crucial because it greatly reduces the chance — which I think was a very slim chance anyway — that gold will have to undergo some further corrective movement right here.

I want to go back and discuss one more time how these big speculative growth patterns behave during these final few months. I think I’ve emphasized enough how this is the time when patterns can go berserk. But to refresh my own memory I went back and looked extensively at the daily charts of these patterns, particularly the last 3 — which are crude oil, the housing bubble, and the Nasdaq 100 in the late 90s tech boom.

One thing that surprised me a bit on a fresh look is just how volatile these patterns can be on the daily time-frame. When you look at a weekly or monthly chart, it looks like smooth sailing higher; but the daily chart shows there are frequent — and often violent — 38.2% retracements all the way up. In fact, this last correction in gold has to be considered quite mild compared to previous patterns, but that is in keeping with the general mellowness of this gold pattern compared to other speculative patterns.

But the big thing to know is the gains during these final months can be astonishing in size and speed. Back during early 2000, during its final months, the NDX blasted up 21.3% in only 7 trading days following a brief-but-nasty correction.

If gold has an equivalent move, it will move up nearly $300 in less than 2 weeks of trading. That means prices have the potential to jump over $1,600 per oz. in one huge “exhalation” of upside energy.

Crude oil and housing also had these sudden upside moves, which were actually even bigger than this example in the NDX.

So I think Wednesday will be a crucial day in understanding whether gold is now embarking on such an epic run. If Wednesday is another strong up day — similar to Tuesday, or better, even stronger — then such a massive run is likely already in unstoppable motion.

If the energy mix is right for this sort of blast higher, then some upside catalyst will emerge either overnight, or on Wednesday morning, to crystallize this energy into a barrage of buy orders. So if this starts to develop, don’t hesitate to keep on adding to long positions

Collapsing Europe

They must be keeping their fingers firmly crossed in Brussels, even praying that the Irish rescue package will do more, much more than buy a little breathing space. Relying on divine intervention will not be good enough, because there are three separate problems that will now make the financial collapse of the euro area a racing certainty. These problems are the large amounts of cross-border lending, misguided economic responses, and creditor-debtor politics.

The scale of the Irish financial threat is considerably greater than commonly realised and presented, because the relative size of the Irish economy is being confused with the size of its external banking obligations which are significantly larger than those of Spain or Italy.  Cross-border loans to Ireland by BIS-reporting banks amount to the equivalent of $715bn, and the comparable figures for Spain are $534bn and for Italy $467bn.^[i] Of course these are not the only cross-border financial flows, because they do not include outward banking deposits and securitised debt issued by the Irish government and large companies. But they are the figures that matter.

So we must focus on the banks, because they are at the heart of the real crisis.  The cross-border loans by BIS-reporting banks for all the PIIGS amounts to $1,982bn at mid-year, which is 32% of the euro area total and disproportionate relative to the size of the economies involved.  So if the largest of these debtors, which is Ireland, is allowed to fail there would probably be a full-blown banking crisis even before markets turn their attention to either Spain or Italy.

These same statistics show that between September 2008 and June this year the PIIGS between them have also suffered loan withdrawals of $611bn, which indicates how hard their economies are being squeezed by the withdrawal of credit. For Ireland alone the figure is $165bn, about the same as one year’s GDP, and more withdrawals will have taken place since June, putting the proposed rescue package of only $113bn into context. This acute deflation is being conducted at the same time as taxes are being increased, which brings us to the serious mistakes being made in the management of the economy.

The Irish government has got one thing right: the importance of keeping corporation tax low. Brussels views things differently, partly because Germany and France see Ireland as unfair competition with respect to corporate location. So between Brussels and Dublin an ugly camel is born, and their attempts to close the budget deficit by a mixture of tax rises and public sector wage cuts while robbing state pension funds betrays a lack of resolve to tackle banking solvency properly. It is madness to punish the Irish people for the current banking crisis, because Brussels is shooting at the wrong target: rescuing the European banking system does not require the Irish economy to be driven into the ground, it requires Brussels to recognise it has a full-scale banking problem on its hands.

Both lender and borrower must bear responsibility for such wrong-headedness.  It amounts to a protection of jobs in the public sector, while taxes are raised from the private sector and pensions are robbed.  Taxing individuals and the private sector to reduce budget deficits prevents vital capital formation and so condemns Ireland’s economy to a prolonged period without recovery. This socially-driven approach is counterproductive, a point which will not be lost on the markets, when they work out that Ireland will be less able to repay its creditors because economic recovery, upon which government finances rely, is effectively cancelled.

So markets are now faced with a bail-out too small to reverse the run on the Irish banks, and by an Irish economy that has no chance of economic recovery in the foreseeable future.  A bail-out of $113bn amounts to an injection of only half of the money withdrawn from Ireland by the banks in the last two years. It is simply not enough.

The crisis is not helped by the understandable reluctance of the German people to commit more good money after bad.  It was difficult enough for Angela Merkel to come up with the funding for Greece, which was sold to the German electorate as a one-off.  Six months later it’s Ireland, presumably then Portugal, then Spain. It is no surprise that she wanted someone else, like senior bondholders to share the pain. But talk of bondholder haircuts merely creates a new bond market crisis to add to the banking crisis and will drive up Irish bond yields even further; and back-peddling on this issue is unlikely to undo the damage.

The importance of Ireland is that is the biggest cross-border banking debtor of all the PIIGS.  If the Irish banks are not saved, the European banking system will probably go under, and soon, without waiting for the pressure to mount on Portugal Spain and Italy. The politicians and bureaucrats of Euroland have not demonstrated a sufficient sense of urgency and understanding of the true crisis to resolve it: rather they have made it worse.  It is now becoming impossible to see a way out of the euro-banking problem without the ECB giving in on its anti-inflation stance and implementing aggressive quantitative easing. However, the ECB was set up to survive attempts to get it to inflate, so if it backs down from its sound-money stance in the middle of this crisis, the euro itself will suffer a loss of confidence.

It looks like divine intervention is the best hope after all.

28 November 2010

http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/

A Daily Compendium of Free-Market Thinking

http://www.thedailybell.com/

Assange’s details were also added to Interpol’s worldwide wanted list. Dated 30 November, the entry reads: “sex crimes” and says the warrant has been issued by the international public prosecution office in Gothenburg, Sweden. “If you have any information contact your national or local police.” It reads: “Wanted: Assange, Julian Paul,” and gives his birthplace as Townsville, Australia.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/30/interpol-wanted-notice-julian-assange

HAVE SOME SENATORS BEEN PAID OFF TO SUPPORT S.510 - THE ‘FOOD SAFETY MODERNIZATION ACT’?

The following is a list of U.S Senators and the Bribes (I mean campaign contributions) that these Senators received from Special Interest Groups to either support or oppose S.510 - The FDA Food Safety and Modernization Act. Money received by elected officials from Special Interest groups to vote a certain way on a bill or bills is nothing less than Bribery. I have listed the names of the Senators, the Party and State, and the amount of Special Interest Bribes (I mean campaign contributions) that they received thus far:

Name of Senator - Party & State - Bribe For S.510 or Bribe Against S.510

Daniel Akaka - D HI - Bribe For: $27,690 - Against: $700

Lamar Alexander - R TN - Bribe For: $190,421 - Against: $4,850

John Barrasso - R WY - Bribe For: $31,350 - Against: $27,500

Max Baucus - D MT - Bribe for: $123,803 - Against: $55,980

Evan Bayh - D IN - Bribe For: $45,200 - Against: 8,250

Mark Begich - D AK - Bribe For: $23,050 - Against: $2,000

Michael Bennet - D CO - Bribe For: $38,509 - Against: $22,050

Robert Bennett - R UT - Bribe For: $105,530 - Against: $10,000

Jeff Bingaman - D NM - Bribe For: $31,498 - Against: $8,450

Christopher Bond - R MO - Bribe For: $49,550 - Against: $5,200

Barbara Boxer - D CA - Bribe For: $120,000 - Against: $13,650

Sherrod Brown - D OH - Bribe For: $57,800 - Against: $6,600

Samuel Brownback - R KS - Bribe For: $20,950 - Against: $13,500

Jim Bunning - R KY - Brobe For: $20,700 - Against: $2,000

Richard Burr - R NC - Bribe For: $328,086 - Against: $32,292

Roland Burris - D IL - Bribe For: $0 - Against: $0

Maria Cantwell - D WA - Bribe For: $93,541 - Against: $2,750

Benjamin Cardin - D MD - Bribe For: $72,200 - Against: $0

Thomas Carper - D DE - Bribe For: $83,150 - Against: $0

Robert Casey - D PA - Bribe For: $80,576 - Against: $4,600

Saxby Chambliss - R GA - Bribe For: $557,694 - Against: $108,041

Thomas Coburn R OK - Bribe For: $64,400 - Against: $14,200

Thad Cochran - R MS - Bribe For: $50,144 - Against: $22,000

Susan Collins - R ME - Bribe For: $157,438 - Against: $7,800

Kent Conrad - D ND - Bribe For: $41,650 - Against: $29,612

Bob Corker - R TN - Bribe For: $298,639 - Against: $8,850

John Cornyn - R TX - Bribe For: $286,648 - Against: $254,730

Michael Crapo - R ID - Bribe For: $64,199 - Against: $14,350

Jim DeMint - R SC - Bribe For: $149,935 - Against: $5,000

Christopher Dodd - D CT - Bribe For: $36,400 - Against: $4,500

Byron Dorgan - D ND - Bribe For: $28,200 - Against: $6,000

Richard Durbin - D IL - Bribe For: $151,050 - Against: $19,000

John Ensign - R NV - Bribe For: $76,297 - Against: $10,500

Michael Enzi - R WY - Bribe For: $87,394 - Against: $21,450

Russell Feingold - D WI - Bribe For: $53,854 - Against: $2,200

Dianne Feinstein - D CA - Bribe For: $168,189 - Against: 25,314

Kirsten Gillibrand - D NY - Bribe For: $98,210 - Against: $10,650

Lindsey Graham - R SC - Bribe For: $101,272 - Against: $5,700

Charles Grassley - R IA - Bribe For: $112,150 - Against: $25,500

Judd Gregg - R NH - Bribe For: $26,000 - Against: $0

Kay Hagan - D NC - Bribe For: $36,250 - Against: $3,500

Thomas Harkin - D IA - Bribe For: $138,135 - Against: $40,600

Orrin Hatch - R UT - Bribe For: $102,215 - Against: $11,600
(See comment received from Senator Hatch’s Office below)

Kay Hutchison - R TX - Bribe For: $127,811 - Against: $103,386

James Inhofe - R OK - Bribe For: $66,744 - Against: $36,430

Daniel Inouye - D HI - Bribe For: $26,350 - Against: $11,200

John Isakson - R GA - Bribe For: $280,995 - Against: $10,100

Mike Johanns - R NE - Bribe For: $159,259 - Against: $59,785

Tim Johnson - D SD - Bribe For: $26,850 - Against: $15,000

Edward Kaufman - D DE - Bribe For: $0 - Against: $0

John Kerry - D MA - Bribe For: $14,406 - Against: $250

Amy Klobuchar - D MN - Bribe For: $149,778 - Against: $16,250

Herbert Kohl - D WI - Bribe For: $300 - Against: $0

Jon Kyl - R AZ - Bribe For: $363,660 - Against: $58,906

Mary Landrieu - D LA - Bribe For: $73,622 - Against: $2,250

Frank Lautenberg - D NJ - Bribe For: $37,883 - Agqinst: $3,550

Patrick Leahy - D VT - Bribe For: $13,800 - Against: $2,750

Carl Levin - D MI - Bribe For: $49,900 - Against: $2,000

Joseph Lieberman - I CT - Bribe For: $121,075 - Against: $0

Blanche Lincoln - D AR - Bribe For: $347,526 - Against: $125,297

Richard Lugar - R IN - Bribe For: $153,579 - Against: $21,000

John McCain - R AZ - Bribe For: $118,070 - Against: $21,525

Claire McCaskill - D MO - Bribe For: $48,950 - Against: $7,650

Mitch McConnell - R KY - Bribe For: $439,593 - Against: $42,244

Robert Menéndez - D NJ - Bribe For: $183,850 - Against: $250

Jeff Merkley - D OR - Bribe For: $27,350 - Against; $3,300

Barbara Mikulski - D MD - Bribe For: $52,165 - Against: $1,000

Lisa Murkowski - R AK - Bribe For: $164,713 - Against: $5,800

Patty Murray - D WA - Bribe For: $136,500 - Against: $3,150

Ben Nelson - D NE - Bribe For: $254,906 - Against: $44,950

Bill Nelson - D FL - Bribe For: $205,471 - Against: $35,748

Mark Pryor - D AR - Bribe For: $115,550 - Against: $16,565

John Reed - D RI - Bribe For: $29,350 - Against: $0

Harry Reid - D NV - Bribe For: $133,985 - Against: $10,000

James Risch - R ID - Bribe For: $56,750 - Against; $36,050

Pat Roberts - R KS - Bribe For: $167,294 - Against: $65,186

John Rockefeller - D WV - Bribe For: $21,250 - Against: $1,000

Bernard Sanders - I VT - Bribe For: $7,800 - Against: $4,200

Charles Schumer - D NY - Bribe For: $175,185 - Against: $14,200

Jefferson Sessions - R AL - Bribe For: $65,303 - Against: $16,800

Jeanne Shaheen - D NH - Bribe For: $17,090 - Against: $7,300

Richard Shelby - R AL - Bribe For: $73,616 - Against: $10,000

Olympia Snowe - R ME - Bribe For: $78,136 - Against: $2,000

Arlen Specter - D PA - Bribe For: $209,124 - Against: $9,400

Debbie Ann Stabenow - D MI - Bribe For: $84,941 - Against: $14,482

Jon Tester - D MT - Bribe For: $21,250 - Against: $61,550

John Thune - R SD - Bribe For: $218,900 - Against: $55,625

Mark Udall - D CO - Bribe For: $34,435 - Against: $45,050

Tom Udall - D NM - Bribe For: $27,102 - Against: $51,900

David Vitter - R LA - Bribe For: $188,225 - Against: $8,500

George Voinovich - R OH - Bribe For: $103,850 - Against: $185

Mark Warner - D VA - Bribe For: $116,450 - Against: $8,600

Jim Webb - D VA - Bribe For: $25,300 - Against: $7,700

Sheldon Whitehouse- D RI - Bribe For: $27,025 - Against: $1,500

Roger Wicker - R MS - Bribe For: $147,650 - Against: $16,250

Ron Wyden - D OR - Bribe For: $58,700 - Against: $4,900

Here’s a list of the Special Interest Groups that support S.510 and how much they bribed (I mean donated) to Senators:

Restaurants & drinking establishments $3,217,767
Food and kindred products manufacturing $1,753,503
Milk & dairy producers $1,717,687
Food stores $1,473,532
Beverages (non-alcoholic) $744,551
Vegetables, fruits and tree nut $709,238
American Veterinarian Medical Association $551,750
Beverage bottling & distribution $289,725
Food wholesalers $284,900
Food & Beverage Products and Services $281,137
Fishing $277,984
Chambers of commerce $219,234
Manufacturing $207,740
Food catering & food services $171,835
Confectionery processors & manufacturers $96,438
Consumer groups $6,100
Farm bureaus $0

Here’s a list of Here’s a list of the Special Interest Groups that sopposed S.510 and how much they bribed (I mean donated) to Senators:

Milk & dairy producers $1,717,687
Livestock $1,561,207
Farm organizations & cooperatives $412,976
Consumer groups $6,100
Farmers, crop unspecified $0

www.libertynewsonline.com/article_301_29693.php

In silver the open interest is 5,428 contracts. This is 27.1mm ounces vs. the 48mm ounces available to deliver. This is 56% of deliverable silver. Again, if even half of the contracts demand delivery, the Comex will feel stress and the price of silver should squeeze higher.

Just for the record, many of us believe that the Comex is fraudulently reporting its actual amount of physical inventory in gold/silver. Ted Butler has pointed out that SLV had a 6 million ounce withdrawal of silver last week and is speculating that this silver may be possibly intended to help cover silver deliveries on the Comex. JP Morgan, not coincidentally, is the custodian (safekeeper) of the silver in SLV and just happens to be the largest short interest in paper silver on the planet, both via Comex futures and OTC derivatives. You can make your own assumptions there. It also just so happens that only 56 delivery notices were posted in silver yesterday - about 1% of the open interest - compared to gold notices which totalled 5,016 - about 33% of the open gold interest.

Again, the banks who are on the hook for deliveries have until the end of December to deliver. Typically most of the deliveries occur early in the delivery period. There’s really not any good reason to not deliver the goods as soon as possible - that is, unless you don’t have it in hand. I will point out that our fund, twice in the past 18 months, did not receive our silver delivery until well after the contractual delivery period. HSBC was the counterparty both times. I have received emails from readers over the past year describing the same experience. I think we can all see what is going on here and I believe it’s part of the reason the metals are flying today.

Bill,
Just putting my thoughts into perspective, I want the whole GATA Army to realize just how tight the silver physical market is, and how easy it is PROVE it.

Over the past two years, I have spent a large amount of time researching the various ways to buy physical gold and silver, particularly silver as I believe it to be far more undervalued (as well as far more barterable for this reason).

While there are obviously hundreds of coin shops, there are really only a handful of major players in America in the coin selling business, and after a while of following the business you get to know these players.

Silver is a tiny, tiny market, with estimates of AVAILABLE, INVESTABLE SILVER BULLION WORLDWIDE generally in the 200-500 million oz range, or just $5-$15 billion at current prices, a pittance in the global securities markets. And remember, this is a WORLDWIDE figure, a world where nations such as India and China are far larger buyers of bullion than America.

In other words, there may be less than 50 million ozs. (a measly $1.3 billion worth) of available, investable silver coins at American dealers, enough to actually count up by hand if you call the major American dealers, such as Tulving, APMEX, and the Northwest Territorial Mint. And if you watch eBay as carefully as I do, you get to know all the major players there (usually smaller, regional coin dealers) and thus can get a good feel of available supplies.

I am telling you that, based on what I currently see from these dealers cumulatively, this is the tightest I have EVER seen the physical silver market in America, at least in the two years that I have been watching like a hawk.

HUGE premiums over spot (15% on average), even for lesser coins such as Maples, Buffaloes, etc., shrinking or zero inventories, delivery delays, etc.. Heck, in the last two days I’ve watched actual AUCTIONS for 20-100 coin lots of Silver Eagles DISAPPEAR ENTIRELY, replaced only by “Buy it Now” sales at way above spot prices, such as $34-$35/oz..

And now, with the onslaught of anti-Cartel actions, starting with GATA of course but now closely followed by the National Inflation Association, Silver Circle, Max Keiser/Alex Jones (”Buy Silver, Crash JP Morgan”), and of course silver stalwarts such as Jason Hommel, Ted Butler, and now the mainstream BART CHILTON (nice call on that one, Bill!), it looks like the end of the Cartel is nigh, especially as December and January are the two largest PM buying months of the year.

Silver is the Achilles Heel of the Cartel due to its TINY SIZE, and IT WILL BE THE STRAW THAT BREAKS THEIR BACK!

BUY SILVER, CRASH JP MORGAN!

James Mc…

Bill,
When considering the possibilities for owning silver one reason stands out above all. That is, it eventually will be expedient for the cartel to let go of silver suppression.Yes, once (if) the cartel gets out of their massive short silver positions there will be zero incentive to go back, and every incentive to flip to the long side. Mainstream media would then do their best to divorce silver from gold and make it a simple supply-demand story. Gold alone would then become the benchmark for fiat transgression. Another reason for higher prices in silver being expedient is unlike nearly any other commodity or financial instrument, an enormous run-up would do very little harm to the economy. At 15 times its current price silver would still be consumed industrially. I haven’t heard any auto makers lobbying Congress about the oppressive prices of platinum, palladium, or rhodium. Silver’s viability at $400 or more is very reasonable when you think of the extraordinary effort to suppress it for decades. If silver exploded to $400 it would barely cause a ripple in industries where it is consumed. Compare that to nearly any other commodity and see what would happen.

* If soybeans went from $12 to $180 a bushel there would be starvation and food riots.

* If lumber went from $270 to $4,050 MBF a typical 2000 sq. ft. home would cost over a million dollars to build.

* If crude oil went from $80 to $1,200 a barrel the economy would ceace to function.

* If gasoline went from $3 to $45 a gallon there would be mayhem in the streets.

* If nat. gas went from $4.30 to $64.50 per CCF millions could freeze to death.

* If 30 yr. T-bond yields rose from 4.3% to 64.5% governments would collapse.

Yet if silver goes from $27 to $400 the economic fallout is miniscule, and mostly off the radar! JPM, HSBC, and the rest of the cartel could earn many multiples of any settlement costs for class-action suits by getting long and riding the monster to the top. This may be the CFTC’s angle; fine the cartel and then let them get in position to make it back in spades. No short seller would oppose them unless he knew he had silver to deliver. Even with proper position limits silver could grind higher for many years.

There are few commodities that will ever behave like a 1990’s dot.com stock. If there was just one that could it may be silver. Unlike a dot.com stock though it still may not be overvalued at a 15 multiple of its current price. The nitwits at GFMS would howl all the way up but the computer, camera, cell phone, and automobile manufacturers would just pay up and go on.

James Mc

WikiLeaks ….. are we being played?
-> Posted by sailman @ 16:15 pm on November 30, 2010
Cui bono …… to whose benefit is this really? The Daily Bell ponders this.

WikiLeaks: Clever PsyOps?
WikiLeaks to Take on Private Sector?

UXG has been berry berry good to me.

right on…fully agree…best for all to hear..i hear fox news turned them down…interesting

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Economics Last updated: November 30th, 2010

Stripped to its essentials, the €85bn package imposed on Ireland by the Eurogroup and the European Central Bank is a bail-out for improvident British, German, Dutch, and Belgian bankers and creditors.

The Irish taxpayers carry the full burden, and deplete what remains of their reserve pension fund to cover a quarter of the cost.

This arrangement – I am not going to grace it with the term deal – was announced in Brussels before the elected Taoiseach of Ireland had been able to tell his own people what their fate would be.

The Taoiseach said afterwards that Brussels had squelched any idea of haircuts for senior bondholders: a lack of “political and institutional” support in his polite words: or “they hit the roof”, according to leaks.

One can see why the EU authorities reacted so vehemently. Such a move at this delicate juncture would have set off an even more dramatic chain reaction in the EMU debt markets than the one we are already seeing.

It is harder to justify why the Irish should pay the entire price for upholding the European banking system, and why they should accept ruinous terms.

I might add that if it is really true that a haircut on the senior debt of Anglo Irish, et al, would bring down the entire financial edifice of Europe, then how did any of these European banks pass their stress tests this summer, and how did the EU authorities ever let the matter reach this point? Brussels cannot have it both ways.

Ireland did not run large fiscal deficits or violate the Maastricht Treaty in the boom years. It ran a fiscal surplus, (as did Spain) and reduced its public debt to near zero. German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble keeps missing this basic point, but then we don’t want to disturb a comfortable – and convenient – German prejudice.

Patrick Honohan, the World Bank veteran brought in to clean house at the Irish Central Bank, wrote the definitive paper on the causes of this disaster from his perch at Trinity College Dublin in early 2009.

Entitled “What Went Wrong In Ireland?”, it recounts how the genuine tiger economy lost its way after the launch of the euro, and because of the euro.

“Real interest rates from 1998 to 2007 averaged -1pc [compared with plus 7pc in the early 1990s],” he said.

A (positive) interest shock of this magnitude in a vibrant fast-growing economy was bound to stoke a massive credit and property bubble.

“Eurozone membership certainly contributed to the property boom, and to the deteriorating drift in wage competitiveness. To be sure, all of these imbalances and misalignments could have happened outside EMU, but the policy antennae had not been retuned in Ireland. Warning signs were muted. Lacking these prompts, Irish policy-makers neglected the basics of public finance.”

“Lengthy success lulled policy makers into a false sense of security. Captured by hubris, they neglected to ensure the basics, allowing a rogue bank’s reckless expansionism,” he wrote.

Let me add that the ECB ran a monetary policy that was too loose even for the eurozone as a whole, holding rates at 2pc until well into the credit boom and allowing the M3 money supply to expand at 11pc (against a 4.5pc target). The ECB breached its own inflation ceiling every month for a decade.  It did this to help Germany through its mini-slump, and in doing so poured petrol on the bonfire of the PIGS. So please, NO MORE HYPOCRISY FROM BERLIN.

The truth is that the EMU venture is one of shared culpability. Yes, the Irish should have regulated their banks properly and restricted mortgages to a loan-to-value ratio of 80pc, 70pc, or 60pc, forcing it down as low as needed – as Hong Kong and Singapore do – to stop idiotic bubbles.

But almost nobody understood the implications of monetary union:  in Dublin, in Berlin, in Brussels, and Frankfurt. They were almost all beguiled, (though I doubt that the ECB’s Axel Weber and Jurgen Stark ever were).

Given this, why should the  Irish people accept the current terms? As Citigroup said in a note today, the EU part of the package will come at around 7pc  — higher than the fee paid by Greece. This is pena

By 2014, interest payments on Ireland’s public debt (then 120pc of GDP) will be €10bn, while tax revenues will be  €36bn. This ratio is well above the average default trigger of 22pc, as calculated in a  Moody’s study.

Nominal Irish GNP has contracted by 26pc since the peak. It is nominal, not real, that matters for debt dynamics.

Ireland is in a classic debt-deflation trap , as described by Irving Fisher in his 1933 Economica paper.

Yes, it has a very vibrant export sector, and can perhaps claw its way out of the trap – which Greece and Portugal cannot hope to do in time, in my view. In a way that makes the choice even harder.

The question is, should the Dail vote against the austerity budget on December 7, Pearl Harbour Day.  And should the next government –  with Sinn Fein in the coalition? – tell the EU to go to Hell, do an Iceland, wash its hands of the banks, and carry out a unilateral default on senior debt by refusing to extend the guarantee?

The risks are huge, but then the provocations are also huge. And there is a score to settle. Did the EU not disregard the Irish `No’ to Lisbon, just as it disregarded the first Irish `No’ to Nice? Did it not trample all over Irish democracy?

It is not for a British newspaper to suggest which course to take. Both outcomes are ghastly, but as one Irish reader wrote to me: if  Eamon De Valera  could defy world opinion in 1945 by sending condolences to Germany for the death of the Fuhrer, today’s leaders need not worry too much about scandalizing those who made them swallow Lisbon.

Compliance is traumatic. Default is traumatic. What the Irish have before them is a political choice about what they wish to be as a people, and a nation.

Let me finish with a few words by Dan O’Brien, the Economics Editor of the Irish Times, that caught my eye.

“Nothing quite symbolised this State’s loss of sovereignty than the press conference at which the ECB man spoke along with two IMF men and a European Commission official. It was held in the Government press centre beneath the Taoiseach’s office. I am a xenophile and cosmopolitan by nature, but to see foreign technocrats take over the very heart of the apparatus of this State to tell the media how the State will be run into the foreseeable future caused a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach.”

My sympathies.

O tay panky.

you must still think we live in a constitutional republic???
its now a fascist state ya know….its the meaning of it it is.
wj