Questions and Answers session
A very poor session and can be skipped.
How likely is that going to be?
It depends on what share of employment the SMEs have and we simply don't know that.
We know more about the Medieval Irish economy than we know about SMEs. I am serious.
As far as economists are concerned, Academic and Central Bank, they are soooooooo boring. But they are the Irish economy.
4. You are saying that we have a mortgage crisis and a small business crisis, but you are giving us no figures. Do you think...Do you have a figure for the SME debt and if so, where might we get the money to pay for it?
The amounts will be smaller. The last time I did a back of the envelope calculation, I reckoned it would cost €90 billion in total. Around €25 billion for the SMEs.
8.30
Question about austerity
We haven't had the credit contraction we expected. Austerity has been useful in that they are stringing us out. It's part of that theatrical performance.
German notions of economics are radically different from the Anglo Saxon ones. They think it's about morality. We think of economics as amoral.
14
A question about the future of institutions
Hirschman said that you end up with a tyranny of the weak by the incompetent. And that is as succinct a description of Ireland as you will ever come across. You have a very small pool of talent - in the Central Bank, in the government, everywhere. The stronger ones lord it over the weak.
14.30
Do you still feel that a group of mortgage defaulters could have political power?
When it started off I thought that this could have dramatic political consequences - people unemployed and being booted out of their houses. But I feared that there might be a hard-right anti-Euro anti-traveller mentality, but it's not going to happen now. But the reason for that is that we are short of talent. We have no Hitler wannabes. Our politicians are crooks and incompetent but they are not scary.
16.30 Do you feel that debt forgiveness sets a bad precedent?
It's a matter of being pragmatic. But you need to have transparent rules.
22 What would happen if the Irish government refused to meet the requirements of the EU
You would have credit to the banks cut off. Your savings in the Irish banks would be lost. That would not be pleasant.
Why?
Your banking system would collapse. The economy would not function
23 Why don't we inflate our way out of the problems?
That is essentially what Draghi wants to do.
Moderate inflation of 4% a year might drive the Germans out of the Eurozone which would solve a lot of problems. (laughter) . No - that is true.
23.30 what would happen if Britain left the EU
Nothing would happen. There would be no trade sanctions. Others would see that the sky hasn't fallen in, so they might leave as well.
24.40 If the banks had gone under insted of kicking the can down the road, would we have been able to get back on track sooner?
Had we been very tough we could have inflicted the losses on the bondholders. It's irrelevant at this stage.