HEADLINE NEWS – WE’RE RICH!

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According to Wikipedia, a United States Treasury security is an IOU from the US Government, (which you can buy). It is a government debt instrument issued by the United States Department of the Treasury to finance government spending as an alternative to taxation. Think of it as Uncle Sam borrowing a few bob from you, swearing that he’s good for it while also paying you the interest on it every couple of years until he decides to buy that IOU back from you for the cash you gave him. Now multiply that by trillions and you have treasury bonds.

Debt is a two-headed beast. If you are in debt, then that debt is a liability whereas if you are owed money, then the debt becomes an asset. So the sales of US bonds raise money for the US but they also become a debt the US owes. In 2017, the United States had a total public national debt of 20.25 trillion U.S. dollars. In 2016, the total interest expense on debt held by the public of the United States reached 273 billion U.S. dollars, Of the 20.25 trillion in US debt, foreign countries held a total of 6.29 trillion U.S. dollars in U.S. treasury securities as of March 2017.

All fine so far. But I ask you, in your opinion, which countries hold those bonds and who has the biggest share of them? It must surely be no surprise that the Chinese and the Japanese are the biggest holders of US debt, $1,187.7Bn and $1,043.5Bn respectively. Guess which country on Earth is the next largest holder of US debt? You are not going to believe this! The third biggest holder of US Treasury Bonds is non other than little Ireland!!!!!

How da fuck? ……………. What in Jaesus name? …………….. Nah, nah, nah, it can’t be! ………… Oh but it is. We Irish hold $317.9 billion dollars in US bonds or to put it another way, the USA owes Ireland $317.9 billion or about €280 billion. Now, to put that in perspective for you, Saudi Arabia holds £151.2, (versus Ireland $317.9 billion), Russia £96.1 (versus Ireland $317.9 billion), France $80.9 (versus Ireland $317.9 billion), Gemany $76.5 (versus Ireland $317.9 billion) and even the U.A.E. has less than us at $59.2, (versus Ireland $317.9 billion). I notice that Israel, that fanatical supporter of all things American, isn’t even on the list. But I must say, I’m staggered by this simple piece of statistical information. I mean, where the fuck did we get $317.9 billion from? We are the second most indebted Nation on Earth after Japan and just behind the Japs as well on this list. We apparently owe €200bn+ and we are paying huge interest annually on it. it’s why the health service is in meltdown and why we have a homeless crisis among other things. So why don’t we just cash in our chips with Uncle Sam, take the €280 billion owed to us and pay off the €200 billion we owe? We’d still have €80 or billion to play around with and absolutely no debt.

At this point, I must put on the record here that I am no financial whizz so in this instance I can only look at the stark statistics from “Statista” and speculate. But I know deep down that there is no way in hell that we, as a country, have that much money owing to us. So how come we are listed in third place? I can only guess that it must be big money skullduggery in high finance and in Ireland, that means the I.F.S.C. Dublin’s IFSC, which was set up by the Irish Government with EU approval in 1987, is globally recognised as a leading location for a range of internationally traded financial services, including banking, asset financing, fund management, corporate treasury management, investment management, custody and administration and specialised insurance operations.

More than 500 operations were approved to trade in under the IFSC programme. The centre is host to half of the world’s top 50 banks and to half of the top 20 insurance companies. Merrill Lynch, Sumitomo Bank, ABN Amro, Citibank, AIG, JP Morgan (Chase), Commerzbank,BNP Paribas and EMRO are just some of the big-name operations that have chosen to locate in the area. A sophisticated support network, including shared services centres, software development, and legal and accountancy companies, has also developed around the IFSC. So Yup! a veritable viper’s nest of big money skullduggery right on our shores. We are told that billions pass through this place everyday. Two years ago there was a piece in the paper with a photograph of a nondescript door. It was a one room office that allegedly traded several billion in financial instruments during the previous twelve months, even though that door never opened once.

If I am right, and I can only suspect that I am, then I have to confess to being quite relieved that we do not have $317.9 billion in US bonds. For one thing, those bonds are raised and sold by the US to fund the wars they are raging around the world. Secondly, the dollar is on very shaky ground right now. See here and here to learn more.

International experts have said that the only thing between the dollar collapsing and America going back to the stone age, is Saudi Arabia and their insistence on the petrodollar. So how stable the dollar is is also how stable you believe the sand Kings to be. At present, the Saudi’s are at war with the very small and very poor Yemen and are actively creating a situation of widespread famine in that country. If, as that article suggests, Saudi Arabia does collapse sooner rather than later, the overnight, the American dollar becomes worthless. It will be backed by nothing at all in a country that owes the world $20.25 trillion. In that scenario, our $317.9 billion in US bonds would go up in a puff of smoke …………. if we had them.

Of course, if the dollar goes, the Euro goes as well as does the £STG and the Japanese Yen. It would be a world in chaos so maybe, just maybe, the US is too big to fail, (where have I heard that expression before?).

IT’S ALL A BIT FLUID

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Our betters really are short-sighted. Not too long ago a decent performing family saloon in this country came with an annual road tax of over €1,000. The Revenue were taking in short of a billion snots a year on this racket. Then two things happened.

The climate change lot convinced the weak-minded in power that car tax should be charged on the basis of emissions and not engine size. The 2.5 liter flyer that I had was costing me over €900 a year at the time just to be street legal. But no sooner had I got rid of it for an old and underpowered 1.4liter car than the system changed to taxing emissions. The current model of the 2.5 liter flyer costs less to tax than my ancient small engined car.

The second thing that happened was the people standing up to the political bullies and forcing them to abandon double-taxation for water. This left the expensively created Irish Water with no income source so 100% of all of the car tax collected goes to Irish Water to keep the door open. Just as this was decided a trend to lower emission cars rose sharply and an idiot could have told our short-sighted betters that Revenue had to fall as a result.

We hear this morning that, “Department of Finance officials are warning the move to more efficient cars could ‘could severely challenge the revenue’ generated for the exchequer,” to which you can only add, “What the fuck did you think would happen?” So the, ‘ahem,’ brains in Leinster House are considering the idea that “Drivers could be taxed on distance travelled.”

There are pros and cons to this of course but the self same duplicitous politicians are stuck with financing Irish Water and a falling road tax amount has to be addressed lest the whole sorry spectacle collapses and political appointees at the top find themselves out of a job. The powers that be have obviously got the bean counters on the case and they must be pretty sure that taxing on distance travelled will put up most peoples car tax. It is the core dishonesty I can’t stand because in reality your car tax should be gauged on the amount of water you use in your home. They wouldn’t touch that one with a barge poll though.

When this mess gets ‘sort of sorted,’ the next message from Revenue is bound to be about the rapidly falling tax take from tobacco. God knows what the tobacco taxes fund because it is in excess of a billion a year and non-smokers are going to have to somehow pay to fill the growing gap. The anti-drinks outfit want to kill the tax take on booze, typically a handy little earner, so as the drinkers turn to, I don’t know, illicit drugs for their kicks and because there’s no tax on cocaine, the tee-totalers may be expected to make up the shortfall in drink taxes.

It’s all a bit fluid.

THE ORIGINAL RUSSIAGATE

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In a week where President Chump is calling for an end to the investigation regarding some vague alleged help he received from Russia to secure election, I came across an odd piece in an old Forbes Magazine.

I am one of those people who believes that John Kennedy was the last great American President. After his murder, I came to think that Bobby could have been a great President too but then he was murdered also. That left Ted. The Kennedy’s were ardent Democrats but back in the 60’s, that party had values, integrity and good social policies. John Kennedy handled the Cuban missile crisis in a way that none who came after him could have. I was young in the sixties and while I loved the Kennedy’s, I knew little of the Democrats or the Republicans.

Fast forward to today and an utterly despicable Democratic Party in my view. I do not see the Republicans as being much better but the Democrats are refusing to believe that Hilary lost and are trying everything they can think of to impeach Trump and reverse the election result 18 months later. Among the many various allegations they are employing to do that is the accusation that Trump had the Russians interfere in the american presidential election for his benefit. By implication of course, this must be seen by all decent Americans as something the Democrats would never consider doing themselves, ever!

Then Forbes published this. “Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.” It appears that Ted Kennedy proposed to lend Yuri Andropov, (Ex-head of the KGB and then Soviet President), a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. Ted suggested that he would use his senior contacts in the media to get Andropov on American TV addressing the voters directly.

Reagan had publicly called the Soviet Union the Great Satan so if Andropov, coached by Teddy and his team, were to appear to be a friendly reasonable man in the eyes of the American public, the tide of that public’s opinion could be turned away from Ronnie Reagan and his Republicans in the 1984 elections. So it seems a former potential Democratic candidate for the American Presidency was the first of his ilk to ask the Russians to interfere in American politics, as reported in this scrutinized and verified memorandum from the time. This is actual proof rather than the flimsy unproven accusations thrown at Trump today. We hear that the US has ‘indicted” several Russians on this issue and at first glance, that sounds serious. But a quick check shows that the word “indictment” is legalize for ‘accusation’. So it is yet another possibly groundless accusation with a few Russian sounding names thrown in to try to make it sound plausible.

Of course, as I wrote earlier, this is all a storm in a tea cup because it is informal American policy to interfere in the politics of any county it chooses, including among its so-called Allies. They have even invaded countries they don’t like in contravention of the UN Charter. So crocodile tears about Putin and Trump are just so much hypocritical bullshit.

The true statesman that was John Kennedy must be turning in his grave.

POPE-ING IN FOR A CHAT WITH US.

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Pope John Paul II visited Ireland from Saturday, 29 September to Monday, 1 October 1979, the first ever trip to Catholic Ireland by any Pope. Over 2.5 million people, (out of a population of 3.5 million at the time), attended events in Dublin, Drogheda, Clonmacnoise, Galway, Knock, Limerick, and Maynooth. I went to see the lad Józef Wojtyła at the Limerick venue. There’s an article alone on that trip but I digress. Now, nearly forty years later, he’s coming back!

No not the Polish Pope but this new guy from South America called Francis. He’ll be dropping in for a chat with us for about 36 hours over the 25th & 26th of August and already the preliminaries are different. This mad country has changed beyond recognition since the last Papal visit. Back then it was all rosary beads, best bib and tucker, bend the knee, bow the head, beat the breast and kiss any ring within reach of you. The purity and piety on display in 1979 put the most devout in the Vatican to shame. It’s a wonder the weight of plenary indulgences prayed for at the time didn’t sink the whole island beneath the sea.

But they didn’t. We’re still afloat though much has changed it has to be said. Today everyone is riding everyone else without as much as an engagement ring to be seen. Worse again from a Papal perspective, there’s many Irish riding their own sex too without a care for eternal damnation. In the social and religious pop charts, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost have dropped off the top three slots to be replaced by money, power and influence. The fawning politicians of the 1979 Dublin airport tarmac fame are replaced now by a cabal of individuals who appear to believe they are actually God. I can’t see many genuflections from the Irish front bench when the Lord’s messenger on earth alights the aircraft staircase. If Francis wants to make an impression on that lot of heathens then he’d better strike them all down with plague as they smirk at him.

Then there’s the common people. Sure, the breast beaters are still around but they are a minority and in my age group and above. Hell, the churches are almost empty from one end of the month to the next. Most of the under thirties couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Catholic Church or any religion for that matter and apart from the worldwide celebrity status of our impending guest, they’ll have no interest in the lad. I can’t see him being any more than a handy excuse for a piss up for many people. Last week on Joe Duffy an atheist rang in to boast how he’d managed to get 600, (free), tickets for one of the Pope’s venues. With some pride in his voice he told the nation that it was his intention to destroy those tickets to ensure there’d be 600 less people seeing the man. What a prick!

On the commercial front, some enterprising ice cream outfit are producing a memorial product they call the “Ice Pope”. Apparently it is a traditional ice pop but sculpted as the Pope’s head and figure. Are you supposed to lick it I wonder? I doubt the makers could care less even if you shoved it up your hole as long as they get the money. It’s so tatty, isn’t it? There are over two billion catholics on earth, many who would starve to get to see this man in the flesh but I fear we’ve become so full of ourselves here that it will be the badge of ‘super-cool’ to say, “He was down the road but I couldn’t be arsed at the time.”

Oddly enough as I look at all of this I see a lost innocence and with it a lost feeling of happiness as well. Spiritual peace brings a comforting sense of well-being and it can be lasting. On the other hand we now have the twin pursuits of power and money and these are what we are supposed to aspire to to make us happy. Our leaders discuss the economy to the exclusion of any talk about a society. They presume upon our cohesiveness as a people and our blind stupidity as individuals as they dole out the mushroom treatment short term. Pope Francis, on the other hand, comes with the eternal message of God, handed down over two thousand years. It is a message of love and compassion, of forgiveness and empathy, of peace and (genuine) good will to your fellow man. It is depressing then that he may turn out to be some kind of weird freak show in our so-called modern Ireland.

I sincerely hope not!