Manny Mondays: Return of the Irish Famine....For Jobs?

So much for the "low/no corporate taxes or regulations" (and "free markets") meme as the cure-all in that magical imaginary paradise where everyone, including the global elites and their handmaidens, are honest and altruistic, and things are certainly nothing gamed or fraudulent for the benefit of a few. Ireland is merely the latest domino to fall in the aftermath of the global credit bubble, and it's citizens now must be "austeritized" to save large European banks and large banker bonuses. And silly me, I didn't realize that Ireland also had the CRA and Fannie/Freddie as the main cause in distorting the housing market over there as well. Oh, they didn't have those two things? Nevermind. But I digress.

Now that an IMF/EU bailout of Ireland appears imiment, another crisis is heating up in Ireland, namely the mass exodus of people fleeing the country in search of jobs. This article in the NY Times about thousands of people fleeing Ireland in search of jobs caught my eye over the weekend.

Here are a couple of key excerpts from the article:

Experts say about 65,000 people left Ireland last year, and some estimate that the number may be more like 120,000 this year. At first, most of those leaving were immigrants returning home to Central Europe. But increasingly, the experts say, it is the Irish themselves who are heading out — unsure that they will ever come home.

Among those leaving are the country's so-called "best & brightest", which could hollow out the country of its citizens that are most capable of helping to turn things around, thereby further contributing to a vicious downward cycle.

And there are risks, too, that Ireland’s best and brightest — the very people who could help turn things around — are leaving.

Edwina Shanahan, the marketing manager of Visafirst, a company that helps emigrants settle abroad, said there might be some truth to this. “A lot of the countries giving visas are quite choosy,” she said. “You need to be highly qualified and have recent job experience to get into Australia. They are getting the best among us.”

History is apparently rhyming in Ireland, as this jobs "famine" and subsequent human exodus is eerily reminiscent of other time periods of hardship there:

Ireland experienced its sharpest population drop during the 19th-century potato famine when the population dropped sharply from 6.5 million. More than a million people emigrated, and another million died. But there have been other waves of emigration during economic downturns in the 1930s, the 1950s and the 1980s.

Read the whole article here:


The Hunt for Jobs Sends the Irish Abroad, Again

So who's next in the "Save the Banker Bonuses & Elites at all Costs to Humanity" Global Welfare Program, otherwise known as the "Collective Sheeple Austeritization Congo Line?" Portugal? Spain? Italy? And when is it our turn to "suck it up" (hat tip: Charlie Munger, 'ole Uncle Warren's partner) here in the United States?

In the meantime, this bailout announcement is likely good for another 2% pop in the markets this week, as bankers everywhere celebrate by buying stocks and commodities. We should just have one of these sovereign bailout announcements along with a major IPO every week. The DOW will be at 36K in no time, thus fulfilling that markets and economics sage Kevin Hassert's ill-fated prediction (until now) from back in the late 1990's.