Column: Ireland has no option but to play hardball. So why aren?t we?
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[excerpted from TheJournal.ie]
Terrible task
A small nation taking action against such powerful interests faces a terrible task. Ask the Icelandic people. But continuous inactivity guarantees a world of pain to the Irish people over the decades to come. This syndrome is called illegitimate debt payments. Irish citizens, myself included, first found this new government’s inactivity puzzling. Now it is simply embarrassing. Taking on international private financial interests is not just warranted in these dire situations; it is essential! What is not acceptable is watching the government spend the last few euros of their public’s pension funds to pay off private debts that the public never owed. The patient is gravely ill. The current prognosis: 100% fatality. She needs her health insurance payments.