"So this method of encouraging the consumer to up his spending is out, dead, gone!"

In effect, there was no one in charge of what I have long referred to as international financial buccaneers.

It was this concern and the complete refusal of our politicians to realistically assess and take control of the direction that Ireland was being led in, that propelled me to register my anxiety and disquiet by putting my name forward as an independent candidate in Sligo North-Leitrim in last year's general election.  

There is about €60bn in securitised retail mortgage loans to be paid back to investors from outside the country which now appears to be indirectly backed by an Irish government guarantee. The drastic collapse in house prices means that we have nothing of value to represent these securitised loans.

RE: Mortgage Crisis

Hello, I just surfed into your site. I am a father of four children between the ages of 22 and 30. I went up for election as an independent candidate in Sligo North Leitrim to highlight this very grave injustice that is being perpetrated on our young men and women on this isle of ours. The bottom line is that house prices both North and South are increasing rapidly because of the unseemly inward investment in mortgages from Elderly Europe! What is happening is that financial companies are bungling hundreds of mortgages together and selling them to European Pension Funds etc one and two billion euros at a time; now they take a big commission from the European Pension Fund; and then they have the balance to lend out again, and on and on and on!. The limit is: what the youth will bear. All the banks etc are at it; loads of commission is being collected from Pension Funds etc.

The Director,

Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland

1.       the Total Debt (Whether it be classified as loans, bonds or whatever) that would be associated with Securitisation of Residential Mortgages

2.       the Total Debt (Whether it be classified as loans, bonds or whatever) that would be associated with Securitisation of Commercial Mortgages.

Demand the release of the Rossport Five

As young students embarking into the world, we were excited that oil/gas exploration would be initiated off our coasts, having been led to understand that the rock structure was favourable.

Madam, -    The Irish Government encourages low paid workers, who by default are in the majority, to invest in Pension Funds for their retirement. Yet we hear from Britain that a worker who contributes £23 a week for 20 years could end up only getting an increase retirement pension of £12 weekly (The Observer, 26^th September 2004). An in debt study into this phenomenon should be carried out over here.

Maybe, I am a Dodo when it comes to politics. I know that you were surprised at some of my mutterings. But, I continue to be gob smacked with the enthusiasm that the Irish have for the EU. If we were bringing something to the party besides a blind faith in the economic future of the EU, then I might be less worried. I have written in all the Mayo Yearbooks from 2000 to 2003 (Let me know if you wish to read them) pointing out the very foreseeable disastrous future for the EU. Consumer demand is falling, depression like in Ireland of the fifties is taking hold. LISTEN! THE EU ECONOMY IS A BASKET CASE; GROWTH THE HOLY GRAIL OF CAPITILISM IS DEAD following on a forty year falling birth rate; and to my utter consternation I see the Irish nation gaily marching to the same tunes and in the same direction.

Referendum on Irish Citizenship

Madam, there are close to 250,000 less children, under twenty years of age, in Ireland today than there were in 1984. This happened because Ireland in promoting feminism has become, whether intentionally or not, an anti child country. Just weigh up the following experiences that happened over the past 30 years:

·        Abandonment of tax allowances for children.

·        PRSI introduced without any thought given to the number of children being supported.

·        Higher tax allowances if both parents work outside the home.

·        Money and wealth promoted as an end objective e.g. 100% tax relief for pension contributions rather than the other factor of production i.e. the generation of future workers/consumers.

·        The burdening of our young men and women with awesome loan repayments

·        No serious thought given by our government to make the wider world more safe for children in the absence of full time parents in the home e.g. the lack of restrictions on pornography via internet, satellite, magazines.

The GOVERNMENT SHOULD DISALLOW ANY TAX BREAKS FOR PENSION FUNDS THAT ARE INVESTED IN THE STOCKMARKET. Specific funds will rise, but the general trend is a depressed economic world. Otherwise as a businessman, I and hundreds of others see that such funds are ripe for plundering e.g. Inron, Parmalat etc

What makes your article so explosive is that there would have been many investment analysers in all the establishments who would have been able to see the warning signs building up at the end of the 90s. I would have had no special foresight. The one thing that I would have is independence, no special corner to protect a raw analyser of world movements, no special line to tow. In fact, I set up a company to give investment advice. But got so disillusioned by the lack of understanding in the GLOBAL Banking/Investment climate that I ceased giving personal advice c 1997. I took to writing instead.

In the More Developed Areas of the world the fertility rate in 1960 was 2.68, and 1.57 in 2000, i.e. a drop of 41%, or the birthrate was 71% more forty years ago, as per United Nations Population Division http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=2. These areas of the world account for c.90% of the world's trade! The ordinary punter on the ground is not informed of the potential this scenario throws up for world disharmony; to put it mildly!

GENERAL GROWTH the engine of the capitalist western system in the past is NO MORE. People are not realistic; a sustained fall in the birth rate results in no growth and flight of capital. 

Some of my letter was a plea to Mr Cowen to do something for our emigrants. His Private Secretary, Joseph Hackett replied and outlined the various inititives his Department had talen to help emigrant care groups in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia who require special assistance and support. However there was no reaction to the rest of my letter, some of which I print below:

< style="font-weight: bold;">"Mayo people, if their Hydrocarbon Resources are exploited for the Common Good, can look after their own and in so doing, the whole country can benefit.  Funds to help all our Irish emigrants need not be taken from the current budgets. All the present furore is happening while our citizens are investing billions of Euros abroad and International oil companies are lining themselves up to relieve us off billions more! Some obvious budgetary matching can and should to be done. 

I have written much about the Hydrocarbon resources lying off our coasts. Our emigrants are dying in poverty overseas, while we refuse to invest and reap the profits of oil/gas production off the Mayo coastline. In desperation, I have now written a short story of what is happening as seen from a fictional planet named Xlmn.(click) Please find story enclosed.

Tunnel Vision and ‘riches in tandem with the fastest falling birth-rate in the world’ seemed to be the stock in trade of your comrades at the cabinet table. We are living in a virtual world; you transfer 150 jobs to Co Mayo while presiding over a drop in the number of pupils in Mayo National Schools (8 yr. cycle) of 4,300 over the last 17 years. Your table has not a monopoly on losing a grip on reality! Pension Fund Managers etc are not able to comprehend changing macroeconomics in the midst of an acute 40 year old demographic disaster hitting the rest of the Developed world (90% of world trade). Two years ago, I wrote to: national papers, banks, IFCS companies, government departments, political parties, universities, warning them of the creeping Global financial meltdown. I did not want Ireland’s pension (50% state subsidised) funds to be among the financial losers. You see, I think like the rip-off merchant except I shudder because I see affluent Ireland as the prime targets. Expected commissions, bonuses made sure that no notice was taken of such advice. A Press Cutting is enclosed! Our country could have saved €15bn, yes billion, that’s right! Advisors to Greenspan, McCreevy did not even consider the principles on which I based my forecasts. Birth-rate (world demand) is collapsing; in complete ignorance of the balancing scales of demand and share price, pension savings are encouraged by governments. The joke is that Growth is the foundation stone of Capitalism. Negative  growth = fiddling of books, lies, balloons = Pension fund values disappear! Discount the wealth of a childless nation, you get zero value! Let us cop on!

Read the Xlmn story enclosed! I will keep my fingers crossed that one influential Irish person in four million may take heed! My efforts to date appear to be ‘in vain’; hope is all I have left. Seamus Heeney when writing a poem on South Africa and Nelson Mandella, had the lines

“History says, Don’t hope

On this side of the grave,

But then, once in a lifetime

                                                   The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up

And hope and history rhyme”

The Irish will have a lessor representation in Brussels after the EC enlargement than Mayo ever had in Leinster House! This fact was highlighted in Mayo Yearbooks before the Nice agreement was passed. Your big problem will be how to pull the wool over the eyes of the Irish electorate. Better skills than were ever in Mayo are needed. Go make your mark where you may have more influence and try and work your cabinet colleagues around to harness the oil money to help our own Irish citizens at home and abroad. Forget about inward investment from the USA and possible handouts from the EC! Just invest & dig! Read the story, Please!

Le gach dea ghuÍ i gcÙir na hAth bhliana"

·        Billons stolen from Pension Funds from the Enron scandals etc.

·        Twelve years ago, the Yugoslav investor had $12 billion of savings in state owned banks. The Central Bank had $10 billion in foreign reserves. It was all spirited away with a slight of hand!

·        It was revealed in a major newspaper that Britain’s biggest Financial Service Companies take more than £Ster20 billion a year from Unit Trusts, Pension Funds and other savings products without the true facts been revealed to their customers. This was in addition to published charges.

·        The English Chancellor of the Exchequer recently took £Ster5 billion with a once of tax on Pension Funds.

My contention is that Pension Funds will be the target of Financial Buccaneers etc. In the EC, immigration is making little contribution to counteracting the ageing of society.

Capitalism/Stockmarkets depend on Growth. How can one realistically expect Stockmarkets to grow with the above statistics. “Levi Strauss, for example, complains that the youth market is shrinking faster than the company’s jeans: shifting demographics caused it to shut down three European factories in 1999” – Newseek Sept 16-23, 2002. It does not take a genius mind to recognise that all other products e.g. entertainment related, cars etc. will eventually be substituted for jeans! Why are we Irish, taking up the rear, marching absent mindedly behind the Pipepiper of Consumerism etc., especially when stories are leaking back that the vanguard are in complete disarray! Capitalism needs growth so much, that Balloons will be accepted as the real thing. Big bulky Pension Funds will lose out in the subsequent collapse!

Losing out our resources
Sir – Mr Frank Fahey, the Minister of State for Labour Affairs and former Marine Minister, is quoted as saying that an adverse decision on the proposed gas terminal project in Co. Mayo would have a “severe, negative impact” on the west of Ireland. What’s new!

Mr Fahey is a member of the Government, an institution that has an atrocious record on infrastructure and business development in the past 80 years in the west. It amazes this writer that our leaders do not recognise the great loss to this country that neglect of the west had on the population numbers and economy of this country e.g. billions of pounds of fishing revenue foregone in the 20^th Century. Now we are stand to repeat the same mistakes and loose massive streams of revenue by seemingly allowing the unfettered foreign owned exploitation of our hydrocarbon resources throughout the 21^st century.

It is beyond time that the Government took the bit between their teeth in regards to the exploitation of resources off the west coast. Without a hands on approach (investment via a national owned petroleum company), the Irish people will continue to be ripped off! The Government should insist that all serving of rigs should be carried out from Irish bases.

Needs of Mayo’s economy ‘being ignored’

Sir, - At last, the politicians seemed to be acting in the interest of the people who elected them. They have finally woken up to the significant wealth that will be generated from the proceeds of the Hydrocarbon industry off the west coast of Ireland. An area that has all but been ignored by the Irish State throughout the 20^th Century. This apathy resulted in other nations reaping the benefit of our vast fisheries. Should we the people of Ireland get excited? 

No! the politicians in question are from Italy. The Italian State owns 30% of the oil group, ENI. This company has recently made a play for Enterprise Oil. Berlusconi, much maligned Premier of Italy, may not be too enthused about the Euro; buy he certainly has a nose for when to pounce on a potential good income stream! What are the odds against the Italian voters receiving a Euro dividend from Irish oil/gas production long before the citizens of his country see as much as a brass farthing?

Paisley's Perceptions

Sir, - I first became aware of Northern politics in the 1960s, when the Rev Ian Paisley wailed about the Republic as been ruled from Rome and gave the impression that this was the biggest obstacle to opening dialogue with Free Staters. Since then the South has changed utterly. We have rejected much of the teaching of the Catholic Church. We have abandoned our claim to the Six Counties. We have nothing left on which to compromise, except maybe to fly the Union Jack (currently suffering its own identity crisis!) over the GPO.

Trade between Britain and Ireland is running at record levels. Many of our businesses are subsidiaries of British companies. We have no problem identifying with the victorious exploits of Manchester United in Europe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O1e6xemzKY
                                                                                                                                                 See also above

Sir –  Dr Garret Fitzgerald, our former Taoiseach, stated in your March 4^th edition, that ‘the number of 18 year olds has already started to fall: it is 2,000 lower than a year ago, and within the next three years, there will be a further drop of 7,500 in the number of young people attaining that age.’ He wondered from what source future workers would come from! ------------------How about entering a period of consolidation and reflection! Open our eyes and minds! Carry out a review of the effects of our great economic achievements from a long term social point of view; ask as to what kind of society do we want to bequeath to future generations of young Irishmen and woman? What actions can we instigate now to fulfil our hopes and desires? See rest of letter here

Sir-, --- It was very fitting that Mr John O’Loughlin’s letter, in which he criticises Dr Desmond Connell outspoken criticism of the ‘greed’ of property speculators, appeared on April Fools Day. It appears that not only the above mentioned personnel are arriving at a false diagnosis as to cause of spiralling house prices, but every latter day Economist.