Outrageous: Geithner Blocked IMF Deal to Haircut Irish Debt

Ireland is suffering with the burden of unmanageable debts because Geithner didn't want any of his banker friends to lose money on their foolish speculative investments? That guy is really a piece of work.

From http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/05/geithner-blocked-imf-deal-to-haircut-irish-debt.html#Search">naked capitalism:

:loveya:

I am thinking this is an effort to preserve our access to funds.

Look what Meredith Whitney did to the whole class of Muni bonds earlier. She freaked people out on the entire class.

If Sovereign debt fears start spreading a contagion won't we be affected?

We're a sovereign currency nation. Our debt is denominated in our own fiat currency. This issue has nothing to do with us. Geithner interfered solely to save the skin of his pals on Wall Street.

And then people start looking at who is next and it rolls down the line.

Even the Greeks are denying they are looking at a haircut.

Our debt is denominated in our own currency.

but could you elaborate a tad? I don't understand the bonds markets that well. In particular, if investors were scared away from bonds of sovereign governments, where would that money go?

And will continue for soooo long.

K&R

Meanwhile, Iceland, which refused to take the path pushed onto Ireland, has been recovering.

There's a lesson there.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/12/iceland-ireland-portugal-markets
Iceland broke the rules and got away with it
Now Ireland and Portugal wish they too had got tough with the markets


Aditya Chakrabortty
The Guardian, Tuesday 12 April 2011

Remember Iceland? In the autumn of 2008, it became the first national casualty of the financial meltdown; the first rich country in more than three decades to take an IMF bailout. Commentators declared it the Icarus economy, which had finally come crashing back down to earth. It became both parable and laughing stock. What's the difference between Iceland and Ireland, joked traders – one letter and a few months.

You don't hear much about the insolvent island any more – apart from occasions such as this weekend, when Icelandic voters were asked to repay the £3.5bn owing on collapsed bank Icesave, and replied with a firm "Nei".

Unnoticed it may be, but Reykjavik now serves as a very different kind of parable, of how to minimise the misery of financial collapse by ignoring economic orthodoxy. And in those other broke European economies – from Dublin to Athens to Lisbon – politicians and voters are starting to pay attention. After its three biggest banks – 85% of the country's financial system – failed in the same week, Iceland did two remarkable things. First, it let the banks go under: foreign financiers who had lent to Reykjavik institutions at their own risk didn't get a single krona back. Second, officials imposed capital controls, making it harder for hot-money merchants to pull their cash out of the country.

These policies were not just controversial; they represented a two-fingered salute to the polite society of academics and policy-makers who normally lay down the laws on economic disaster management