On The Myth Of Ireland's Debt Sustainability

Ireland is continually held up as the poster-child for austerity-driven 'aid' and how the European Union can successfully manage an economy through a depression with no real pain for bankers. Unfortunately, as we have pointed out previously, judging a nation's progress on the back of its bond yields (when liquidity is negligible and the mighty hand of ECB-collateral-reacharound is upon us) should become anathema from any serious analysis. The sad truth, specific to Ireland in this case, is the relative size and importance of EU subsidies (and the EU budgetary allocation) mean that assumptions of current account surplus going forward (the much-needed elixir to sustain the gross debt load the nation's taxpayers now are buried under thanks to banker-transfers) leave Ireland's debt sustainability greatly in question.   Authored by Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev, originally posted at True Econ...