Daily Blog - 01 December 2010

Criticism, analysis, response: The BudgetJam liveblog

23.00 Well that show has finished up. I think I'll finish up too. Make sure to check in tomorrow for more BudgetJam. As way of goodbye, The Twitter sent us this way as a recommendation for resistance: http://bit.ly/gBLRFu. Thanks to the good man Soundmigration for the link, the same man behind the welcome song for the IMF.

22.50 But then this whole 'so-and-so gets paid too much' from participants and texters does seem very locked in to the 'we're in this together' discourse. The whole problem seems to be that some people aren't 'feeling the pain' while most of us are. It's a reasonable irritant, but the discourse really needs to be shifted further - it needs to be 'fuck right off if you think we should pay for your crisis". But this may be, as Brian Lenihan might say, 'too much talk'.

22.45 Late Debate is very silly. If they're not yelling at each other, they're all talking at once. And then they're personalising it, making it all about the wages. Damien English (FG) is very funny: "Sure, don't you know, I only get paid 12 euros an hour?". That man is like Neo in the Matrix dodging a question.

22.28 A bit of levity. RTE/Pravda's Late Debate are taking recommendations for Anglo-Irish Bank's renaming. Considering my own favourite novel and the government's self-destructive and hopeless pursuit of a white-whale recovery, I have to recommend AHAB - Associated Housing Asset Bubble.

22.20 Ok, it seems the 'reform' of legal costs is particularly messy. The Memorandum commits to reducing legal fees. See page 14.

• - the legal profession, establishing an independent regulator for the profession and implementing the recommendations of the Legal Costs Working Group and outstanding Competition Authority recommendations to reduce legal costs."

But what, pray tell, were these recommendations? Oh, that is where it gets tricky. This is from the Legal Costs Working Group's report:

• "Firstly, the Group recommends the replacement of the existing taxation of costs system with a new system of assessment predicated on the formulation of recoverable cost guidelines — based on work actually and appropriately done — by a regulatory body."

From the monkeys: "currently lawyers are taxed based on the cost of a service. Apparently they want to be taxed on profit. If the net cost is expected to be reduced though, that requires a net reduction in tax". Any knowledgeable people out there got any ideas what LCWG's recommendation means?

22.00 Delay to water charges - "Water charges are to wait until after the construction of a water utility. The water utility will take over from councils and start charging in 2012/2013". The monkeys haven't ascertained if we're going to be shivved with a flat tax or a metered charge, but my guess would be that it'll be the flat one - according to a Veolia presentation, meters take about 5 years to install and trial. The property tax is also coming in at the same time, that's a lot of hurt, all at once.

21.40 This just in from the basement! The monkeys have managed to make sense of some more sections of the Memorandum:

21.32 A song here, from the Cabinet. Very nice animation. Thanks to Karrie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD2Vr7lb-D4

21.20 So my team of analysis monkeys are looking at the Memorandum, pulling the nasty shit out and running it through a Google translate. Here's their first pickings. From how the Government will reduce long-term unemployment by (no, not stimulating the economy, don't be stupid):

"the application of sanction mechanisms for beneficiaries not complying with job-search conditionality and recommendations for participation in labour market programmes set in such a way as to imply an effective loss of income without being perceived as excessively penalising so that it could credibly be used whenever lack of compliance is ascertained."

The monkeys' efforts at translation indicate that this means that they want to profile dolies based on number of job apps per week and cut the dole substantially if they don't pass. Nice. It's on page 11 of the memorandum, which is here: http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1201/finance.pdf

21.06 One of Eadaoin's budgetjam playlist, Micah P. Hinson is running out of patience and, like the younger generation, packing up his stuff. Goodbye Micah, goodbye economy!

21.00 In other news, the spread of democracy across the world continues unabated. Amazon have responded to US Government opprobrium and stopped renting servers to WikiLeaks. As we all know, a democracy is distinguished by the inability of citizens to now what their governments are doing or, in Ireland's case, to discuss other things they could do, which might work better.

20.54 Ok, one more angry song - Atari Teenage Riot tell us what we need. While that's playing, check out Roderick Flynn's 'Who's this 'We' paleface?'

But it is when it comes to addressing the problem that the political intent of suddenly adopting the first person plural (“we”) become obvious. It makes it possible for the state to contemplate measures like the four-year plan. Instead of the state acting as the welfare state is meant to be - standing in front of the weakest members of society and taking the force of the blow - it singles out those at the bottom of the pile, those on the minimum wage and social welfare, and uses them as a shield.

“We” are not where we are. They (the banks, the government, the ECB, the Euro) are where they are.

20.40 I have grappled unsuccessfully with video embed so you'll have to click through to YouTube to view this fine musical video and share my rage at the Irish elite. The Mighty Stef's 'We Want Blood'. Those rocking the Twitter, more angry songs  #budgetjam!

20.03 Ok, now I'm getting pissed off. Newstalk has given the full quote from Brian Lenihan's pronouncement in the Dail. The cheek of this guy is really astounding, irony escapes me. Rough paraphrase:

There's been a lot of talk in recent weeks about senior bondholders having to take their share of the pain. Too much talk in my opinion....[if people who look at the ongoing run on the banks and reflect, they'll see that some of this talk is causing it].

That's a really rough paraphrase, especially in the [], but we can get the full quote tomorrow. I'm pretty amazed at this stuff.  So it's Irish commentators who are responsible for the run on the banks, not the wreck of an economy that he's left us with? Words fail me. This is also a great expression of the intentional narrowness of Irish political discourse. 'Too much talk.' For fucksake.

19.55 Sorry to get all leftie here, but I think this quote from David Harvey's A Brief History of Neoliberalism is relevant to the transparency thing.

Neoliberal theorists are, however, profoundly suspicious of democracy. Governance by majority rule is seen as a potential threat to individual rights and constitutional liberties. Democracy is viewed as a luxury, only possible under conditions of relative affluence coupled with a strong middle-class presence to guarantee political stability. Neoliberals therefore tend to favour governance by experts and elites. A strong preference exists for government rather than democratic and parliamentary decison-making. Neoliberals prefer to insulate key institutions, such as the central bank, from democratic pressures.

I love David Harvey. One of those Marxists you can take home to your mother.

19.33 So I see that Mark Fielding, the ISME CEO has said that the outlined reduction in the minimum wage is 'the right move' [audio link from breakingnews.ie]. I would be very curious about what Mr. Fielding's salary is. And of course, who the hell is going to be buying if we don't have any money? I also notice that the bould Mr. Fielding, astute economic commentator that he is, advised investment in property back in - ooh - August 2006!

I have always felt more in control of property investments, with less chance of outside influences on return.

Well, he's definitely right about the minimum wage thing then. I see the light in the tunnel already.

19.30 NewsTalk reports that Mr. Lenihan has called those pro-defaulters (I'm one of them!) irresponsible, saying that we may cause foreign investors to become nervous about the business environment here. Unlike Mr. Lenihan's policies, which have set the Yanks lining up to give us all jobs for life.

19.25 The commitment of the Irish state to opacity is really quite impressive. From Eoin's article, the document was:

1. typed up by someone or a few people,
2. it was compiled into one document
3. it was PDF'ed and then,
4. hey, someone decided to scan that PDF to make it inaccessible.

Scanning things isn't even convenient, that's a mark of bloody-mindedness. Eoin quotes Paul O'Mahony here:

"The friction involved in getting the most basic information from Irish public institutions acts against informed democracy. We assume that getting insight into how the government spends money is impossible, so we don’t try."

Sure what would you be wanting that information for Paul?

19.18 Aha, the software begins working again. Eoin O'Mahony has had a quick look at the Memorandum of Understanding with the EU/IMF and is impressed with its cultivated inaccessibility.

As he says, the state of Irish transparency is very poor, a problem well-documented by thestory.ie, who have been grappling with the opaque monstrosities of the Irish civil service for some time. A post from Nat O'Connor of Tasc sums up some of the problems.

18:42 A Fine warm Gale there:

18.33 Dara here, will be monitoring the airwaves for any discussions of anything other than the weather.

17.55 Just as RTE, faced with the details of the most important 'deal' in the history of the State, can't help but get distracted by speculation about how many Fianna Fail TDs are likely to step down before the next election, your intrepid liveblogger [still Harry, just] can't help but get distracted by the prospect of trudging through the snow to see Janelle Monae in the Tripod tonight. And, hey, these days aren't we all tippin' on the Tightrope? Only some of us have a safety net... 

17.40 Ah, NAMA, the gift that keeps on giving. "Further deleveraging of the banks will be achieved by the extension of the NAMA programme to include €16bn of land and development loans in AIB and Bank of Ireland, which had previously been excluded because they were below a value threshold of €20m."

17.30 The 'memorandum' document, 'EU/IMF Programme of Support for Ireland', really must be seen for its ritual significance. It begins with an almost self-abasing letter from Lenihan and Honohan to the Euro and IMF powers-that-be about how we went wrong -- in a nutshell, banks got too big, oops -- and how we Must Do Better. 

17.20 'Straitjacketed' much? Harry McGee on RTE radio explaining precisely how much the next government will have to 'adjust' Budgets for the next three years. And privatisation on the agenda. 

17.18 Memorandum on the bailout and Lenihan's statement available on irishtimes.com. RTE's Fergal Keane reports the deal is contingent on passage of the Budget.

17.15 So Brian Lenihan reckons we burned the banks by even talking about burning the boldholders. Terribly sorry.

17.13 No, we don't want to get dragged into the public-service debate, but Daniel Sullivan makes interesting points by email, in response to the 14.28 post quoting the OECD on our unexceptional public-service spending: "[Why] would we expect public service expenditure to increase to match the rise in GDP? ['we' wouldn't, but it's a typical measure - hb] There is logic in it rising to match increases in population as there are more people to provide services to but the idea that simply because the numbers in work increased in the private sector that we simple must increase the numbers in the public service seems to reflect a belief that the public service is primarily about provide some people with something to do and an income for doing it and not about provide the public with services that they need and have paid for. 14.6% might seem a low figure for "general government employment" but in many OECD countries at least they would have rather sizably military spending while we do not, and their public services provide more services not simply employ more people to do the same things as ours. 5.1% growth was well ahead of inflation and increases in the cost of living and the question has to be asked did the range and quality of service provided to the public increase commensurate with that 5.1% annual average figure. I suspect most members of the public would say no. Fact is too much of the increased spending was sucked up by those stakeholders with the closest access to the public funds, be that managerial staff in administration in the health service or the consultants."

16.57 Stephanie Rains writes on the subject of 'flexibility, the word beloved of neoliberals and evoked by Brian Cowen in defence of minimum-wage cuts yesterday: "The word itself is interesting in its imagery - that of a workforce permanently poised in a state of cat-like readiness to adapt, spring into action, go with the flow of labour market changes.  This, we are relentlessly told, is the only way for us to retain those fragile and easily spooked creatures, investors and job-creators.

"But it is striking - given that we're all in it together - the way in which this 'flexibility' is such a one-way street.  I doubt if the mortgage-holders or landlords of those on minimum wage will be so 'flexible' about receiving their monthly payments.  I doubt that the supermarkets will be 'flexible' about the food bills of those workers.  And on a more macro level, where is the flexibility of the senior bond holders in Irish banks?"

16.35 Harry here. Thanks Gavan, especially for evoking the gentleman adventurer for my trek up Lwr Kimmage Road. It's as close as I'm ever going to get.

16.27 News from Finland, no stranger to snow and economic implosion. According to the public broadcaster YLE, the Social Democrats intend to vote against the bailout, arguing that the 740 million loan guarantee contributed by Finland to the 'bailout' is not sufficiently secured. The Left Alliance has also indicated they will vote against it. It's interesting to see how the European level consensus is tested in various ways by populist jostling at the national level. And I mean 'populist' in a very specific sense. Finland has a general election in April 2011. Coalition governments are the Finnish norm, and currently the Centre Party (Keskusta) and the National Coalition party (Kokoomus) form a broad-based government along with the Greens and the Swedish People's Party of Finland (SFP/RKP). Normally, an election would see these main two vie with the Social Democrats to form government. However, over the last years, the Perussuomaliset (which translates as True Finns, or Basic Finns) have become increasingly influential, with recent opinion polls putting them close on the heels of the Social Democrats. The True Finns schtick certainly involves some nasty racism, but its leader, MEP Timo Soini, has reined in most of the swivel-eyed fringe in favour of a more broadly populist message about the fate of ordinary people and the need for a strong welfare state when buffeted by globalisation. Attacks on the EU as a threat to the ability to maintain this kind of state, and to sovereignty in general, have proved popular, and more so since the Greek bailout. In fact, the debate on the Irish crisis takes place in the immediate aftermath of a defection from the ruling Keskusta to PS, an act which has both Keskusta and the SD scrambling to position themselves in relation to the PS opinion poll surge.

I presume that the Left Alliance opposition is based on a critique, hoping to have a Finnish blogger on here soon. The Social Democrats, on the other hand, have been lurching to the right for a while. And if that puts you in mind of this rightward stumble closer to home..

16.18 Still briefly, TASC have just released their response to the EU-IMF agreement, which calls for a new government to renegotiate the deal.Their analysis makes the important point that current proposals that would see bondholders of loans issued after 2013 incur proportional losses is an 'acknowledgement that sovereign countries should not be reponsible for the entirety of loans in the banking sector'. A useful summary with a few points to debate (anyone?) check it out here http://bit.ly/i9z1em

15.56 Gavan here, briefly, Harry has stepped out, and in the manner of such gentlemen adventurers in the snow, he may be some time. Tom Farrell draws our attention to Martin Wolf in the FT today;

'The Irish banking system is worse than too big to fail; it is too big to save. The first duty of the state is to save itself, not to load its taxpayers with obligations to rescue careless lenders...The Irish state should have saved itself by drastic restructuring of bank liabilities. Bank debt simply cannot be public debt. If bank debt is to be such debt, bankers should be viewed as civil servants and banks as government departments. Surely, creditors must take the hit, instead....Left, right, up, down...no-one buys what Merrion St is up to...a shambles by every measure and dimension'.

15.12 The building where I'm blogging is now being closed, so there will now follow my own mid-afternoon Angelus, also known as 'trying to get home'.

15.10 Not surprisingly, when it comes to ‘going forward’, ‘positively’, Gavan says it better.

15.05 Okay, without setting any precedent for interactivity, it’s probably worthy trying to answer some of the criticism at 14.24.
There’s a lot going on here at the ‘All in This Together?’ Budgetjam, and blogging may even be the least of it. (It’s a new activity for many of us, and I know I’m teething.) Scroll around the page and enjoy, or not, as the case may be. Is a lot of it ‘negative’? Damn straight. There’s a lot to be negative about. And much of the impetus for our work here is precisely about ‘rejection’ -- Just Saying No to the myths that bind us to neoliberal ‘solutions’. As for offering some solutions of our own, well, perhaps that may come, but this (growing) network is not bound together by any common political-economic programme and proferred solutions will tend to be in a personal capacity. There are plenty of people out there offering answers; at the moment we’re offering, basically, resistance. And hopefully some tools to strengthen resistance.
Last night’s TV show was supposed to be a discussion about the media and the limits of mainstream discourse, and got way off track. I [yep, still Harry Browne here] didn’t argue with John McGuirk about the minimum wage or overpaid librarians and appreciated his ‘socialism for the rich’ comments. But his populist rage about public servants is, frankly, not only a distraction from the central issues of the national and global crisis, but also -- if translated into a policy of cutting the public sector and reducing wages for those still in it -- would be further disaster for the economy. I don’t always engage with that debate because as a third-level lecturer in a public institution I have a very direct ‘interest’; on a personal level I don’t believe there is any moral justification for such a substantial (though much fallen) income for a job as stimulating as the one I’ve got, at least this side of a workplace revolution that would see me job-share with the people who clean the toilets. And of course like anyone else I do get outraged at the much more lucrative pay-packages for others on the public payroll. But (perhaps conveniently) on a political level I don’t think this, or indeed a relatively trivial discount for ESB workers, is the sort of central social injustice we should be addressing as a matter of first-order urgency. Nor do I think the absurdly high incomes of many in the private sector -- orders of magnitude higher than the highest-paid ‘public servants’ -- are socially neutral and somehow more sacrosanct.
If any of that comes as a disappointment to particular readers, they should probably look elsewhere.

14.28 Thanks to Eadaoin O’Sullivan for the OECD stats from 2008 on what the Celtic Tiger did for public services: “public sector spending and employment growth have not kept up with population and GDP growth. Ireland’s real average annual growth rate in public expenditure between1995 and 2005 was 5.1%, significantly slower than real GDP growth of 7.5%.... Government policy therefore has actually decreased the total number of public sector employees as a percentage of the labour force and decreased the overall public sector wage bill as a percentage of GDP. As compared with other OECD countries, 2005 data indicate that general government employment in Ireland represents around 14.6% of the total labour force, which is relatively low among OECD countries.”
Of course public spending in health and education did increase quite dramatically, given that it was chasing bubbly GDP growth. But even the OECD acknowledged that the hikes “reflected a need to play catch-up from historically low levels”, and that we were still never better than average even when you measured spending against the more modest growth in domestic income: “Once one accounts for the financial flows (profits and other revenues) entering and leaving the country...the level of public expenditure expressed as a percentage of gross national income (GNI) is much closer to OECD average levels.”

14.24 This just in by email, from a reader commenting both on this blog and last night's 'Tonight with Vincent Browne' show: "You're blog is pretty awful. It just seems to consist of sniping from the sidelines without any substantive and positive suggestions abotu what we should do. And I hate to agree with McGuirk but it was just an example of the disparity in public sector pay and how the government shouldn't have been cutting the minimum wage. He was your side it would seem. For God's sake he said that socialism was applied to the rich while capitalism applied to the poor. And is it reasonable that ESB workers get discounted electricity. It would seem not.
I thought this was going to be different. It's not."

14.12 More revolting students. Very impressive that they’re staging an outdoor ‘occupation’ on this of all days. Fertile ground among students, perhaps, for Gavan's idea of a series of in-bank teach-ins next Tuesday. That's 'in', where it's warm. (See 11.19, below.)

14.07 Thanks Hugh Green on Twitter for the link to Paul Krugman’s latest Irish blog post: the bailout is “reparations imposed on an innocent public”.

14.02 Liveline caller says “I thought we were all supposed to be in this together.” Unfortunately it’s in the context of bashing ESB workers for getting discounted electricity.
The item does offer the regulator’s telling euphemism for cutting off people’s electricity: “de-energising” -- exactly what the ‘key myths’ are meant to do to all of us.

13.43 Since the TV/radio news today is largely a weather report, it’s back to today’s newspapers. Brian Cowen defends the cut in the minimum wage, even if it was all Olli Rehn’s idea. The raw sadism of this utterly superfluous action has struck everyone except IBEC, and has offered the resistance to the bailout an easily grasped conversation starter. As Leo Panitch puts it, apropos the notion that Ireland’s working class has been overpaid: “The problem is not that Irish workers are too well off. The problem is the enormous wealth inequality, and above all inequality in power, and irrational investment that has gone on in these countries.”

13.29 Students, obviously, are revolting.

13.23 Re: effective resistance -- make a big noise.

13.13 When I saw today’s Irish Times lead story my first thought was -- aha! -- this bailout ‘plan’ is failing even on its own terms, because it has failed to stabilise the euro zone. Incompetence is not limited to our own miserable shower of ‘planners’, as the IMF’s lousy forecasting record makes clear.
But then I remembered arguments about the Iraq war, when many people, including lots on the left, labelled Bush & Co ‘incompetent failures’ because they hadn’t brought democracy, peace and stability to the country they invaded. I argued then that this was mistaking the Americans’ stated intentions for reality, and that no matter what else happened they had achieved a notable ‘success’ by destroying a major Arab nation.
For many of the key players in the current global economic crisis -- including those who forced Ireland into bailout -- ‘austerity’ (i.e. the destruction of public services and the welfare state) is its own reward. Whatever else happens, we can be sure that many of the stated intentions of the bailout, including the laughably irrelevant one of restoring Ireland’s economy to good health, pale into insignificance compared to the ‘shock doctrine’ goal of eviscerating the public sector and forever lowering people’s expectations of the capacity of the state to work on their behalf. (Of course even in the good times the Irish state did a fine job of lowering expectations by delivering such shoddy public services.)
This isn’t meant as a totalising conspiracy theory: as Gavan’s note on Portugal at 11.53am makes clear, ‘the markets’ don’t always ‘like’ austerity, even when neoliberal orthodoxy does. The contradiction was most blatant when S&P’s chief economist made the Indo front page by swearing that ‘we like what you’re doing, we really do’, just as the markets savagely dumped us.

13.09 Note that the US cable, from 2006, was sparked by the acquittal of the Shannon 5/Pitstop Ploughshares, seen as evidence of deep Irish hostility to the use of Shannon.  Some guide as to what constitutes effective resistance?

13.04  We have however located Gavan's last post before he was raptured:
Mary Fitzgerald has tweeted out the first Wikileak cables to deal with Ireland. No prizes for guessing they relate to the transit of hundreds of thousands of Marines through Shannon. Cable can be found here. Funny, I didn’t hear anyone refer back to this particular exercise in ‘sovereignty’ over the last week. They certainly didn’t die for that either, Geraldine Kennedy.

12.50 Harry Browne here. I never knew Gavan to be so, um, devotional. After the 50min Angelus the Budgetjam liveblog is back in business, gremlins allowing.

12.00 Just pausing now for The Angelus

11.58 To be read with the Guardian piece below, Bloomberg just posted a piece examining the scope of the responses required now that investors have decided that the Irish bailout, which is not yet signed, will not work.

“You’ve had repeated interventions, but the markets are still selling in response,” said Andrew Balls, London-based head of European portfolio management at Pacific Investment Management Co., which runs the world’s biggest bond fund. “Policy makers have to move beyond a country-by-country approach and think about the system-wide challenges.”

11.53 The Guardian today has a report on the auction today of 12-month bonds, ahead of which Standard and Poor has warned that it may cut Portugal's credit rating. Check this:

'Last night, S&P announced that it had put Portugal's debt on negative credit watch, and may downgrade its A- rating in three months. The agency said there were "increased risks" to the Portuguese government's creditworthiness, and warned that its austerity cutbacks would harm economic growth.

"In 2011, Portugal's minority government is set to implement an ambitious fiscal austerity program with an emphasis on reducing expenditures. However, we see the government as having made little progress on any growth-enhancing reforms to offset the fiscal drag from these scheduled 2011 budgetary cuts," said S&P's credit analyst Frank Gill.'

11.47 From Stephanie Rains, picking up and expanding on how the nature of media flow further naturalises the totemic idea of 'the market':

Amidst all the imagery and analogy for national unity, we're all in it together, there is no alternative, where's the discussion of the primary force behind all this, the international markets?  All of the decisions taken by the government, the ECB, the IMF etc are predicated on the idea of 'the markets' having certain characteristics:
1) autonomy and separateness - this idea that they're a independently-functioning organism which is divorced from social formations, politics, ideology etc.  When clearly they're deeply entangled with European and national government formations, and drivers of a very distinct ideology.  That ideology may well place no particular value on social formations, democracy etc, but doesn't this have to be discussed?
2) rationality - the drive to meet the demands of 'the markets' is entirely based upon the idea of them as rational and machine-like.  And yet even our current reporting is forced to describe them as 'nervous', 'jumpy', 'unstable' etc.  This makes them appear less like a divine hand and more like a jittery flock of birds.

Surely time for some mainstream media discussion of the very concept of the financial markets and of course the relationship between their operations and those of elected governments?

11.37 Thanks to Anna Marie Mullally for sending on this from Der Spiegel today, a graph of debt for 'Europe's problem children'. She points out that the original text writes of Sorgenkinder, a phrase with some colonial resonance. There is only one response to that, and it's not totally mature, admittedly.

11.30 Prichard on Kenny draws attention to the contradiction between the ECB and Commission trumpeting the stress tests passed by European banks, banks which would then be fatally undermined by any form of loss on their investments. Kenny asked, rightly, what kind of system is this? Prichard laughed. The moment at which 'right' and 'left' critiques converge, and then spring apart. Interesting though, just like the Rehn 'love you love you not' statements posted below, the European-level explanations are riven with contradiction. Not being surprised by that, or expecting these contradictions to be resolved, is a step closer to understanding capitalist crisis.

11.19 There is a hollow irony that we need occupations to confront a crisis symbolised by empty properties. Anyway, creative, flash style occupations are back here and in the UK. The University of Strategic Optimism can be seen here holding seminars on the relationship between the banking crisis and the shafting of third level education in a branch of Lloyds, and with a follow up lecture in Tescos. Lookleft magazine on Facebook wryly advising people to occupy the Anglo near them before it becomes an unbearably hipster thing to do. In Cork the Social Welfare Defence Campaign has occupied a zombie Anglo. That's the second sense of zombie; physically empty, not just the fiscal undead.

Well let's be untrendy at least for a week. How about a series of alternative budget visions, teach-ins on the bailout, etc, in banks across the country, just as Lenihan rises at 15.00 next Tuesday?

11.16 Ambrose Evans Prichard of the Telegraph on Kenny right now giving a very succint explanation of how the 'consenting adults' involved in speculation, investment and European regulation are now holding Irish citizens entirely responsible for a systemic failure.

10.57 Brief discussion on VB last night on wealth in Ireland. Kathleen Lynch mentioned a CSO report showing 'Resident holdings of foreign portfolio securities' totalling 1.25 trillion at end of 2009.  Throw that phrase into google and a pdf comes up as the first link. Colin Coulter opens up this myth that 'the country is broke' here

10.29 The discussion of John Gormley's heartfelt outburst on the Kenny Show is another interesting showcase of depoliticisation. It's all about the boy; do you feel sorry for him at all? Etc. The discussion seemed to centre on a fairly useless either or - can we or can we not blame the Greens for the crisis? And then the texts and tweets flow in, analyzing Gormley's character, the nation playing Doctor Phil to the good nerds gone bad.

Well here's a - wait for it - hypothesis. Watching some of the Greens in action (part of my 5-a-day etc) on the media of late I'm struck by what seems to be a sense of nonplussedness, a pained gaze, as if to say, don't these angry people know we mean well? That we are committed to good things? That we want a better world (or a Green Reich according to Deputy Gogarty this morning). Part of the problem for the Greens is that, without an explicit red-green politics, or at least tension within the party, they were always going to be painfully exposed by capitalist crisis. Without, for example, a more radical ecological platform, that is able to constantly relate environmental issues to questions of social justice, the public good and the power webs of globalization, it becomes a kind of lifestyle politics. At best this becomes regarded as disposable in hard times, at worst it becomes a ventriloquist for neoliberal orthodoxy. And that's what has happened to the Greens, and their incredulity that protesting their good intentions does not compensate for supporting the idea that 'there is no alternative' to the bank guarantee, social welfare cuts, the bailout, and so forth.

10.18 And on it goes on Kenny. Phil Hogan has used the word reform alot. But not as a verb, more as an incantation. 'Reform' is one of those terms from the central crib sheet of managerialist evasion. It casts the current state of an institution, for example, as inherently problematic, as seperated out from wider considerations, and gives you that 'going forward' fairydust. But reform what? Why? How, precisely, is X deformed?

10.11 Oh jaysus. Pat Kenny and Paul Gogarty in dialogue right now. Kenny asked Deputy G as to whether Gormley is now like Hitler, raving in the bunker in the last days. Do you break Godwin's law if you are surreal enough? Deputy G's answer was that 'unlike Hitler the green reich will march on'. The airports are closed folks, we have no choice but to face this down. The Desert Fox, on a bike.

10.05 On the question of Portugal being talked up and talked in, here's Mark Fonseca Rendeiro on other ways of reporting Portugal. As against the 'we are not Greece/Portugal' talk, one of our aims here is to reach out to our fellow PIIGS (what will happen that acronym when plucky little Belgium falls?). So hopefully Mark and others will be blogging for us here. Any links, suggestions on that front very welcome. Particularly from the German press.

09.39 This project kicked off last night on The Vincent Browne show with a discussion of the interrelations between the strategies of the ECB, IMF and EC and 'media spin'. Lively stuff, but the main focus got a little lost once John McGuirk decided that the pay of UCD's chief librarian was an issue of overweening national interest. Video here.

Quite a good discussion of media ownership, editorial lines, and deeper assumptions about the boundaries of the thinkable when it comes to political economy. But a range of other things could have come up.

For a start, the relationship between media coverage, 'market anxiety' and state action. On Morning Ireland this morning they featured a report in the FT about PORTUgAL YoU ARe NexT!!

This featured the usual dialogue between market analysts saying oh yes they do, and politicians in Portugal saying oh no we don't. When FF and the Greens ('Fine Gael on bikes', thanks Eoin for that one) were in this position, it was read as a sign of disunity, incompetence, and mendacity. Generally this charge sheet is uncontroversial, but there has been very little media reflection on performativity - that is, bringing something into being by speaking it. The issue here isn't a straightforward one of the right and duty to report versus claims to the national interest. The feedback loops between market analysis, business and mainstream news, communications operations, the pressure to officially comment, confirm or deny - it is these loops that create a reality intent on eating itself.

Further, we need to look at the ways in which the neoliberal mystification of 'the market' is assumed and normalised in media discourse. It's not a question of 'bias', it runs far deeper (Mark Fisher discusses this as 'capitalist realism' over on his excellent kpunk blog).The daily rhythms of reporting, sourcing and framing stories in a non-stop multimedia environment further embed this shorthand. Except it's not a shorthand, it's a hyperlink to a whole set of assumptions that are crumbling around us, with Ireland as the current site of implosion.

09.36 Our email again: budgetjam@gmail.com

09.25 You wait around for ages for some myth-busting and then two come along at once. Great post by Slí Eile on progressive-economy@tasc gathering up the stock phrases and soundbites that act as door jams in media debate. Cut them out, pull them randomly out of a hat, and make your own episode of the Marian Finucane sunday show. Here's the top ten or so (I didn't count them):

‘We are where we are’
‘the worst is nearly over’
‘we can bounce back especially when we have been bounced into it’
‘we are all in this together’
‘we all were responsible – over-spending, two cars, credit cards, mortgages. We should all be ashamed of ourselves’
‘folks on the dole need an incentive to go out to work’
‘we would not start from here but we will not undo it either’
‘sure we would have done it ourselves if given the opportunity. Don’t be hard on anyone who got it wrong’
‘We are not Greece’
‘We are not Portugal’
‘We’ll get through this’
‘don’t mention emigration’
‘there will be pain for everyone’
‘Love the bondholders and turn the other cheek. They will love us for 6% per annum’
‘all our elderly uncles and creditors abroad said that we are good and responsible children in reducing the Irish economy to its knees. Salvation is only through austerity and all economic history proves this. Let the history of the pre-celtic 1980’s and the post Tiger 2008- be written this way’
‘never mind Krugman, Stiglitz, Blanchflower, the FT, WSJ, Guardian, der Spiegel – they don’t understand Ireland’

09.18 Funny how after years of being told we had left the corset of national homogeneity behind, national character has made a roaring comeback as the neoliberal platitude of choice. It’s confusing though. How can we be humble enough for Barry Andrews and the "smart, resilient and stubborn people" that Olli Rehn so admires?

Rehn, of course, has also been lovingly scripted in the Irish media as the straight-talking Finn who’ll see us through in the long term, like a kind of fiscal Paavo Nurmi. So interesting to see this from Michael Taft last night, on Rehn endorsing the National Recover Plan while rejecting the projected rate of growth:

"Commissioner Rehn announces on Sunday that he ‘strongly’ supports the Government’s National Recovery Plan. He even said:

Implementing the plan will offer a “sound basis for stable, job-creating growth.”

Then, on Monday, he announces he doesn’t believe the growth rates contained in the Plan. In fact, he so disbelieved them that the EU Commission tacked on another year to the Maastricht target. Question: how can you strongly support a plan when you so strongly disbelieve the projections that underpin them?"

09.07 A few teething problems here, fickle server and typing in mittens.

 08.23This the first morning of our liveblog, running from today until after the budget. Budgetjam came together over the last weeks as an attempt to unsettle the 'there is no alternative' dogmas and platitudes that shape mainstream media coverage.

Funny thing is, the way events have accelerated over the last week has done some of this work for us. More on that later. For now, just to recap what this budgetjam site is all about. Media monitoring, gathering critical ideas, internationalising our 'national tragedy' and linking up actions and resources for protest and resistance.

08.19 Dear post-citizens of post-post-sovereign Ireland, good morning! Welcome to budgetjam.

Morning Ireland has just announced that every member of the riot squad, including all dog and mounted units, will be on hand to greet you next week should you be thinking of protest.

That’ll be the best snowball fight of the week at any rate.

07:53 Gavan Titley signing in this morning.