Indo Article on More Department of Finance questionable figures.

[onq]

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/c...ring-for-leaders-who-cant-add-up-2940086.html

A month ago, the FAC issued a call for even greater austerity in the forthcoming Budget. Mr Howlin said the FAC call would be taken into account.
Mr Noonan, the Minister for Getting Approval From the Bundestag, said the scale of the austerity would indeed be increased.
At which point, Michael Taft, a researcher with the Unite trade union, popped up. Your figures are wrong, he said. The FAC had claimed to show that austerity had reduced the deficit from 14.8 to 10 per cent -- a significant pay-off for the pain we had already suffered. Mr Taft showed that the actual drop was from 11.8 to 10 per cent. In short, billions were cut from the economy to little positive effect.

If we're not getting it done with the pain we've got, why bother?
Equally if taking the money out does so little, what about putting some money back in?

After some embarrassing squirming, the FAC adjusted its figures in line with his correction. And last week, as the Government preened itself over its courage at slashing jobs, up popped Mr Taft again. He's a handy chap who seems to spend his life immersed in the kind of data that gives the rest of us headaches and he publishes the results occasionally on a blog called Notes From The Front.
The Government boasted of "gross savings" of €2.5bn. The net savings (after lost tax revenue etc) are something else. Mr Taft used ESRI measurements to predict that the public service job cuts would cut consumer spending by over €1.2bn, remove about €2.3bn from the domestic economy -- and reduce the deficit by all of 0.03 per cent. And that's before the negative effects of the VAT increase.

FAC = Fiscal Advisory Council
These are the Members
Apparently, we're not paying them anything - and you know what they say...

There is much more in the article debunking the €600 Million figure supposedly saved on Dole Cheats.
This is such a substantial figure that just before a budget it could easily be parlayed into public anger sufficient to justify a witch hunt.

Finally there is a nasty reference to a confirmation in the Times yesterday that it was "Tim Geithner, who insisted that Irish citizens should pay the entire cost of bailing out the unsecured bondholders (including US banks) who had bet on Anglo and lost..."

This government and they way they are doing business is ripe and with this revelation the bona fides of the Eurozone and America start to look unconvincing.
It isn't the first time people with very little business acumen or foresight have been sucked into availing of easy money on low credit terms.
Supplied by Germany, gambled on by America - and both of these countries involved in the bailout of an incompetent government.
One step away from propping up a dictator and selling him Boeing 747's that his people will have to pay for over decades.

I'll bet they still see us as a banana republic.