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I don't feel so guilty about this any more. We bailed out German, French and other bank bondholders for billions (that unlike TARP we will never see back) when

I don't feel so guilty about this any more. We bailed out German, French and other bank bondholders for billions (that unlike TARP we will never see back) when we should have give them 50% haircuts. 18% of my countrymen now live abroad, far higher rates for young people - including way too many of my friends. Most of the reasons for our mistakes are entirely our own but the EU can bugger off if it thinks it should be able to set our tax rates - each citizen will be paying back debts because of their banks for decades - financially and at the human level.

IAmEveryone 9y ago
I usually don't engage in this sort of trivial nationalism. But I just have to inject that your retelling of this story omits the fact that Irish banks were obviously first in line to go belly-up. It is true that those banks had various lenders in Germany/France/wherever, and that the consequences of an all-out collapse of the Irish economy would have had negative effects in those countries as well. But presenting it as some sort of altruistic sacrifice to allow them to rescue Ireland from a potato-based future is just adding moral bankruptcy to the other. It's also frustrating to see such uninformed hatred, considering EU funding of 44.6 Billion Euros since 1976 was what essentially allowed an agrarian society to catch up with Western Europe in the first place. Plus, obviously, a large fraction of those 18% of Irish living abroad are beneficiaries of the EU's open borders. [0]: https://ec.europa.eu/ireland/about-us/impact-of-EU-membership-on-Ireland_en https://ec.europa.eu/ireland/about-us/impact-of-EU-membershi...