Morgan Kelly injects fear and loathing into the Irish Bank System

I highly recommend that anyone who cares about the irish economy to read Morgan Kelly‘s “The Irish Credit Bubble” (pdf link).

You need to blow past the economic formula in the first few pages and get into the meat of the analysis. In summary, in 2009 we opened our main parachute and a grand piano popped out in its place. In 2010 we will open the reserve ‘chute to find an anchor attached.

Some nice quotes:

“The destruction of the Irish entrepreneurial class may prove one of the most enduring and costly consequences of the property bubble”

“The mis-management of Irish financial institutions was amplified by the presence of a genuinely rogue bank, Anglo Irish”

“Since the seventeenth century, financial innovation has consisted in banks finding new ways to lose money”

“However, the question remains of why, given that Ireland’s bankers were probably no more reckless, its regulators no more spineless, and its politicians no more clueless than their counterparts elsewhere, how did Ireland come to have a far larger credit boom than other wealthy economies, with the exception of Iceland?”

“The issue therefore is not whether the Irish bank bailout will restore the Irish banks so that they can function as independent commercial entities: it cannot. Rather it is whether the Irish government’s commitments to bank bond holders when added to its existing spending commitments, will overwhelm the fiscal capacity of the Irish state, forcing outside entities such as the IMF and EU to intervene and impose a resolution on the Irish banking system”

Read it and weep.