timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article7140211.ece
So there you go. All of us who didn’t partake are smug and were just lucky. Stupidly lucky
Well actually Matt us smug people ARE ALREADY paying for the debt-fuelled lifestyles of others; what the hell do you think NAMA & the bank bailouts is ???
What I personally resent is the proposal that I should have to now pay out again so that I not only have to pay for the dumb bastards that lent the money; but also the plebs that borrowed it !!
So let me express it clearly.
Fuck you & the horse you rode in on !
Debts have to be paided by someone. If not by the original borrower, then by the shareholders in the bank (ie pension funds, private shareholders etc.) or by other bank customers or the taxpayer. How is it Matt Cooper cannot understand this?
I have no problem with shareholders loosing out, but punishing the prudent for the mistakes of others is hardly a solution.
Hi Matt, the banks and the people that owe these banks money are free to negotiate any kind of debt resolution deal that they want to.
Thanks,
a taxpayer.
PS. “If fairness and morality can be put to one side” is not a strong basis for arguments, sure doesn’t it cost a fortune to keep criminals in jail.
Doesn’t that almost sign like a FF Party slogan ?
You just have to swap ‘economy’ for ‘us’.
Something to do with the fact that he is in negative equity himself?
I have to say this stuff really depresses me - makes me feel like getting the first plane outta here.
I’m proud to say that I consider myself neither dumb nor smug. Several people of my acquaintance (including relatives) are now in negative equity having bought in 2005/2006 when I was selling. They asked for my opinion and I gave it. They ignored it. Will I end up bailing some of them out personally (the family members) at some future date? It’s possible, in fact probable…although it hasn’t come to that yet…But if I do so it will be my choice. Do I feel any obligation to bail out every dog in the street who failed to do the maths before taking out a jumbo mortgage? No I do not. Sorry Matt - you still have a (well paid) job so yes you will have to keep paying that mortgage. If you ask me to pay for your mistakes I’ll pack my bags and leave this pathetic land-of-no-responsibility - Consider that a promise.
The same cunt who can’t understand one of his sidelines that is champions league football (Gilesy and the geriatric gang can).
I wish these types would ever just fuck right off.
This cunt like the rest sprung up out of nowhere back in the day and it’s time the easy money dried up.
Fucking clown.
Fuck off Matt you dickhead,we have no interest in the nonsense your bosses accept as news.
He stated on The Last Word that he himself isn’t in NE. Bought his house 15-20 years ago so hard to see how he would be. Doesn’t add anything to his argument though.
What’s the bets he dabbled in property investment then? Call me cynical, but the way he keeps banging on about debt forgiveness? Either he’s a lot more altruistic than the average bloke (just can’t wait to shell out higher taxes for others debts?) … or (more likely) he needs a bit of it himself!
There is something quite stressed about that article.
Just because someone in not in NE on their house doesnt mean they have no debt worries. Thats just a statement by the way, I have no idea about his circumstances. It’s almost BOCish in it’s fervour. Wierd.
Here is some balance written a few months ago by Kathleen Barrington
Lost any regard I had for him after reading that piece of drivel,I concur with the majority of the eloquently expressed sentiment here and will add my own for good measure…go fuck yerself.
I have no prosperity Matt. The ruling classes of Ireland took that away from me over the last 10 years. Did that by concentrating the wealth of the country - such as it was - in nontradable property. I’ll be paying for till the day they bury me.
I own no property nor a mortgage. Luck in a way had something to do with it. The ratio of a house price to my salary was about 10:1. I can, I suppose thank you and your ilk for it; but I don’t. I resent it because if you hadn’t colluded with many other Irish people, and the banks, and the developers, **you and your ilk wouldn’t now be in the mess that you are in and I would actually own a house. We would both be a shit load better off. ** You wouldn’t need bailing out and we might have a better public service to look forward to rather than the spectacular cuts we are facing into.
I have some few savings. Not a lot. But I am paying significantly more tax than I was 2-3 years ago to be paying for this. And fortunate timing is not how I would describe a housing bubble that priced me out of the market at a key moment in my life. Yes, I listened to gobshites telling me I should buy now, should get my foot on the ladder now lest I get left behind. Well I got left behind; but I don’t have a mortgage, or a millstone around my neck.
I’m not glib and I am not smug. I regret very much what has happened in Ireland. But I cannot afford to pay for it and I resent fuckwits suggesting I should pay to get them out of trouble. No one forced them to sign on those dotted lines and if they hadn’t, we would all - them included - be better off. I’m not here because I was dumb or lucky. I am here because despite a monumental amount of society pressure, I chose not to be dumb enough and unlucky enough to get a mortgage on a property, any property over the past 10 years. I’m having some difficulting lining that up with “luck”. I think it’s called “not being stupid and blinded by emotion”.
So please, shut the fuck up about “what is best for the economy” because that is not what it’s about. If it were, we would have a 50% crash in property prices over night 4 years ago. Anglo Irish would have been wound down 3 years ago and a bunch of idiots who the media class lauded to us as heros over the past 8 years would be in jail.
But it hasn’t been and they are not, and right now I have people like you claiming that we have to bail out the people who are overstretched. They were happy to lord it over us when they were rich with their properties and second properties. With that wealth comes a responsibility, the responsibility to recognise when it’s gone. If it ever was. It isn’t because they were particularly bright that they could sing that song; it is because of dumb luck. And dumb luck can bite.
We will wind up having to bail them out; I know this; but there has to be a quid pro quo. If your mortgage gets written off, you lose your house, your investment properties, and you start over. Clean sheet but no free rides. Dump the properties on the market in return for a bail out. We will get the property crash and we the people of Ireland will all be better off for it.
But that’s not what you’re proposing I suspect. Your proposal will lead to me paying for other people getting to keep houses they couldn’t afford and shouldn’t have bought in the first place and because I am paying for that, I will never get to buy my own house.
That’s not in the best interests of the economy or society.
+1 Calina.
Matt Cooper is like DMW - he was critical in the boom and that should be praised, but his proposed solutions are awful.
His argument doesn’t even make sense - spending money to bail out those in debt does not create as many jobs as, for example, giving the money to someone with no debts but a good business idea. But no, no, free property for everyone and we all go back around for Matt.
At least Bertie has a kind of honesty - the snake doesn’t pretend it is not a snake - but Matt Cooper is revealed as a wolf in sheeps clothing. Unless of course it was a typo and that article was written by another newstalk host with the same initals.
You do a disservice to wolves here. Wolves when they are revealed are generally competent at what they do. He is not revealing as having any particularly useful vision for the future.
That’s a little depressing about the whole thing. It is a glib and smug solution - I don’t need it, it’s dumb luck that I got to where I am, so that must be true for everyone else.
Malcolm Gladwell may well be right that it is luck that gets someone to a particular position, but along the way there are plenty of opportunities to fuck up. Not fucking up while still doing stuff is a fine art and a difficult one; the temptations to fuck up are many and varied. Knowing the arse end of a cow from a chance to spew money down the toilet is not normally a particularly relevant or useful skill, but the scale of the pyramid scheme in Ireland has rendered it darwinian.
What I don’t understand (or rather I do and I don’t like it) is why the bankruptcy laws aren’t seriously being talked about. The twelve year rule is onerous, almost certainly too much so. Paying back as much as you can over, say, a five year period, or a three one, hell, pick a number, would have the same effect for those who are completely swamped. For those who are not, it will be a tough step to take. Could they live without credit for the penalty years? Why is this not happening? Well, I suspect it is because it is a complicated message - you have to take some responsibility for your actions, your life will be harder as a result, but everyone else will assist (in that we will, lordy help us, be ‘supporting’ the banks).
I also have a vague suspicion that there is an element of vendetta in this. If there is a popular move for this, perhaps it will put pressure on the banksters and prevent the bailout of the ansbacher classes through NAMA? Could that be the logic? If so, it is flawed.
The less charitable interpretation is that Mr. Cooper has supped of the “credit is the lifeblood of the economy” cup - it isn’t. Spending is. Credit is the cocaine of the economy; it makes you feel great until your septum lands in your tea. Spending is what you do with what you have earned, whether now or in the future (through credit). Well, the spending has happened. My Sony Bravia 32" doesn’t support 3d. I feel a little cheated…
Can’t read the article but from the responses and quotes here looks like Matt is another casualty of the Boom.
BTW Bertie was and is the veritable Wolf in Sheep clothing, don’t ever ever forget that … he had the “Lovely Man” persona down. If you ever been in close proximity as I have to the beast you’ll know.
Calina,
This is exactly what is going to happen. No general bail out, case by case workout with the shifty feckers pursued heavily.
It was/is never going to be a general scheme. That would be based on “entitlement”, like our fucked up social welfare and never work.
Sadly Grumpy that isn’t what I would expect.
In Ireland the one that shouts the loudest, or knows a TD/Councillor, gets the most.
Just look at Frank Faheys fund of fisherman in his constituancy.
[Editted to correct quote attribution !]
Long time reader, first time poster…
Upon reading this post, as one of the smug and lucky ones, we’ve already been identified already as prudent and so we should attempt to exploit this with the help of Matt. To this end, I’ve come up with the following plan.
Rather than debt forgiveness, the government should go down the bailout route and bail these people out with vast sums of money. We, the prudent ones, would be ideally placed to administer these mini-bailouts on behalf of one or more unfairly oppressed and pay back their mortgages in a gradual and responsible manner.
And to quote Homer Simpson: if we’ve learned anything in the last few years, and we haven’t, I too want my chance to have access large amounts of money that doesn’t really belong to me and fund a lifestyle to which I could become accustomed…