Responding to the UK’s actions to bail out Ireland, Prof Philip Booth, Editorial and Programme Director at the IEA said:

“Europe is trapped in a cycle where debt is being passed round and round in circles – the banks are bust so the Irish government bails them out; the Irish government’s debt is owned by other banks and if the government defaults, they go bust; the EU as a whole then tries to rescue both in opaque arrangements which are only sustainable because Ireland is so small; now Britain is getting involved.

“Responding to debt crises in this way is entirely unsustainable, we potentially have crises in Italy and Spain around the corner and nobody can shoulder their indebtedness.

“The EU has been sitting around doing very little for the last two years (except for dreaming up new regulations for the banks, hedge funds and private equity). What it and the nation states involved should have been doing is ensuring that banks can be wound up in an orderly fashion so that all providers of capital and credit potentially lose money except for depositors who were insured at the beginning of the crisis. The EU governments are simply underwriting mistakes made by private businesses and then blaming it all on “casino capitalists”.

“The Irish government’s debt position would not, in fact, be that bad if it were not for the bank guarantees. Ireland is not another Greece (or Italy) – its underlying position is sound. The key issue has not changed since the beginning of the crisis – it is the need to recognise failed financial institutions for what they are and not load the cost of their bad loans onto taxpayers in general. At the beginning of the crisis, the bail-outs were understandable; we have now had two years to sort out proper legal mechanisms for winding up banks.”

Notes to editors

To arrange an interview with Mark Littlewood, IEA Director General or Prof Philip Booth, IEA Editorial and Programme Director, please contact Stephanie Lis, Communications Manager, 077 5171 7781, 020 7799 8900, slis@iea.org.uk.

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