Has Alex Sammond’s Eagerness For Scottish Independence Doomed It?

Yesterday Scotland came one step closer to independence when Alex Salmond, the First Minister and Prime Minister David Cameron came to an agreement about holding a referendum in 2014 on the issue. The process and the referendum being offered to the Scottish people in two years time will be a surprisingly simple affair. There will be only one question asking whether or not one wants Scotland to secede from the Union and become independent. The First Minister wanted two questions offering two separate choices for Scotland’s future: independence or “devo-max”. The latter would have seen increased devolution of powers from Westminster to Holyrood in such affairs as taxation. David Cameron, a stern opponent of Scottish independence had refused two questions but to the consternation of his own party agreed to the referendum on the condition that there would be only one question that explicitly laid out the issue of independence or not.

There is no doubt that Alex Salmond and his Scottish Nationalist Party will be happy today and that getting Westminster to even approve a vote on independence will be seen as a crowning achievement. It is without doubt a seminal event but has the First Minister in his haste for a vote on independence doomed it? Scotland has had devolved government for close to fourteen years and in many respects it has been a very positive thing for Scots. The parliament in Holyrood has passed popular legislation such as abolishing prescription and college fees, the latter creating a huge discrepancy between the rest of the United Kingdom where students now could pay up to nine thousand pounds a year for their courses. To many politicians in London they snort that it has been only possible from financial transfers where Scotland gets more money than it creates by taxation and is therefore a blatant free-rider. The Scottish Nationalist Party scoff at such remarks saying that with North Sea oil revenues Scotland does the exact opposite with Westminster siphoning off money that are the fruits of its nation. Scotland in the opinion of nationalists will prosper if granted independence.

David Cameron would never have agreed to a referendum on independence if he did not believe it could be decisively beaten. Polls show only lukewarm support with the majority still in favor of staying in the United Kingdom. It appears people are more interested in the basic issues of the economy, education and welfare. Nationalists respond that once the debate gets kicking and the people begin to take an interest in the vote, things will change. Nevertheless the economic question of can Scotland be both financially independent and viable will be the decider. The prime minister was straight out of the gun after agreeing to the vote by visiting Rosyth and the shipyards where the next generation of British aircraft carriers are being built to emphasize that with independence such contracts could be in jeopardy and thus the loss of thousands of jobs.

The Scottish Nationalist Party was formed with the explicit intention of advocating for independence for Scotland. After winning a stunning outright majority last year in Scottish elections based on PR voting it seemed to Alex he had his mandate to ask for the referendum. But by placing all his cards on the table he has created a high-risk game. While already having control over certain aspects of Scotland through devolution, “devo-max” seemed a deeply unsatisfying option compared to independence. Considering the debate in Spain about Catalan independence, Scotland after winning from central government the right to a binding referendum has become the vanguard for regional independence in Europe. Although the Catalan President Artur Mas has advocated for Catalan independence, recently it has been more out of frustration with the government in Madrid refusing to devolve more powers such as independent tax raising to Barcelona, in essence “devo-max”. This is an issue seen even more egregious considering the other independence-inclined region of the Basque Country has that right. Artur Mas’s centre-right nationalist party Democratic Convergence of Catalonia would much prefer a process beginning with increased devolution for Barcelona to allow a stronger sense of independence to grow organically because to many right now a full jump to independence is somewhat unpalatable.

Scottish Parliament Debating Chamber, Holyrood

David Cameron firmly believes that many Scots are fearful of taking that jump to full independence, a new frontier that in light of the current world economic environment could be dangerous. Alex Salmond, who advocated for two questions took that exact jump. In 1979 Scotland voted in a referendum for devolution that failed on two accounts, a failure to win a majority of supporters voting and also the mandated quorum of registered voters. It took another generation to have another vote on the issue. While that issue was for basic devolution, it would be a lot harder to get Westminster to agree on another vote for independence in the future. A rejection of the referendum will be in the eyes of the government in London as a copper-fastened verdict and a mandate to refuse any other votes for a very long time if not forever. In essence the independence vote would in fact become the pawn of Westminster to prevent independence.

Alex Salmond and the SNP firmly believe they can win this debate but with rejecting a vote on “devo-max” in favor of a vote on full independence they could in fact doom the cause they were founded on for over a generation. David Cameron played hard-ball, pandering to that eager, genuine desire by the SNP for independence. Intoxicated by winning a strong mandate in elections last year more likely due to other issues than independence and a discredited Labour party, Alex Salmond has probably fallen for a Tory-designed trap to emasculate them. A failure to win a referendum could mean the other parties in Scotland against independence sense blood and advocate for a new Scottish election. It will at the very least hurt the SNP.

Rosyth shipyards

While I am personally a supporter of Scottish independence I feel that devo-max would have allowed a stronger sense of independence grow in Scotland and thus win over the sizeable minority firmly against secession. With greater control over all the important aspects of government bar currency and foreign affairs, Alex Salmond could then point to that success and call for outright independence. However he has never been one to take that path and has been consistently itching for a clear referendum on the issue. Alex Salmond is a surprising politician who has come back from behind countless of times to succeed at the end and he could very well win his cherished lifetime goal. But the stakes are high and in his haste he could have in fact sabotaged the entire cause for at least a generation. 

Argentina and the 100 Peso Note: A Story in Economic Mismanagement and Manipulation

The new 100 Peso note

Eight years ago when I first visited Argentina in what would result in an affair that lasts to this day, I was very naïve in what to expect from a nation that still felt numb after its economic collapse. I will admit that one of the reasons to visit Buenos Aires was curiosity about what exactly happened. To be fair the media at home were not particularly concerned with the economic calamities of a South American country such was the jaded and somewhat ignorant opinion that these things, like coups or attempted coups were as prevalent as the seasons in that part of the world. All I knew was that in the year and a half prior to my arrival Argentina suffered the biggest sovereign default in history, its currency crashed and with it the savings of a once wealthy and proud nation were wiped out. To this day, the sight of cartoneros, the newly poor and destitute from the far edges of this vast city arriving by twilight like economic zombies to collect the cardboard in the empty evening streets of the financial district, all the time too proud to ask you for money haunt me.

I had never heard of the term corralito, a word that even today makes the average Argentino spit in disgust that described the economic measures taken by the desperate government to prevent the nation falling into economic and political anarchy. Breaking the one dollar one peso peg that hubristically held that perennial demon inflation away and underpinned the boom of the 90’s resulted in a peso freefall, wiping 75% off the value of the peso and all peso-denominated wealth. Since then I have taken a keen interest in the economy of Argentina. Buenos Aires went from being one of the most expensive cities in the world to one with a cost of living on par with many African nations. This confirmed the belief many of my Argentino friends that all the time no matter how wrong they were such was their resignation they in fact lived in a Third World country.

On my second day in Buenos Aires I took a taxi to a restaurant. For the lengthy trip it came to about 10 pesos or just over 2 euro. I gave the taxi man a 100 peso note. He looked at me with an expression between exasperation and horror as if I was a pedophile. Cursing in Spanish he angrily scowered around for change before without a smile speeding off. In the past 100 pesos amounted to 100 dollars and thus a note of novelty but with the crash it had become a piece of scorn. Smaller notes became much more needed due to the devalued peso but became prized. Handing over a 100 peso note back then would result in angry sighs in shops and restaurants. Yet today it is a completely different situation and Argentina is a nation in desperate need of new 100 peso notes that resulted in a new one issued with the revered Evita as it’s face and a rapid increase in print numbers. What caused this change of events is a particularly Argentino story that has as its star that old foe: inflation.

Argentina today is a strange yet fascinating country again for politics and economics lovers. Instrumental in all of this is the person some see as the contemporary Evita, the current president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, or CFK to many Argentinos. CFK and her husband, the former president and deceased Nestor rose up from the calamity of 2002 to steer the nation back on track. Taking a particularly brazen and confrontational approach that gave them supporters and haters in equal amount, Nestor was rightly successful in getting a massive write down in international debts for the country.

Former president Nestor at the innauguration of her wife Cristina as president

However what happened after was more dubious. Fuelled by revenues from hugely increased international demand for agricultural exports, Nestor and later Cristina (who won election in 2007 when Nestor stepped down to prevent the handicap of two-term limits) created a state of clientelism and largesse, lavishing the country in subsidies for things such as fuel and public sector wages. To some it was a game of indirect vote-buying or at the very least an incentive to sectors supportive of the Kirchners to vote for them in the future. What resulted in this is basic economics. Inflation, although always there returned to double digits and in a nation long prone to the erosion of purchasing power by it, the acrimony increased.

To dampen criticism about increased inflation and prices and move attention to other policies considered more important, Nestor and later Cristina slowly began to manipulate the board of the independent national statistics organization INDEC, thus taking control of the institution and cooking the books. Soon the organization was posting inflation numbers much lower and certainly lower than what the average person on the street was seeing in the prices of goods in shops. A plethora of alternatives, formal and informal flourished in an attempt to keep people informed of price increases. A personal favorite was called the Ugi’s index, started by an American ex-pat that charted the price increase of the price of a pizza from a pizza chain of dubious quality in Buenos Aires.

In a fashion prevalent in some South American countries, which the Kirchners have their own virulent brand of, they begun to find measures to prevent the publication of alternative inflation indexes. Cristina enacted laws that prosecuted individuals and organizations that published inflation statistics that were not INDEC’s with six-figure fines. No matter how much of merit these alternative statistics were, in a sense it was a crack down on the freedom of information and thus a furor has ensued ever since with the Economist refusing to post INDEC’s statistics in its paper and a “yellow-card” from the IMF, much to the delight of Kirchneristas, the name given to supporters of Cristina. Only a number of members of the federal Congress post monthly statistics under the protection of Congressional immunity such is the situation right now.

The slide in the price of the Argentine peso since last year

The ratcheting up of the printing presses is at times a sign of economic mismanagement and the beginning of failure of the economic policies of a nation that is involved in it. To many that seems to be the case in Argentina with increased money flight and growing demand for more stable dollars. To prevent this the government has imposed restrictions on buying dollars and taking them out of the country, resulting in sniffer dogs at ports and airports on the hunt for large quantities of foreign currency on a person and the return of that truly Argentino situation of parallel exchange rates. Although Argentinos now have to inform the state revenue commission if they plan to go abroad and buy dollars for the trip and have to endure a mandatory 15% credit card surcharge on all purchases outside the country the president refuses to say that such actions are in fact restrictions. It is in Cristina’s opinion a process to de-dollarize the economy and start getting people thinking and using pesos in a country where all major transactions from cars to houses are denominated in dollars.

However one must ask why now? With almost ten years of Kirchner presidents why is the process being implemented over the past few months and seemingly haphazardly? To Kirchneristas it is the natural progression of an economic process begun under Nestor to rebuild confidence in the peso but to others it is a sign of desperation as people lose confidence in the Argentine economy. It doesn’t help that the peso has been on a continuous yet slow slide in price against the dollar, bringing back bad memories of 2002 and the end of the currency peg. It seems that the cogs are coming off the machine that Nestor and Cristina have built and that the newly-printed 100 peso note will lose even more value. To some it could result in the next economic crisis in Argentina. Looks like there will be more Evitas in my pocket than I expected before.

A Party And a Nation Meets Its Vice President Nominee

Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Paul Ryan

In politics the game is to tell people what they want to hear and not at times the true facts. In a race so polarized as it is, the 2012 presidential campaign takes things to the next level. With very few undecideds and certainly a lot of people holding exceptionally strong and unwielding views about politics it is a process of galvanization of your core supporters.

Tonight Paul Ryan, the Republican vice president nominee did just that. His speech was simple, accessible and at times eloquent but it also included some glaring inaccurances. The Democrats will certainly have a lot of ammunition to throw back at him at their convention and also in the vice presidential debates in October. The sad thing is a lot of it won’t stick. Paul Ryan stuck to the core beliefs of many modern die-hard Republican supporters. He hammered the issues of increased debt, interfering government and the supposed evils of Obamacare. He took no mercy in showing the failure of the main templates of Obama’s run for the presidency four years ago of hope and change. To many there is no point in arguing these issues. The Republicans have painted a rich and fruitful tapestry for their strong supporters that will overlook what Democrats will call the deceptions to be found in Paul Ryan’s speech.

There were indeed quite a lot of them. Ryan’s speech started by depicting a grim economic situation of a failed recovery with one in six Americans in poverty and the loss of America’s much cherished triple A bond rating. No matter how much the Democrats have tried to say otherwise, statistics have shown that the economic rehabilitation is still an issue for intensive care. Not just for Republicans but for many more in America that is all they see and pointing fingers as who is to blame is not going to help. Without the person on the street feeling the recovery in their bones it is a failure and the blame must fall at the doorstep of the President. Paul Ryan railed against Obama’s stimulus and has gone all out in depicting virtually all stimuluses as economic mismanagement. This is when in fact he voted for numerous stimulus programmes dating back to George W Bush’s first term as president.

Paul Ryan spoke often about one of the biggest issues for Republicans, that of healthcare and especially the Affordable Care Act known colloquily as Obamacare. While to some the issue of forcing someone to buy healthcare under penalty of a fine is wrong, how does one attack something which tries, albeit with substantial flaws to actually give universal healthcare, especially when Medicare is extremely popular? The Republicans have ingeniously latched on to the idea that to pay for Obamacare, the president intends to suck out of Medicare $716 billion. However this is false and was an effective smokescreen tonight to hide the fact that Paul Ryan’s own plan for healthcare would gut Medicare as we know it and create a voucher system instead.

One of the more contentious issues will be about Paul Ryan’s statements on debt and that President Obama walked away from a bipartisan debt deal and thus endangered the future prosperity of the nation. Ryan has made a name for himself as a deficit hawk and tonight made the allegation that Obama increased federal debt by $5 trillion, more than any other president in history. That may be so but the Democrats will point out that most of it was linked to the previous presidency and its economic mishandling. Furthermore, Paul Ryan made issue tonight about looking at the past record of Obama but failed to point out that his own signature has been on legislation in the past that has increased the debt even more than Ryan makes out Obama to have done . Furthermore, Obama was not the one to walk away from the bipartisan deal on debt and that he advised house Republicans to not support it due to the positive political implications it would have for the president.

Paul Ryan and his children

Surprisingly some of the most divisive social issues of the past few years barely got a mention. Gay marriage and issues concerning a woman’s body such as abortion were conspicuous by their absence. Interestingly enough the most noticable thing in relation to this was a small group of women protestors waving a banner calling for the Republicans to stay away from their vaginas! Later Paul Ryan to wide applause harangued Obama and government saying it had created “a country where everybody is free but us”. This of course hits on the nail of Republican hypocracy in relation to social issues. For all their advocation for less interference in people’s lives they are extremely quick to call for a constitutional amendment making marriage only between a man and woman and for a ban on abortion. It is for this reason that tonight’s speech was fundamentally a critique of Obama and his handling of the economy.

One of the more interesting inaccuracies that will be taken up by the press in the morning will be about Paul Ryan mentioning the supposed lies of Obama during his presidential campaign in promising upon election to prevent a car factory from closing. There no legitimate basis for this and in fact Obama pledged to do his best to secure the viability of the car company, not outright saving it. But the funniest bit about this lie is that the factory closed before he was elected president.

For all its inaccuracies the speech ticked the boxes for many Republicans. Paul Ryan gave them what they wanted to hear in a simple and clear way. To many that were watching tonight they would have seen a man speaking about the issues that cared directly to them – healthcare, debt and the failing recovery. The resonance of that coupled with the sheer joy of the crowd in Tampa will be etched in to their minds and will it is hoped by Paul Ryan’s speech writers and campaign crew overcome the erroneous nature of some of its facts. Tonight a nation saw their vice presidential candidate and have two months for the Democrats to do their upmost in tearing down the image his speech created among people

Gentrification and Nostalgia For What Is Lost

East Village Graffiti today

As a regular to New York City I have become accustomed to hearing about gentrification and more worryingly for some, the yuppification of various neighborhoods. Gentrification is a poisoned chalice. It makes certain areas unquestionably more livable but in the process the essence is lost as long-time residents and tenants are slowly pushed out due to higher rents.

Today virtually all the island of Manhattan has become gentrified. A strong whiff of sterilization can be experienced in some of the areas which were previously seriously dodgy. This is particularly the case in The East Village and Lower East Side. Here there is to be found ruthless property developers  more akin to other, wealthier parts of the city taking advantage of the increasing desire of people to live in these areas. While still having a particular charm and feel to them, they are completely different to what they were twenty and certainly thirty years ago.

Lower East Side in the 1970's

In the late 70’s and early 80’s the East Village and Lower East Side were virtually no go areas for many and most certainly for the wealthy elite uptown, chambered in their ivory towers on Park Avenue and so forth. However just like many no go areas in big cities it was a cheap place to live. While they attracted the down and outs of society and riddled with social hardships, many artists found a welcoming as in affordable place to live. After a time in situations like this a critical mass is reached and the whole area develops in to a flux of cross breeding of ideas and styles that attracts even more artists. Whole, vibrant and at times, extremely influential scenes emerge.

This was certainly the case for this part of New York over thirty years ago. From the run down tenements and ruins of the Lower East Side that almost looked in parts like Berlin in May 1945 came the flourishings of post-punk, new wave and most certainly no wave. This has all been recounted by a recent documentary about the no wave film scene in the late 70’s and early 90’s by filmmaker Celine Dahnier’s wonderful and accessible documentary called “Blank City” and the inspiration for me writing this article. Not only does it contain a satisfying mix of conversations with influential members of that movement but it creates oddly in this writer a nostalgia for what a vibrant and inclusive place Manhattan specifically but New York as a whole was for artists at that time. Nowadays one must pay an arm and a leg for a run down place in the East Village that has staunchly refused to be eaten up by developers. Back then a hundred dollars would have gotten you the same shack of a place but at least it was financially accessible.

Gentrification is a universal and ongoing process with an uncertain ending. Artists are slowly being pushed further and further away from the centres of cities. Some will argue it is a good thing, that in time artists will find a far away enclave from increasing rents and prices that have bedeviled them in the past from being so close to centres. However it is at times a somewhat symbiotic relationship between urban artists and the wealthy, many that later bankrolled the artists who made great art, such as Jean Michel Basquait in New York. But technology opens up other means of revenue and communication. Nevertheless gentrification as we know it will continue. Areas will lose some of their charm and vibrancy once that new giant condo gets built in the area.

Can One Forgive Certain Follies? A Simple Observation Comparing How Spain And Ireland Blew It All

Madrid Barajas Airport Terminal 4

Of all the countries I have visited in the past number of years, Spain is comfortably within the top three that I have visited most. My family and I love the country and we have grown accustomed to it over time. Ireland and Spain have a lot in common except most noticeably in relation to the weather. However we have both been battered by the extreme recession that has affected the developed world since 2008, more so than many other nations. We both allowed a property bubble to reach catastrophic levels and then collapse, thus saddling our banks and the sovereign with debt. While Ireland’s collapse was much more swift necessitating a rapid clean up, looking at Spain is like seeing the Irish banking car crash in painful slow motion whose outcome we can pretty much guess.

Nevertheless what we did during our periods of deluded excess we can notice some differences. What we spent our cheap loans on and what we have to show for it are different. Also, the main culprits in the fuelling of the irrational exuberance are dissimilar. The follies of this period that we now have to pay for or are saddled with are numerous. But I keep asking myself is there any merit to what we have to show for it all? This may all sound strange but bear with me.

Whenever I visit Spain I generally arrive in a gleaming, well-equipped airport, a shining gateway to the nation I have just arrived in. One can only look at the vast and serenely voluptuous Terminal 4 at Madrid’s Barajas Airport. It’s welcoming canopy of pillars are bright and fresh compared to sheds like Gatwick or Newark. I effortlessly connect from many major city airports on an air-conditioned and modern metro system to a hub train station. From here I can continue my journey on a fantastically sleek high-speed train to virtually all corners of the country. I could if I want spend my time in many of the cities and marvel at the investment in civic and art facilities from the Guggenheim in Bilbao to the Parc del Forum in Barcelona.

Parc del Forum's giant solar panels

Yes I admit it is an idealistic and innocent interpretation of the situation in Spain. Many of these fabulous pieces of architecture and ingenuity were paid for with loans that will probably never be repaid and many, such as Ciudad Real’s airport or the mesmerizing Centre for the Arts in Aviles, designed by Oscar Niemeyer lay empty with no customers and groaning under mountains of debt. However many of these are public and merit goods. Spain had a property bubble just like ours, leaving empty towns and cities such as Ciudad Valdeluz and banks with impaired loans. But in Ireland, personal property and the cavalier development of it by rapacious developers was the main cause of the boom and bust. We had no regions rivaling each other to build new airports and cultural centres. It was a deeply concentrated personal greed at the expense of all others that we in Ireland are now paying for.

In Ireland all we have to show for the period of inebriated wealth are the physical hangovers of property tycoons gone bust and the sad, necrotic-looking ghost estates throughout the country. The government allowed a greedy few run roughshod over the land in a vile pursuit of personal enrichment. Now there were certainly many in local and regional governments in Spain that also benefitted illegally in the good times and are now being investigated. Bribes were paid that fuelled property speculation. However, whether out of trying to show off and take some pride they at least took a more social, bread and circuses approach to spending.

International Cultural Centre, Aviles

 Many of these follies are functioning, such as Valencia’s metro. Ciudad Real’s airport may never open, doomed in perpetuity to lying luxuriously on the scorched Spanish highlands but it could probably in the future, spurring growth in the area. Many of these white elephants could in the future be turned around and made in to something once their debts from local caja banks and others are sorted out. In fact if there is some separation of the debt from the asset, investors may be interested in them. In Ireland we didn’t spend as much in proportion on infrastructure or cultural entities as the Spanish did. What we had was a small, deluded plutocracy built on shaky loans that did their very best to enrich themselves by creating deeply personalized things such as housing; the vast majority over-priced, badly built and speculatory. For a time we were building more houses than our neighbors across the Irish Sea, a nation with close to fifteen times our population. What good is it for anyone to have decaying houses strung around the countryside that will never be populated?

While the Spanish boom is coloured with terms such as airports and art centres, what we have in Ireland is one of Quinns and McNamaras, individuals that did no use to this country other than indebt us with useless property. We have two Luas lines that don’t connect, one decent new airport terminal and a national theatre that still sits languishing in its 1960’s box even after ten years of debates about moving it to a better location. So forgive me for having some sort of positive attitude to those follies in Spain, many of them I use quite often with countless millions. 

Cautious Optimism As Irish Bonds Dip Below Pre-Bailout Levels

Irish bond yields: Bloomberg

It is of some welcome relief and a moment to celebrate with the news that this week saw the yield on the government’s bonds due to mature in 2020 fall below 6% for the first time since the bailout. This is in fact a fraction lower than Spanish bonds, a country that did not have to take a full sovereign bailout from the Troika and not far off Italian yields either. For some it would be seen as vindication for austerity, that the extreme cuts demanded by the bailout are working. However this is probably not the reason.

When one compares the countries that have requested a bailout from the Troika or are on the watch list for one, there is a slight difference between those nations and Ireland and Portugal, whose bonds also this week dropped to pre-bailout rates. The difference is that once Ireland and Portugal requested a bailout, those two countries have implemented with very little hesitation or procrastination the entire programme of austerity requested of them as terms for receiving the bailout money. The austerity has been exceptionally painful for both nations but they have been unwavering in their implementation. Neither country has called for more time in implementing austerity. Contrast this with Greece where virtually all trust has been lost due to their ducking and diving and this week’s request for two more years to fully implement austerity. One can also contrast Ireland and Portugal to a lesser extent with Spain, where the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy consistently drags its’ feet in implementing structural reforms, tackling vested interests and coming to terms with the shocking debts of its local banks and strongly independent regions.

The reduction in bond yields should not be seen as austerity working. In fact the austerity has resulted in a depression in domestic demand in Ireland that Irish GNP, which is a measurement of the economy less the outflows from multinational entities has been almost consistently decreasing since 2007. The size of the economy is still significantly below pre-crash levels with austerity exacerbating the situation. Ireland has been fortunate in that its highly export orientated economy has held up in the past few years, albeit in very specific fields such as pharmaceuticals and to a much lesser extent agricultural produce. The fruits of this growth have not fed in to the domestic economy. This has continued the historical deviation between GDP and GNP, the former holding up well the past few years but there still seems to be no end in sight to this exceptionally long recession domestically in Ireland.

The reduction in bond yields should be seen as a large part due to the unwavering implementation of austerity even in the face of it causing a prolonging of the recession. It is a badge of confidence given to us by the markets, which have in the past shown extreme displeasure in half-baked proposals and shoddy implementation of reform and austerity in other countries. Markets do not like to be surprised and like us all, find comfort and satisfaction in sticking to the book. It is in essence an award for doing everything that had been asked of us even if it was not all for the best.

The government should not become complacent for without growth the austerity will become an uncontrollable death spiral for the Irish economy. Bond yields could easily shoot up if the economy continues to contract, thus making the level of debt larger in relation to the size of the economy thus necessitating more cuts. That is a real danger for Ireland, as the world economy seems to be heading for a slow down whose magnitude we have not fully grasped yet. Therefore one should be allowed to celebrate but with extreme caution. 

Todd Akin and the Issue of Abortion

There has been much deserved anger directed at Missouri’s Republican candidate for the Senate Todd Akin this past week. Mr. Akin recently asserted in a television interview that women do not get pregnant from what he called “legitimate rape” and that the bodies of women have a way of shutting down and preventing conception.  Virtually the whole of the Republican Party has either disowned him or have openly come out to state he should step down from the race but the representative from Missouri has refused to do so. That he has apologized for what he called words being taken out of context does not reduce the stupidity of his actions and opinions in relation to rape and the rights of the fetus.

This issue brings up an interesting view of many Republicans in relation to abortion. In the recent past Todd Akin with Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan co-sponsored a “personhood” Bill that would have given full rights to a fetus upon conception. This is not a new idea within the ranks of conservatives in the United States and especially evangelicals. However conservatives have been trying to justify such an extreme view in relation to abortion, with many believing that under no circumstances should a termination be allowed.

What this extreme opinion creates is heated debate over how certain pregnancies happen, most importantly in relation to rape. It is the opinion of this writer and many others that a woman should have the right to terminate a pregnancy if it was a consequence of rape. Rape is the upmost violation anyone can happen upon them and to carry that fetus to term when the woman does not want it is a horrific, nine-month long ordeal that I would never wish upon someone. In essence it is as if the rape continues after the initial violation.

It seems to be a similar opinion of many conservatives who advocate for banning abortion. However because of their extreme and blinded views being attacked by people who have the same opinion as me, some sort of twisted deflections and opinions are thrown back at us. Todd Akin’s attempt to categorize rape and state wildly unfactual biology is a perfectly distilled extreme example of this. These advocates of a complete ban on abortion are aware of the wrong this stance causes and attempt to find excuses or obfuscate.

The banning of abortion under all circumstances is an ignorant, unwieldy position to take and to categorize rape in to less malicious terms should be completely condemned. The simple, inexcusable fact is that rape is rape, no matter how it occurs. Todd Akin demeaned women with his statements recently and showed complete contempt for this shockingly prevalent vicious act. For this reason the representative of Missouri should take the advice of many in his party and step down.