QE II Visits Guinness Brewery

Photo from Boots in the Oven. http://www.bootsintheoven.com/boots_in_the_oven/2006/08/dublin_day_one_.html

No, it doesn't have anything to do with the Federal Reserve:

Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip resisted the temptation to sup the perfect pint of Guinness on a visit to the Irish cultural icon's home brewery on Wednesday. The royal couple were given a tour of the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, one of Ireland's top tourist destinations, as part of the queen's historic first state visit to the Irish Republic.
All eyes were on whether they would get stuck into a jar of the black stuff -- an indelible part of Irish life.
Up in the seventh-floor Gravity Bar, designed to look like the head on a pint, they were shown round the commanding 360-degree views over Dublin.
Master brewer Fergal Murray then took the royal couple through the stages of pouring a perfect pint of the stout, one of the world-famous cultural symbols of Ireland.
Prince Philip, who is known to like a pint of bitter, seemed in his element and asked if it was made with water from Dublin's River Liffey.
"No! Pure and pristine from the hills!" Murray replied, dismissing the "urban myth". The Guinness website says water for the brewery comes from springs in Ireland's Wicklow Mountains.

If they didn't drink a pint, they shouldn't have gone to visit, geez.  I could damn well care less about the Queen herself, but I do like being able to get Ireland into some posts, and she's definitely been providing that opportunity.

Police Detonate Bomb in County Kildare

Irish Times:

An Army bomb disposal team made safe a viable improvised explosive device discovered in the hold of a bus in Co Kildare late last night.
The Defence Forces deployed the team in response to a request by the Garda at about 11.10pm, apparently after a tip-off.
The pipe bomb was found in the luggage compartment of a Dublin-bound bus outside the Glen Royal Hotel in Maynooth and made safe following a controlled explosion.
The device was viable but it was not primed.
The scene was declared safe at 1.55am and the remains of the device were handed over to gardaí for their investigations.
The bus carrying 30 passengers had been on its way to the capital from Ballina, Co Mayo.

Sounds like the next few days are going to be pretty crazy.  I think the Gardai will have their hands full:

A sporting venue that has deep symbolic importance for the people of Ireland will be visited by the Queen during her tour of the country.


Croke Park – an 82,000-seater stadium and the scene of a massacre of 14 civilians by British soldiers in 1920 – will be toured by the monarch later this week.


It is the home of Ireland’s Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) which has pledged to give the monarch a warm greeting when she arrives.


The GAA, an amateur organisation set up in 1884 to promote Irish culture, language and sports, has said ahead of the visit it wants to showcase the world renowned arena.........

The landmark stadium on Dublin’s northside is a world renowned symbol of the strength of an amateur organisation with a presence in every village and townland in Ireland.


Its famous terrace, Hill 16, is also rumoured to have been built with the rubble from the 1916 Easter Rising – an armed insurrection in Dublin against British rule.

More on the Croke Park Massacre below:

From Wikipedia, the activity in the afternoon of November 21, 1920, after an IRA operation in the morning which resulted in the deaths of 12 British informers and 2 British Auxiliaries:

The Dublin Gaelic football team was scheduled to play the Tipperary team later the same day in Croke Park, the Gaelic Athletic Association's major football ground. Despite the general unease in Dublin as news broke of the killings, a war-weary populace continued with life. Approximately 5,000 spectators went to Croke Park for the Gaelic football match between Dublin and Tipperary, which began thirty minutes late, at 3:15 p.m.
Meanwhile, outside the Park, unseen by the crowd, British security forces were approaching and preparing to raid the match. A convoy of troops drove in from the northwest, along Clonliffe Road, while a convoy of police and Auxiliaries approached the Park from the south or Canal end. Their orders were to surround the grounds, guard the exits, and search every man in the Park. The authorities later stated that their intention was to announce by megaphone that all males leaving the stadium would be searched and that anyone leaving by other means would be shot. But for some reason, shots were fired as soon as the police convoy reached the stadium, at 3:25 p.m.
Some of the police later claimed that they were fired on first by IRA sentries, but this has never been proven.^[11] Correspondents for the Manchester Guardian and Britain's Daily News interviewed eyewitnesses, and concluded that the "IRA sentries" were actually ticket-sellers:

It is the custom at this football ground for tickets to be sold outside the gates by recognised ticket-sellers, who would probably present the appearance of pickets, and would naturally run inside at the approach of a dozen military lorries. No man exposes himself needlessly in Ireland when a military lorry passes by.^[12]

The police in the convoy's leading cars appear to have jumped out, pursued these men down the passage to the Canal End gate, forced their way through the turnstiles, and started firing rapidly with rifles and revolvers. Ireland's Freeman's Journal reported that,

The spectators were startled by a volley of shots fired from inside the turnstile entrances. Armed and uniformed men were seen entering the field, and immediately after the firing broke out scenes of the wildest confusion took place. The spectators made a rush for the far side of Croke Park and shots were fired over their heads and into the crowd.^[13]

The police kept shooting for about ninety seconds: their commander, Major Mills, later admitted that his men were "excited and out of hand."^[14] Some police fired into the fleeing crowd from the pitch, while others, outside the Park, opened fire from the Canal Bridge at spectators who climbed over the Canal End Wall trying to escape. At the other end of the Park, the soldiers on Clonliffe Road were startled first by the sound of the fusillade, then by the sight of panicked people fleeing the grounds. As the spectators streamed out, an armoured car on St James Avenue fired its machine guns over the heads of the crowd, trying to halt them.
By the time Major Mills got his men back under control, the police had fired 114 rounds of rifle ammunition, and an unknown amount of revolver ammunition as well, not counting 50 rounds fired from the machine guns in the armoured car outside the Park.^[15] Seven people had been shot to death, and five more had been fatally wounded; another two people had been trampled to death by the crowd. The dead included Jeannie Boyle, who had gone to the match with her fiancé and was due to be married five days later, and two boys aged 10 and 11. Two football players, Michael Hogan and Jim Egan, had been shot; Hogan was killed, but Egan survived, along with dozens of other wounded and injured. The police raiding party suffered no casualties.
Once the firing had been stopped, the security forces searched the remaining men in the crowd before letting them go. The military raiding party recovered one revolver: a local householder testified that a fleeing spectator had thrown it away in his garden. Once the grounds were cleared, the Park was searched for arms: according to Major Mills, none were found.^[16

After the shooting at Croke Park, 3 IRA prisoners in Dublin Castle were beaten and killed by their guards, allegedly while trying to escape.

There is never a shortage of places where historic Irish or British actions can provide a rallying point for those with long grievances.  The Queen's visit gives Republican dissidents a lot of targets to gain noteriety.  Hopefully, they fail miserably.

Irish Republican Dissidents Cause Alarm

Dissident paramilitaries called in a bomb threat for London:

Police received a bomb threat for central London from Irish republican paramilitaries, a day before a historic visit by the Queen to Ireland, Scotland Yard said.
''A bomb threat warning has been received relating to central London today. The threat is not specific in relation to location or time,'' a Scotland Yard spokesman said yesterday.
''We believe the threat is in connection with dissident republican terrorism.''

This is bad news for Northern Ireland.  It would be nice for the Real IRA and Continuity IRA to fade away.  Any appearance in the news is bad for the Republican cause.

Update:  Actually, maybe it isn't the RIRA or CIRA which is the problem this time:

Republican terrorists have pledged to disrupt the tour.
The first day of the visit coincides with the 37th anniversary of the bloodiest day of the Troubles, in which 34 people were killed in four car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan.
Irish police will have to deal with attempts by the radical republican group Eirigi to occupy the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin, the memorial to Irish people killed in the struggle for independence, where the Queen is due to lay a wreath today. The group has threatened to set up a ''freedom camp'' in the memorial garden .
On Sunday, the Irish President, Mary McAleese, said the Queen's visit would be an ''extraordinary moment'' between the two countries.

Guess I should have read further.  I still contend that any news of this type is bad.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Two things.  First, The Fateful Choice, at the Middle East Research and Information Project:

There is nothing new about torture in warfare, even as waged by democracies. What is new (at least in the modern era) is the brazenness with which torture’s proponents have asserted its compatibility with democracy and the rule of law. The Bush administration’s tangle of poor legal argumentation in support of its torture policy need not be rehearsed; the Obama administration was right to rubbish the lot. It has been disgusting, therefore, to see Bush officials emerge from the woodwork to suggest that finding bin Laden came about through torture. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for instance, told FOX News that “anyone who suggests that the enhanced techniques, let’s be blunt, waterboarding, did not produce an enormous amount of valuable intelligence, just isn’t facing the truth.” His fellow Republican, Rep. Peter King of New York, went one step further: “Osama bin Laden would not have been captured and killed if it were not for the initial information we got from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after he was waterboarded.”
A former top military interrogator in Iraq, who goes by the pseudonym Matthew Alexander, has corrected the record by insisting that torturing detainees produces “limited information, false information or no information.” As Alexander and others note, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational planner of the September 11 attacks (who, incidentally, was captured at home in a commando raid, not on a battlefield, with a nudge from another $25 million bounty), blurted out nothing of value despite being waterboarded 183 times. He was confronted with the nom de guerre of a courier -- the one whose trail eventually led to bin Laden -- and claimed he had “retired” from al-Qaeda. The nom de guerre and all subsequent actionable leads were obtained from other sources through old-fashioned detective work. These facts have led Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to contradict Rumsfeld and King, saying: “So far, I know of no information that was obtained, that would have been useful, by ‘advanced interrogation.’” And when the CIA tortured Abu Faraj al-Libbi, another al-Qaeda courier who would have known others, he proffered a fake name that sent the manhunt on a wild goose chase. Torture is thus likely to have delayed the apprehension of al-Qaeda’s master terrorist.
The utility of torture is beside the point, in any case; torture is repellent and degrading of those who practice it as well as those subjected to it. It is also manifestly illegal, under both US and international law. As anyone who pays attention knows, the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere swept away what remained of the post-September 11 wars’ moral credibility in the eyes of the world. Along with the Bush administration’s deceptions, arrogant doctrines of US dominance and disdainful asides to the effect that “we don’t do body counts,” torture poisoned all of the wars’ fruits, even turning bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, the ugliest caricatures of Arab anti-imperialism, into heroes to some.

This torture was disgraceful and produced misleading and detrimental information, and yet Republicans still defend it and would do it again if they are ever put back into power.  This paper utterly destroys our choices in the war against terror.  It is a must-read.

Second, Edward Harrison has this chart in his article about how much banks in Germany are owed by the periphery states of the Eurozone:

That is stunning and I don't see how they will get that all back.  It is more a matter of how much they lose how quickly.

Irish Economy Struggling With Austerity

NYT:

Benefiting from years of low interest rates that followed the creation of the euro zone in 1999, Ireland enjoyed one of the biggest growth spurts of any country in Europe, and spent lavishly as its wealth increased. The economy expanded an average of 7 percent in the decade leading up to 2007 before plunging into a deep recession. Per person, inflation-adjusted economic activity has fallen approximately 18 percent from the peak, when the average gross domestic product per person was a shade over 43,000 euros ($62,000). Now it is less than 35,000 euros ($50, 767).
As the country tries to recover from the bust, many of its people are paying a tremendous cost for the folly of the country’s banks and to bring its government finances back in order.
As part of Ireland’s effort to pay down its immense debts and bail out the banks, the Condras’ salaries from their state jobs as hospital workers have been cut 20 percent in two years. Higher taxes and further spending cuts are on the horizon.

It looks like years and years of pain for the Irish as they bail out their corrupt banks.  They should have let them fail.  Bondholders should have taken haircuts and stockholders should have been wiped out.  Now the taxpayers are going to be slowly bled out.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link: A peek into one of the deepest little cesspits in Europe, by David Malone:

Beyerishe LB was either the witless dupe who was left holding a huge shit schnitzel or just the last in a long line of greedy and corrupt bottom feeding institutions who wanted the chance to siphon some of that fetid  underground nourishment for themselves.  I personally feel the latter is the more likely explanation for the Europe wide enthusiasm for buying Austrian banks. Austria, with its anonymous accounts had made itself into a major portal for dirty money seeking onward transfer into European banks. And European banks were drawn to Austria like flies to a sewer.

The fact is Beyerische bought a bank for 1.6 billion euros into which it had to immediately pour another 2.1 billion euros just to keep it afloat.  Which although it sounds blunderingly stupid is, by Bavarian banking standards little worse than average. Compare Beyerische to the saga of inept incompetence which surrounded two other Bavarian banks Beyerische Hypotheken-und Wecshel Bank and Beyerische Vereins-bank, whose billions in losses forced the shot-gun wedding whose issue was HVB (see Dominoes Falling from the East) and you wonder how Germany has any banks at all?

Today there is still another 3.1 billion euros of bad debts to be paid at Beyerische. The open question vexing both sides of the German/Austrian border is who will pay? Since Beyerishe sold Alpe Adria back to Austria for a whopping 1 euro it might fall upon the Austrian people. But it might still land back on Beyerishe and therefore on the German taxpayers. Both sides would love to find a way of claiming they were just innocent victims of foreign fraud.

I guess you could call this the European bank mess-Austrian edition.  The article goes into great detail about various bank black holes in Austria which tie into Anglo-Irish Bank, among others.  What a mess, we definitely haven't seen the worst of this yet.

Charity Combined With Carbon Credits for Profit

This also via Ritholtz:

Swiss-based Vestergaard Frandsen--makers of mosquito nets and the LifeStraw--has figured out a solution to turning a profit while saving the world.
The company is launching a campaign today that could change the plight of water-borne illnesses in Kenya, while making the company a tidy sum of money. Over the next five weeks, 4,000 temporary employees will distribute the company's LifeStraw water filters to 900,000 households in Western Province--nearly 90% of the entire population--providing 4 million people with clean, safe drinking water. The filters will be provided to the end users for free, and company founder and CEO Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen has invested $30 million of his own money into the project. But he's not worried about losing out--because for each LifeStraw he donates, he's going to be making money.
The campaign is called Carbon for Water. Kenyans boil their water to eliminate waterborne diseases, using wood fires. Those fires generate a large amount of carbon, and eliminating the need to boil water means fewer emissions from Kenya. Because they're providing the means to reduce emissions, Vestergaard Frandsen earns carbon credits for each LifeStraw donated. He will then turn around and sell those credits to companies in countries that have carbon caps and exchanges. "We are using international agreements about climate change to finance the mitigation of CO2 in the least developed countries," he says.
Vestergaard Frandsen estimates that the campaign will offset about two million tons of carbon every year—that means the company will earn two million carbon credits. Carbon trades on the commodities market at between $6 to $12 a unit and, he says: "because the project is based in Kenya and has significant humanitarian and health co-benefits, these credits can be sold for a premium." Vestergaard Frandsen has made a 10-year commitment to Carbon for Water, which means that the project could potentially offset 20 million tons of carbon. Even at the lowest estimates, that means Vestergaard Frandsen will make his $30 million investment back many times over. Which is important, because Vestergaard Frandsen doesn't sell its units retail--at $25, the LifeStraw Family is prohibitively expensive for most end users to purchase. Instead, the company formerly relied on partner nonprofits to fundraise, purchase LifeStraws, and donate them in bulk. It was a succesful plan--in 2010, the company had a profitable bottom line with revenue of about $500 million--but now, he doesn't have to rely on the fickle kindness of philanthropists.
The model isn't the perfect solution the issues plaguing water in the developing world: while not having to collect firewood to boil water helps preserve safety and time of the women and children who typically bear the burden of these tasks, they still have to make trips to the water source. And carbon trade is inherently controversial, and as of now no plans have been announced for what happens to carbon offsets after the Kyoto agreement expires in 2012.

That is interesting.  It all seems like a bunch of hocus-pocus, but it solves a simple problem in a more primitive society.  The problem is that it also puts off dealing with a much more complex problem in a more complex society.  It also highlights the fact that the worst polluters, the U.S., China and India are doing nothing whatsoever to deal with CO2.

Should Irish Debt Be Restructured

Richard Portes says it is necessary:

Ireland is being made to pay for deciding to socialise its private debt at the end of September 2008. That was the original sin. Advised by Merrill Lynch and pressured by Eurozone authorities, Ireland gambled that its banks were fundamentally sound. A state guarantee would turn markets around, restore liquidity, and give them time to show they could deal with their problems. Not so. Merrill Lynch should at least return its fee. And now policymakers are talking about privatising state assets in order to pay for part of the costs of the socialisation. Whatever the other merits of privatisation, this does not make sense – the right solution is to (re)privatise the debt.
After many subsequent capital infusions of taxpayer funds, the latest stress tests and restructuring plans are supposed to draw a line under the shocking costs of the guarantee and to launch recovery. But the burden of the debt on the sovereign is now unsustainable. The projections in the original IMF programme, endorsed by the European Commission and the ECB, see the debt-to-GDP ratio peaking at 120% in 2013. The IMF itself clearly thinks that the downside risks to the programme are high, likely to materialise, and difficult to mitigate. The government has not convinced the markets – Irish sovereign spreads are today about the same as in November before the IMF programme, and the latest actions have led the ratings agencies to downgrade the sovereign (while upgrading the banks). Yes, a couple of investment banks are now saying Irish debt is a good buy – doubtless because they are now convinced the new government will not dare to restructure the debt. The programme requires some access to market funding from next year. That is not credible unless the debt is restructured.

Private debt should remain private.  There are risks to bond-holding.

Easter Rising, 1916

95 years ago, on April 24, 1916, Irish nationalists began a week long uprising, by seizing the General Post Office and other strongpoints in Dublin:

  The Easter Rising (Irish: Éirí Amach na Cásca) was an insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798.
Organised by the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Rising lasted from Easter Monday 24 April to 30 April 1916. Members of the Irish Volunteers, led by schoolteacher and barrister Patrick Pearse, joined by the smaller Irish Citizen Army of James Connolly, along with 200 members of Cumann na mBan, seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed the Irish Republic independent of Britain. There were some actions in other parts of Ireland but, except for the attack on the Royal Irish Constabulary barracks at Ashbourne, County Meath, they were minor.
The Rising was suppressed after seven days of fighting, and its leaders were court-martialled and executed, but it succeeded in bringing physical force republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics. In the 1918 General Election to the British Parliament, republicans (then represented by the Sinn Féin party) won 73 seats out of 105 on a policy of abstentionism and Irish independence. This came less than two years after the Rising. In January 1919, the elected members of Sinn Féin who were not still in prison at the time, including survivors of the Rising, convened the First Dáil and established the Irish Republic. The British government refused to accept the legitimacy of the newly declared nation, precipitating the Irish War of Independence.

William Butler Yeats reflected on the Rising with the poem Easter, 1916.



General Post Office, Dublin



Irish Prepare Welcome for Obama

Obama to visit his great, great, great grandfather's home (h/t Balloon Juice):

A small Irish village is pulling out all the stops and making sure it's spotless in anticipation of one of its most famous sons.

Moneygall in County Offaly is getting a facelift, as the rural village prepares to welcome the most powerful man in the world, Barack Obama, next month.

The impending visit to Ireland by the U.S. President has transformed the appearance of Moneygall.

President Obama's great, great, great grandfather came from Moneygall and the president plans to swing by to his ancestral home during a two-day visit to Ireland.

And preparations for his arrival are giving the village a whole new look.

For instance, to ensure the presidential feet are made as comfortable as possible, the pavements are being dug up, re-laid and smoothed over as part of a huge refurb.

Pint for the President: Majella Hayes in her bar named Ollie Hayes

I bet folks in Western Ohio wouldn't be too excited by a visit, even though they renamed a street after the last president because he came to Tipp City to tell people things were going good in Iraq right after the surge started.  But, I'm used to people around here liking their politicians dumb.