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THE GAME IS UP

15
Nov, 2010

Armageddon, Doomsday. Take your pick of scenarios – the main stories on all of the quality Sundays are practically interchangeable; and the end is most definitely nigh.

Indeed, now that many of them have decided it is a question of when rather than if, the columnists have already turned their attention to what loss of national sovereignty will mean for us all. It doesn’t make for pretty reading. All that’s missing is the funeral dirges to accompany such headlines as: No holding back the tide; A country on the brink; Slipping into the darkness and Who’s afraid of the IMF.

The Sunday Tribune focuses on the hidden borrowing costs the acceptance of a likely €60 billion bailout would force on business and individuals in an attempt to make it easier for readers to get their heads around the mammoth figures being bandied about. And get around them we must because we are out of options.

A senior bond market expert in Milan quoted in the newspaper said: “I do not see any strong reason why investors should start buying Irish bonds again. Portugal, I think, is in a slightly better position than Ireland, but the way things have deteriorated in the past week tells me that markets are going against both countries.”

And this from someone who lives in a peripheral European country run by Silvio Berlusconi!

Similarly, over in The Sunday Business Post, the prognosis is similarly gloomy.

“A serious rift has developed between the Irish government and Europe, as pressure grows on Ireland to access the EU stability fund,” the lead story says.

The newspaper reports that the European Central Bank is dying to give money to Ireland because otherwise the drubbing the country is experiencing in the bond markets will spread to other Eurozone countries, something that will be far more difficult for Frankfurt to contain.

“It is understood that intensive contacts have been under way between the ECB and the Central bank on this funding position in recent weeks and are continuing this weekend,” according to the newspaper’s political editor, Pat Leahy.

Meanwhile, over at the Sindo, Business Editor and Senator Shane Ross is already calling for the cavalry to arrive.

He doesn’t believe it will be long before they get here and clearly doesn’t see it as the end of the world either: “We need reinforcements from outside. The game is up.”

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