and, as has been pointed out even on Irisheconomy.ie, Ireland’s bond rating started going south AFTER the bank guarantee, as it was clear that the guarantee was going to cripple us.

I remember walking around Dublin the day after the bank guarantee was passed by the Dail and I was almost paralysed with disbelief that people were going about their daily lives not knowing the shit we had just been put into. I really was in a state of shock.

Don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just recounting what he was saying in his “Outsiders” show at the Peacock.

Here’s Morgan Kelly from May 22, 2010:

While most countries facing bankruptcy sit passively in denial until they sink – just as we are doing – there is one shining exception: Uruguay. When markets panicked after Argentina defaulted in 2002, Uruguay knew it could no longer service its large external debt. Instead of waiting for a borrowing crisis, the Uruguayans approached their creditors and pointed out they faced a choice.

Either they could play tough and force Uruguay into bankruptcy, in which case they would get almost nothing back, or they could agree to reduce Uruguay’s debt to a manageable level, and get back most of what they lent. Realising Uruguay’s problems were largely not of its own making, and that it had never stiffed its creditors in the past, the lenders agreed to a debt restructuring, and Uruguay was able to return to debt markets within a few months.

In the column McWilliams says that he was in Uruguay in 2007. But Uruguay defaulted in 2003, and has been cited by free-market economists ever since. No mention of who they owed the money to (US banks), how they got into that level of debt in the first place (US banks pouring money much the same way as German and French banks did in the Eurozone) or how the US Treasury helped them restructure their debt in an orderly way to ensure that the US banks got some of their money back.