Notes on the Front

This was originally written for Progressive-Economy

If you took some commentators seriously, you’d be excused for believing that Ireland Ltd. is on the verge of going into liquidation. Whether it’s defaulting on our debt, a growing inability to borrow more, or just despairing over that ‘€400 million we’re borrowing every week – yes, you’d assume the country is out of dosh.

But that doesn’t tally with the recent US Treasury release of data identifying the major holders of Treasury Securities – that is, US debt. China is the biggest holder of US debt – about a quarter of the foreign total. Japan, the tax havens in the Caribbean and the UK (with its tax havens) are also up there. But guess who else is. Yes, poor ol’ broke Ireland.

Irish ‘residents’ hold $50 billion worth of US Treasury securities. That’s almost as much as Germany (even though German GDP is nearly 14 times larger than our own) and more than twice as much as French holdings. Our holdings are worth over $12,000 for every man, woman and child. Irish holdings have shot up recently. Only last year Irish holdings amounted to $15 billion. In just 12 months, $35 billion fled Ireland for the safety of US debt. Yes, there’s money swilling around – but it’s not swilling here.

This is of a piece. Irish holdings of foreign portfolio securities throughout the world amounted to €1.3 trillion at the end of 2007, with €440 billion held foreign equity and another €575 billion in bonds and notes. The increase since 2000 has been substantial – up from about €500 billion.

To put this in some perspective, Ireland’s €1.3 trillion held abroad compares to the foreign holdings of French residents of €2 trillion – even though the French economy is more than ten times larger than the Irish economy.

Of course, it will be argued that Ireland’s wealth holdings are too big to be maintained in the limited domestic investment opportunities. Foreign Direct Investment may come here by the truckload, wooed by prospects of high returns – but not high enough to satisfy our own residents. They must go abroad to find financial satisfaction; US debt, for instance.

There’s some validity to this argument but there’s another picture. It’s long been a complaint, by politicians and commentators, that money is tight here, but pretty loose everywhere else. Back in the 1950s Flann O’Brien wrote:

‘It is almost a cliché that this country is chronically undercapitalised, that money for productive capital works cannot be got. The administration recently started capital works concerned with land reclamation and drainage and is about to clear all the rocks out of Connemara. With money borrowed from the banks deposited by thrifty farmers? Not on your life. With borrowed American dollars which are twice as costly as pounds.’

Frank Aiken had his own run-ins. When he attempted to finance an expansionary programme shortly after the war, the Irish banks refused to loan, preferring to keep their money safe in the UK. He declared:

‘I regard their turning down of the request (to loan the government money) . . as an act of undeclared war upon our people’.

The banks won and, Aiken surrendered unconditionally, the people paid the price.

Patrick Honohan wrote only a couple of years before the financial crisis:

‘ . . .despite the emergence of the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) as a leading player in some subsectors of offshore finance; despite the high profitability and unusually high percentage of the banking system not domestically controlled; and despite the absence of any significant bank failures for over a century; there is little evidence to suggest either that recent Irish growth has been finance-rich in the sense understood by the literature, or that the previous low-growth experience was explicable in terms of a weak financial system.’

Irish banking and financial investment played little role in the Celtic Tiger economy. They were too busy playing away and plotting the eventual chain of events which would lead us to the Carroll liquidation and NAMA.

Michael Hennigan of Finfacts points out that between 2001 and 2007, nearly €41 billion left the economy in search of commercial property abroad, while only a fraction of that was invested in indigenous high-tech companies.

Of course, it would be too simplistic to point out that only a small percentage of these resident holdings abroad would be needed to pay off the entire national debt (of course). Or that even a smaller percentage would be needed to recapitalise the banks without taxpayer intervention (of course). To maintain such a position would betray a profound misunderstanding of capital flows in a highly globalised system (of course).

Besides, it’s not as if Brian Lenihan is unaware of the problem of ‘money flowing abroad’. Only recently, in a fit of patriotic fervour, he called on hard-pressed consumers not to go to Newry to shop. Unfortunately, Lenihan’s ‘Irish money for Irish business’ is a pretty limited. I’ve not recalled him calling on Irish investors to stop crossing the oceanic border and buying US debt.

So the next time you hear a commentator or economist calling on the Government to slash social welfare spending, claiming that we have been paying ourselves too much; the next time you hear some politician saying we have to take ‘tough-love measures’ (usually without the love) because otherwise we’ll go broke; just remember all those hundreds of billions of ‘Irish money’ circulating throughout the world Remember those billions that have fled the country in the last few months to buy US debt. Remember all the money that is going everywhere but here – to invest in our industries, enterprises, and infrastructure.

And if you think this is a curious way to run a modern economy, you’d be right.

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[NOTE:  On Progressive-Economy, Pavement Trauma asked whether 'Irish residents' included foreign enterprises operating here.  Yes, it does.  Is there anyway to separate out indigenous and foreign?  Probably not.  There is an agnostic tendency towards the operation of foreign enterprises from many of our state agencies (Forfas, for instance, hardly ever refers to transfer-pricing, despite the fact this has a tendency to distort business statistics).  So, do Tesco and Argos operations here hold foreign securities?  Probably not.  But it's a sure bet that other foreign enterprises do.  To what extent is a matter that could be debated for a long time and we'd still be no wiser.  However, even if foreign enterprises constituted half of all ownership of foreign securities, Ireland would still rank high as a ratio such holdings to GDP].