The Land of Saints & Dollars
An historic gathering of Irish clans next year could well see the dollar replace the euro as the most influential currency of the European Union. Realistically, the eurozone needs a massive and unified austerity injection across all EU member states to avoid the euro becoming merely a Franco-German financial package.
There has always been a money lobby in the United States wanting to see the dollar as the preferred EU currency. Greek abandonment of the single currency will see that economy re-introduce its former drachmas, not the dollar.
At first reading, the dollar dominating the EU may seem like American wishful thinking. But that was before the Irish government launched a last-ditch tourism drive to kick-start its severely battered economy, once dubbed the Celtic Tiger because of its world-wide reputation for rapid expansion.
Like Greece and Portugal, Southern Ireland is on the brink of economic meltdown. While re-introducing the former highly popular and successful Irish pound is the obvious solution, there is a danger such a move could play into the hands of Sinn Fein, the one-time political apologist for the Provisional IRA.
Fronted by the County Louth TD and party president Gerry Adams – a former Westminster MP for West Belfast - the republican party has become the unofficial leader of the Republic’s anti-austerity movement, and any move to link up with British sterling could be misinterpreted as a sinister plot to bring the South back into the Union.
Irish tourism bosses and the Dublin government have unveiled a highly innovative initiative known as The Gathering: An Irish Homecoming. Over the next year, the plan is to attract hundreds of thousands – even millions - of people with Irish family roots back to the Emerald Isle for holidays.
The main targets of The Gathering are North America, Australia and New Zealand – all countries where the dollar reigns supreme. With indicators firmly suggesting the United States is edging out of recession, this shift could secure President Obama a second term in the Oval Office.
Obama’s visit to Ireland during his first term has already charmed the influential Irish American lobby. The Southern Irish government, based at Dublin’s Leinster House, is gambling heavily that these millions of tourists will bring American dollars to the Republic – not weakened and dwindling euros.
With the United Kingdom facing a double-dip recession, sterling may not have the financial muscle to become a viable alternative to the under-pressure euro. Realistically, too, the single currency’s leading partners – France and Germany – are highly unlikely to recommend sterling as a radical alternative to any crumbling eurozone.
This situation has far-reaching implications for EU-US relations. The Gathering in Ireland will also be boosted by a significant number of historic centenaries between 2013 and 2016, all of which will increase the dollar’s European powerbase.
Southern Irish tourism bosses and politicians will have noted the massive global publicity and marketing exercise which accompanied this year’s centenary commemorations to mark the sinking in the icy North Atlantic of the luxury liner, the Titanic, in April 1912 with the loss of more than 1,500 lives.
Next year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of two key Irish nationalist militia movements which played a major part in the Home Rule crisis which bedevilled Ireland in the early years of the 20th century.
These were the Irish Volunteers – the forerunner of the IRA – and the Irish Citizen Army. Both were formed in 1913 in response to Unionists establishing the Ulster Volunteers a year earlier to combat Irish Home Rule.
The year 2014 also marks the centenary of the start of the Great War in August 1914 which claimed millions of lives across the trenches and battlefields of Europe. World War One saw the Commonwealth nations, especially Australia and New Zealand, as well as the United States, send tens of thousands of troops to fight – and die – in Europe. 2017 marks the centenary of America’s entry into World War One.
The Gathering organisers can use their event as a template to encourage hundreds of thousands of tourists from these nations – many with no Irish roots at all – to come to Europe to visit battlefields and cemeteries where their ancestors fought, died, or were buried. That obviously means the prospect of billions of dollars flooding into the EU.
The Irish American link will also be enhanced in 2016 as Irish nationalists across the globe pour into Ireland to commemorate the centenary of the failed Dublin Easter Rising of 1916. While militarily, the Rising was a complete disaster, politically because the British executed most of the Rising leaders by firing squad, it laid the foundations for the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1920, which in turn paved the way for the Free State and ultimately the Irish Republic.
The Gathering also provides America with an ace card to financially combat its biggest economic rival, China, which has already offered to use its currency to bail out the entire European single currency.
In spite of China’s very dubious human rights record, many EU states may be prepared to ‘look the other way’ if the yuan was used to stabilise the rapidly faltering euro. Such a move would give the Chinese their biggest financial prize since China’s acquisition of Hong Kong in 1997 from the UK.
An EU-China axis would effectively outmanoeuvre any scheme by the American dollar to dominate Europe’s single currency. The euro would exist in name only, with the Chinese yuan dictating the development and stability of EU member state economies.
In spite of Vladimir Putin’s recent victory in the Russian elections, his ruble is still not yet powerful enough to challenge the yuan – let alone the dollar and sterling – as an alternative European single currency. Besides, would the emerging former Soviet bloc nations really want arch rival China to dominate their economies?
This China-Russian rivalry will be another factor which would play into the hands of financiers wanting to develop the EU-US alliance. Time is not on the side of the dollar. A lot of lobbying will have to be done to ensure any beleaguered EU states look west to the US, rather than east to China.
It is one of the ironies of Irish history that for eight centuries the Irish tribes butchered each other for supremacy of the island, yet in the next eight years, a series of commemorations could see the dead of those campaigns act as a springboard for the dollar’s domination of Europe.
Why go to all that bother John,just get Sean Garlands mates in the sticks to print of the super dollars needed to make us all rich,save us the sight/sound of loads of ham-shanks running round the place telling us how big everything is back in the states....sorry Carrie...
ReplyDeleteCan't see this being a serious article. The dollar ain't coming into Europe. Pure fantasy. As for the 'gathering' that's akin to priests telling their victims to donate a collection for the upkeep of the parochial house. It is the Irish political self servers who continually force emigration on their own people. In a global recession if people are so gullible as to travel the planet to the aid of the very people who forced them and/or their parents to flee Ireland, then hell beat it up the lot of them.
ReplyDeleteLarry that gathering would be a great idea..imagine the Scappaticci,and the Davidison clan get together in the Felons,and the bearded one as an fearati.
ReplyDeleteMarty
ReplyDeleteshower of b-stards...or am I on the wrong thread lmao
No Larry this thread is about the mighty dollar and those bastards are a great example how powerful money is.I agree the dollar wont get across the big pond and if the diaspóra na nGael return home I hope they stay long enough to vote those gangsters out of office...
ReplyDeletemarty
ReplyDeleteif the dollar got across the pond the logic might be it would benefit exports. But, surely a devaluation of the euro will do the same trick?
Re the 'gathering'. After all the letdowns the ordinary 'PADDY' has endured, i hope they have sense to stay wherever they ended up and let the IMF get on with it. Why help those in the Dail?
Larry the ordinary Paddy has been both fucked and conned by the clergy and politicians of this country so wouldnt it be something else that after calling for a return of our diaspora such as SMH ,Marty down under etc that they did indeed return just to hound the fuckers that caused all this misery,as for the euro a cara its a bit like an alterboy in Maynooth....
ReplyDeletemarty
ReplyDeletei never thunk of SMH and martydownunder coming home with an agenda. I only dreaded the cute hoors getting yet another laugh up their sleeves. However should those two arrive home i'll be with ye to meet them.
I hear most of the republic was plunged into darkness last night...when the country,s main electricity supplier fell off his bike....
ReplyDeleteThe gathering lol what a freakin cringe number it all is. The gathering for what - to celebrate the decimation of our people and land & then wax lyrical about ye auld Mother Ireland...
ReplyDeleteTo ride over the blood of Irish patriots and use their courage as some sort of nostalagia is revolting. Many Irish downunder won't be fooled... Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters would see through this obnoxious strategy too.
I always think of what an Aboriginal elder told me aeons ago as follows: "they practised on your people then they came for us"
Keep sending the young over for employment opportunities Ireland We will look after em. heres hoping things dont go agutsa downunder economically... They have already tightened up the residency numbers...
John i dont u/stand how the pound or dollar is gonna shape things up Maybe i am abit thick but it seems a tad naive
@marty Hola! get into knitting marty!! in prep for the nostalgic hordes. They love big green cardies & such. No wait! I will knit em up and send them over to you to sell to the millions invading Ireland searching for their ancestral roots. We will split the dosh!
ReplyDeleteI will even knit up union jack designs with a coded emblem - a beard in the middle of it.
And then there is tourista Tshirts!!
Endless possiblities for slogans - cover all bases:
Brits & Traitor Shits got me here
I love beards & bullshit
Still Occupied
The Pope & Queen are obscene
21st Century Famine $$$
"Kiss me I am dying" Mother Ireland
Stoned in Cokeville Dublin
We will be so successful we will just get the shit done in China and shipped over.
And John McGirr can be the chief tour guide up the Shankill of course
Lol SMH,what a sight for sore eyes,hordes of returning Irish disembarking to the tune of a nation in the rain,most pubs not opening until after 7pm that is the ones still in business, newly built half finished empty houses noone can afford.ex pows in danger of being interned and few caring, priests and politicians still doing what they have always done i.e, fucking screwing the people,yeah while it would be good to see long gone friends , any trip home would just be a reminder to them why they left in the first instance..so maybe hon we could get an extra T-shirt printed
ReplyDeleteBEEN THERE-EMIGRATED ...
Bob doh brains said to Gerry Itwasntme "doh I just seen Sky news and they said 3 CLIFF WALKERS have fallen to their death!!doh cant believe they all had the same name "
ReplyDeleteBob doh brains is away to the olympics with a suitcase full of condoms the ones in Thatcher house entered him for the 3 day riding event...first sailing results are in....USA have taken gold Britain have taken silver..and Somalia have taken a middle aged couple from Weymouth...Rebecca Addlington lost out by a nose in the womens 800mtrs freestyle..she came third..two million people attended events during the first three days of the olympics,firmly establishing it as Britains second most popular attraction after the dole queue.Is it me or have you noticed how well the Chinese swimmers have come on since Morcombe bay..OLYMPIC UPDATE ..Romainians have taken gold,silver,bronze copper lead steel from the olympic stadium..
ReplyDeleteCongratulations to Great Britains Andy Murray for winning gold at the London 2012 olympics tennis singles final,commiserations to Scotlands Andy Murray for losing the London 2012 olympic tennis mixed doubles final...
ReplyDelete