Musical First Impressions Are Often Wrong -- Mastodon

I have a bad habit of dismissing musical suggestions from friends and family.  While I was a musically ignorant kid, due partially to lack of direction and my parents' vigilance against that damn "explicit lyrics" sticker, once released into college I was free to explore music on my own and found my way from ska-punk to punk to second-wave emo to melodic hardcore to hardcore punk to metal to everything aggressive, angry, and loduer than everything else.  As a result of my long descent into more and more obscure musical sub-genres, I have significant overlap in taste with Frank Chow, my brother Tom in Colombian Necktie, and my brothers-in-law.  Hell, my wife (a massive golden age of Hollywood and Brat Pack fan) and I can even agree on a playlist from time to time.

The point is that I am a fan of a lot of different types of music and I constantly have a "to listen" list on my iPod or my iTunes.  With so much to get through I can be unnecessarily dismissive of suggestions from friends and family.  Case in point: Arcade Fire.  They're probably my favorite indie-type rock band and I love all three of their albums, but when when my brothers-in-law were raving about them the only thing I knew about them was the performance of Neighborhood #2 (Laika) on Letterman.  This is still probably my least favorite track of theirs, but it turned me off at the time and no amount of pleading from my wife or the outlaws could make me give them a second try.... until I just decided to have a listen one day to something else on Funeral and ended up loving it.

Another more recent example of my musical close-mindedness is Bon Iver.  Now, to be fair, all I had was a name and "have you heard of this guy?" from my brother-in-law (again), but I ignored it for months until Pitchfork was lavishing praise and Justin Vernon was appearing on late night talk shows to perform Flume or something.  All the sudden For Emma, Forever Ago was everywhere and it was my new favorite album.  I still think it's a near-perfect album.

Fast forward to 2009.  Actually, rewind to 1998.  In high school, the metalheads were jerks.  So were the punk types.  I had a hard time looking past the cover of the book and actually giving stuff a try (plus I was in the midst of discovering Led Zeppelin courtesy of my friend John and trying to learn every lyric of every Beatles song ever recorded).  Long story short: I didn't have a great impression of heavy metal.  This changed in college when my friend Greg started detailing all the overlap between hardcore and metal and the infinite cross-pollination that was going on in the metalcore sub-genre.  Then, in 2001, heartbroken over a failed relationship and horribly angry about the September 11th terrorist attacks, I found Converge's Jane Doe and fell in love with music all over again.  Refused's Shape of Punk to Come and American Nightmare's (or Give Up the Ghost's) Background Music were also hugely influential on my tastes at the time.  Over the past decade I've been trying more and more metal, checking out artist recommendations and seeing where all the influences fit.

Despite my attempts to broaden my horizons into heavy metal, I still make mistakes.

Flash forward to 2009 (for real this time).  I'm at the With Full Force festival near Leipzig in the former east Germany.  Having woken up at 4am for a 6am flight to Berlin, rented a car, stocked up on beer, and driven to the festival, I was wrecked.  On the bill for that evening, just after sunset, were Mastodon.  These guys had already racked up some serious buzz in the US from Blood Mountain and had just released Crack The Skye. I'd been passed a burned copy of Blood Mountain and wasn't captivated instantly by it, but I wanted to give them a try live so my buddy Ross and I wandered into the main festival area, grabbed some food, and sauntered over to a good spot on the field where we could see the stage, the big screens, and could easily make runs to the bar for cheap and delicious beer.  Mastodon were already on and after wolfing down my food, I sat down in a spot that I could still see.

I fell asleep.  There really is no excuse other than sleep deprivation combined with a couple pints of beer consumed in central European summer heat, but -- damn -- it as a hardcore and metal festival!  Seriously lame.  After waking up from my nap I made some half-assed comment to Ross about how I didn't see what the big deal with Mastodon was and he agreed.  He'd fallen asleep too.  Seriously lame.

Flash forward again, this time to 2011.  I was surfing Metal Sucks and Metal Injection and noticed a story about the new Mastodon album.  I don't know what was different on that day, but I decided that I would download all four of their albums and give it a shot.  Impulse buy. After reading up on them on Wikipedia, checking out some reviews, and watching the video below -- Letterman's not joking, they have been nominated for a Grammy -- I decided I'd been way too hasty in writing them off.

They're excellent.  This is complex, interesting, harsh, and yet melodic metal from a bunch of guys who have managed to change their sound while maintaining their core identity as an aggressive heavy metal band.  They experiment without being self-indulgent.  They incorporate melody but not the throwaway "we should do some clean vocals here" melody insertion that is standard in -- and has ruined -- other bands. They're also progressive without descending into jam band bouts of musical masturbation.  They're also quite intelligent.  I mean, Leviathan is a concept about Herman Melville's Moby Dick! Blood Mountain is about the various dangers encountered while ascended aforementioned mountain.

Crack the Skye's concept is... well, it's this:

"There is a paraplegic and the only way that he can go anywhere is if he astral travels. He goes out of his body, into outer space and a bit like Icarus, he goes too close to the sun, burning off the golden umbilical cord that is attached to his solar plexus. So he is in outer space and he is lost, he gets sucked into a wormhole, he ends up in the spirit realm and he talks to spirits telling them that he is not really dead. So they send him to the Russian cult, they use him in a divination and they find out his problem. They decide they are going to help him. They put his soul inside Rasputin's body. Rasputin goes to usurp the czar and he is murdered. The two souls fly out of Rasputin's body through the crack in the sky(e) and Rasputin is the wise man that is trying to lead the child home to his body because his parents have discovered him by now and think that he is dead. Rasputin needs to get him back into his body before it's too late. But they end up running into the Devil along the way and the Devil tries to steal their souls and bring them down…there are some obstacles along the way." -- Brann Dailor, drummer

Oh and the title track is also about his sister's suicide at the age of 14.  Yes, really. Whether you dig this kind of concept album stuff or not, these guys are putting tons of thought into these albums.  You have the music, the lyrics, the artwork is phenomenal... now I see why these guys are one of the most important metal bands around today.

In short, there are only two explanations.  My tastes have changed massively or I didn't give them a proper try when I first heard of them.  While I'd like to take the easy way out and say I just "wasn't ready for them at the time" or something else while I gaze at my navel, given my track record I was probably just being a massive douche, tired, and slightly drunk in a field in Germany.

Mastodon, I apologize.  You rule.

PS Their new album The Hunter comes out on September 26th.

Their first album was Remission (2002):

Next was Leviathan (2004):

Then came Blood Mountain (2006) and Crack the Skye (2009).

We're Done

I can't write about it now, but we're leaving Ireland in early September and heading back to the Washington DC area. Despite all that I've enjoyed in Ireland, you can only tread water and build up so much debt before you realize that it's best to cut your losses.  Actually, if you're building up debt you're moving backwards, not treading water, so that's even worse.  I've submitted my notice at work, we've moved in with my sister-in-law in the north city suburb of Sutton, and as of September we'll be flying back to stay with my parents and start over.

I'll explain more when I can.  An almighty rant awaits...

Like heffeweizen from Hell: Experiments in beer drinking

I mean "from hell" as a compliment, like a badass heffe.  Allow me to explain.  Last week Frank Chow and I got back to recording our podcast, the Trans-Atlantic Throwdown, which we hope to make a bi-weekly event.  Blogging is something of a ranting and/or venting of opinions thing for me, and the TAT has helped me get that kind of stuff out of my system and I haven't had much need to write.  Until now. 


As part of Episode 8 of TAT, Frank brought up a GQ article that instructed readers to mix their favorite beers with some distilled spirits or liqueurs.  Now, growing up in the United States -- and more recently working in an office that works hard and DEFINITELY plays hard -- this recommendation to mix my beer and liquor instantly brings to mind an image of a young man slamming back a quickly curdling concoction and then high-fiving his buddies.  You may have heard of the terms "bomb shot" or "depth charge", terms that invoke combat or high explosives and not thoughtful tasting and appreciation of the art of brewing and distilling.  Not so with these recipes.  It turns out the guy who wrote the article in GQ has his own blog and has not only recommended mixing beer with liquor, but mixing different beers together for endless tasty results.  There's more to this than Jägerbombs and Black & Tans.  


[Another popular beer-liquor mix is, of course, the drink known as the Irish Car Bomb in the United States.  This, like the Black & Tan, has a somewhat touchy history attached to the name due to the most recent Troubles in Northern Ireland.]


Last weekend I ventured into town with my brother-in-law to test out two of the recommended recipes that Frank discussed on the show.  First up, dropping espresso into an IPA.  The set up:

We had to deviate from the recipe slightly.  The only thing approaching an IPA in strength and flavor on tap was the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.  Had we gone to Against The Grain, we may have had a chance at getting Sierra Nevada's Torpedo IPA, but I digress... the bartender did not look at me like a badass when I ordered two beers and two espressos.  In fact, the server on his dinner break sitting next to us at the bar began eyeing us up with a very confused look on his face.  I think I overheard one bartender saying to the other, "... not the weirdest thing ordered... "  My brother-in-law was first up to test it out.

Not a man to do things by half measure, Rob pretty much THREW his espresso into the pint, resulting in a Guiness-like "alive inside" show in the pint glass, but one that quickly erupted like a primary school volcano-replica science project and resulted in much mopping up of beer/espresso mix with beer mats and napkins.  Lesson learned.  I was a bit gentler with the poor and the results were a huge head and two pints that looked like they contained heffeweizen brewed by Beelzebub himself.  Or a root beer float.  I can't decide.  

It was, in fact, very tasty.  In one of those combinations that I never thought would work, the hops, the citrus flavor,  and of course the overwhelming coffee taste totally worked together.  Also, a caffeine and alcohol buzz feels nice. So, 1 for 1 on the concoctions.  I can recommend dropping espresso into a hoppy ale, but I would like to try this again with a really strong IPA.  


Next up, the more alcoholic option: limoncello in a heffeweizen. For this, we ended up going with Erdinger Weissbier, which was also on tap as Porterhouse has not brewed up an unfiltered wheat beer lately.  First, the set up:

Note the lovely 125th anniversary glasses!  We tested two methods here.  First, I gently poured my limoncello into the Erdinger.  No volcano, just some added bubbles as the liquids mixed.  Rob decided to for more of a bomb shot approach.  As he held his shot glass of limoncello over the Erdinger, the server who had been sitting next to us said, "It's going to explode!"  
Rob: Oh, sorry, I'll pour i--
Server: No, you should DO IT!!!
With that encouragement, Rob dropped the entire shot into the Erdinger.  The shot lodged itself in the narrow neck of the glass -- should have anticipated that -- and the beer separated.  Wheaty and unfiltered Erdinger stayed above the shot glass while a clear version stayed below.  

If you don't mind, I'll lapse into cheesiness and just say that the limoncello-Erdinger mix was like a sunny, summer's day.  An alcoholic sunny summer's day -- limoncello is about 35% ABV -- but delicious in any case.  Very refreshing, very smooth and very easy to drink.  2 for 2 on the GQ drink recipes!


All told, this experiment was a great success and I think one that should be replicated, especially the espresso concoction, at the mid-way point of a long night out with friends.  Instead of Red Bull and vodka, I'd much rather enjoy a hoppy IPA with a coffee kicker.  And if you have friends over for a summer BBQ, throwing limoncello into some bottled heffeweizen (poured out into glasses of course).  


Comments? Recipes? Reactions?

The Irish Prospect or When The Employed Start Emigrating, Something Is Terribly Wrong

My company has a policy whereby if you are involved in winning business for another department you are entitled to claim some portion of the fee the company earns.  They call it a cross-sell commission.  About eighteen months ago I was involved in one of these transactions but had heard nothing of it in so long that I assumed that the fee hadn’t been big enough to qualify.  You can understand my excitement when I got the email from our head of Finance:

Dear XXX,

Please add €200 to Paddy’s pay packet this month for a cross-sell commission.

Signed,

Chief Financial Dude

This came right in the middle of January.    

Of course, we have to remember that in December the Irish government announced that almost everyone’s taxes were going up, so I knew my monthly pay would be going down in January.  For the record, my pay-check has gone down twice in two Januaries.  In the intervening two years I’ve had a child and we’ve taken on all the costs associated with raising a little one: tons of gear, clothes, equipment and a bigger place.  In simple language, my costs have gone up while my income has gone down, squeezing our fun money in the middle.  So a bumper of €200 to make the end of January that much easier was greatly appreciated.

The new taxes wiped it out.  I guess it could have been worse. Unlike most of my colleagues, my January pay was on par with my December pay, not lower than, but it was hard to suppress my gasp as I tore open my payslip to see that my cross-sell had vanished into the Irish Exchequer. 

This, along with some other experiences in recent weeks that I can’t discuss here, has started my wife and me on a bout of soul-searching and real serious discussions about the future.  What do we want?  Should we stay here?  Are there opportunities for advancement for us here?  While we haven’t arrived at any hard answers, it’s really given me a chance to finally look around and take stock of what’s going on here.  

I’ve been really optimistic about Ireland.  Sure, it hasn’t been easy to watch the Government dump money into the banks and then saddle the average taxpayer with more taxes, but overall I’ve been very upbeat on Ireland.  The weather’s not great, but pub culture is a lot of fun.   In the first two weeks of January my parents were in town and I saw two Leinster matches with Dad – I loved it!  My wife and I have made a real effort to get out and see as much of Dublin as possible, even the lesser-known parks where our daughter can really stretch her legs.  And, finally – and one of the major reasons I wanted to move to Ireland – we’re on Europe’s doorstep.  An entire continent – at least one entire continent -- of history, sites and tastes to experience!

…Except it doesn’t do much good to be on Europe’s doorstep if you can’t even afford the plane tickets to get there.  A couple of weeks ago my wife and I tried to plan a long weekend in some European city.  We had to scrap it; it’s just not doable on our monthly budget any more.  

I don’t write this to whine about my finances.  Unlike 13.4% of the Irish labour market, I’ve got a job and I can pay my bills.  I live in a nice place in a great part of town and can live without a car.  I’ve managed to get out and see Paris, Venice, Budapest and part of southern France.  And, like most people, I could do without so much drinking and dinners out on the town (which now cost more due to babysitters).  And Dublin is still a great place to live, I think.  There’s plenty to do here and I have friends with whom I can share the good times.

The issue is that every single member of the Irish middle class now has their financial future tied to the economic/banking crisis in a way that I couldn’t have imagined a couple of short years ago.  Business is slow to recover.  The economy is growing again, but most of the growth is coming from the exports sector – a sector that will not deliver job growth to the thousands of young, (mostly) male workers who were in construction and industry before the crash.  Growth is also not fast enough to ensure a raise or promotions for people like me who have worked through the recession.   In my office, the only people getting raises and promotions are those who are jumping ship and moving on to a new company or industry.  

This has helped me to reconsider my view of the Irish emigrant.  Back when the recession was first starting – and well before the vast majority of people had any idea of the black hole in the baking system -- the ever-pessimistic Irish media was quick to resurrect that old Irish bogeyman: mass emigration.  My opinion just two years ago was that emigrants were too quick to abandon Ireland.  Maybe that was my American optimism, but now I can see that they were right.  The Government has put no real effort into jobs programs, instead relying on a magical link between fixing the banking system, getting lending going again and job creation.  

So, to those who can afford the ticket to UK, Australia, Canada or the US, I say, “Best of luck.”

The real problem is that it’s not just the unemployed who are contemplating emigrating.  It’s not just new graduates from Irish universities who are finding it difficult to get work at home.  It’s those who feel they are at risk of stagnating here by staying. When your gross salary has been the same for three years, you haven’t had a bonus and as a result of tax increase and welfare reductions your take-home pay seems to drop every January… why would you want to stay if you have an offer elsewhere? 

I realize this is easy for me to say.  I’m the son of a US Army officer with plenty of experience picking up and leaving places and settling somewhere else.  My family is pretty well accustomed to long distances and infrequent visits.  There is no way for me to comprehend the anguish that some families – some of whom feel deeply tied to the county and country from which they hail -- must be feeling at seeing their child, brother or husband effectively forced out of Ireland due to the lack of employment prospects. 

But I’m starting to understand the reasons why they’re leaving.  At first it was just a trickle of non-Irish nationals who had worked in industries hardest-hit by the recession.  Then there were rumours of real Irish emigration.  Then there were articles in the sports pages about the GAA having trouble fielding teams in some counties and towns because of the drain of young men and women looking for work.  Now people like me are looking at their situation and wondering: how long do I have to muddle through this?  Where is my life headed? 

For me, it’s come down to this: it is unsurprising, albeit unfortunate, when the unemployed go abroad to find work.  People have always moved to find work and support themselves.  But when the relatively stable and employed residents of a country start looking around and asking aloud what they’re doing here, it must become obvious to the leaders of this country that something is horribly wrong and something has to be done quick.  

When Irish Eyes Are Crying... nailed it.

For anyone who hasn't yet read it, I highly recommend Michael Lewis' summary of the Irish economic situation entitled When Irish Eyes Are Crying, printed in the latest issue of Vanity Fair.  Lewis gets most things right, especially his brief profiles of Irish politicians and economists.  There are a couple odd editing misses, however, like when he writes that the banks are older than Ireland itself.  Ireland is an island; he obviously means the independent Irish state, which came into existence in the early 1920's and was, before that, a part of the United Kingdom.  But for the most part its an excellent piece that, despite its length, flies by.

When Irish Eyes Are Crying by Michael Lewis

This says it all

Nollaig Shona Daoibh or Y'all have a merry Christmas.

I used up all my vacation days this year -- two weddings in the US for me and one for my wife to attend plus a week in the US for Thanksgiving -- so here I am showing my face in the office on the 23rd of December.  The workload is light in late for my team in December, so I've done my best to stretch out my few tasks over the past three days and even done a couple of things I normally wouldn't.  The second deep-freeze in a month has dropped another several inches of snow and ice on Ireland, just as people were scraping the last of the ice from the previous freeze off the sidewalks.  The bad weather combined with the Christmas weekend coming up means that more people than usual just packed it in and headed for the family home to begin Christmas early.  Walks home have been through a very quiet south Dublin.  My wife and daughter are out in Galway and I should be joining them tonight when I drive across from Dublin with my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and his girlfriend tonight.

This Christmas should be one of mixed feelings.  The lovely Sue, who began as a nanny to the four "kids" of my wife's family but became so much more to the whole family, is no longer with us and this first Christmas will no doubt be tough in many ways due to her absence.  She took care of so much of the Christmas preparations out in Galway that I'm sure there will be some adjusting to be done as we all try to pick up the slack and make it a nice Christmas for each other.

On the upside, my daughter has just turned one year old, so it'll be a joy to see her experience Christmas in her own new way.  She doesn't yet know about Santa Claus, but she'll be dazzled by the lights, the tree, the wrapping paper, the couple of new gifts we've gotten her and all the attention that will be lavished on her by her grandparents, aunt and uncles. I'm looking forward to creating new traditions with her as she gets older and starts figuring out what's going on around her.  I'm sure that the traditions in my family evolved over time, but in my head there was always some sort of pattern: early morning wake-up, an endless wait for Mom and Dad to get out of bed and get their coffee, opening of presents, small-scale warfare over what movie to watch, a big early dinner. 

Later, to the list of Christmas traditions we added the Christmas Eve soup (usually cream of curried chicken from the Silver Palate cookbook), the Christmas Eve party and a convoy of guests, Catholic or not (all were welcome), to Midnight Mass at St. Mary of Sorrows Catholic Church.   The family has also embraced The Pogues' classic Fairytale of New York, which must of course be sung in swaggering, slightly off-key style.  Now I have Christmas in rural Co. Galway with paper hats at dinner, plenty of Christmas movies, Scrabble, Scattegories, and a visit from my parents around New Year.  Some people lament the loss of that childhood Christmas feeling, but I think I'm enjoying my adult Christmasses just as much.

The last few Christmases have been eventful to say the least.  Just five years ago, my first Christmas as a married man was a tough one.  Due to a mix-up with my paycheck from the Army, I got a big payment of $0 right before Christmas.  This left me and my new bride with no money to travel with -- although we debated getting on a military "Space A" flight -- and no money for gifts.  A generous Christmas loan from the bank of Dad kept us flush enough to get by and although the first Christmas away from her family was tough, I can't help smiling remembering our first Christmas as husband and wife.  With money extremely tight due to the pay mix-up, I only gave her "Gift of the Magi" by O'Henry, a story she'd never read.  I drove onto Fort Bragg and invited some of the lower-ranking soldiers who were stuck on post for Christmas to join us for dinner.  The only one took us up on the offer: Specialist Benissan, originally from Togo, west Africa.  He bowed to my wife when we opened our door to him, he was cheerful and happy throughout dinner and he insisted on cleaning all of the dishes for his hosts.  We ended the day by taking a walk, a tradition in my wife's family for Christmas Day, and we dropped a plate of food off with the apartment's security guard.

On my last Christmas before moving to Ireland (two days before moving to Ireland to be exact), things didn't go as planned either.  My grandfather, up from Florida with Grandma for the week, had bleeding in his brain and was rushed to Fairfax hospital a couple days before Christmas; a few hours later he had a drainage tube emerging from his skull and so we did multiple trips to the hospital that week.  Meanwhile, Dad and my wife began coming down with colds and/or flus and were quickly sent to bed to recover.  This left me, my mother, my two brothers and my sister to "do Christmas."  We did exchange gifts but I can't remember much more than Dad, half-dazed from his flu and propped up in bed, pulling unwrapped gifts out of a giant plastic bag for us like a hacking, coughing and beardless (well, five o'clock shadow) Santa.  Those of us healthy enough to go to mass were piled into the car.  Mom didn't even care what we wore so long as we went; plans had been blown to pieces at this point.  Once in mass we got a seat right up front on the side of the altar.  Then the procession started and my mother realized that her least-favorite priest at the parish, a bit of an awkard guy, was saying mass that Christmas morning.  We kept it together until his homily descended into the theological importance of "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star".  He then led the congregation in a sing along a capella.  My sister and mother cried.  We three boys did the only thing we could -- laugh.  We're still laughing about it now, but that Christmas has since entered the family mythology as "Fizzbitch", so named by my brother Tom. 

Even the "bad" Christmases -- really just Christmasses that didn't go to plan -- are good Christmases when I look back at them.  I know this isn't the case for some people, so I'm thankful that Christmas has remained a positive and happy time of year for me as I've grown up and I'm looking forward to sharing it with my daughter in the coming winters.

The snow just keeps coming down now.  The trip out to Galway should be an interesting one this evening.  We'll get there eventually.

Nollaig Shona agus Athbhliain faoi mhaise duit.
Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year to you.

Is this a trap?

A couple weeks ago my wife, daughter and I returned from our Thanksgiving trip to the DC area and upstate New York, where we had the annual meal with family friends in a house overlooking the Hudson River at West Point. The trip from Virginia to New York was done by car, with my sister's vehicle going by way of Harrisburg, PA while my drive took in the "lovely" scenery of northern New Jersey on the traditional I-95 route. Having done most of my travel to and from Ireland by air, of course, this was my first road trip in a long time and I relished the opportunity to work with a map and navigate our way around the Thanksgiving traffic congestion. Traffic in parts of Ireland can be bad, especially in Galway, but Irish motorways don't count for much in terms of road-trips. You can do Dublin to Galway in less than 3 hours and you could do Cork to Derry in around 4 hours if there was a straight-shot motorway. Unless you're doing something like the Four Peaks challenge, there aren't many long trips possible in Ireland.

I posted a few months ago about the feeling of returning to Ireland from my "home" country. This time the feeling was far less gloomy. As we descended into Dublin airport, we were informed by the pilot of our plane that there had been significant snowfall and a freeze over most of the island, so we went from the US -- where Thanksgiving kicks off the winter holiday season -- to real winter wonderland (pardon the cliché). I've never been anti-Christmas, but I'd be lying if I said that in recent years the whole lead-up to Christmas hadn't lost some of its excitement for me. I think coming back to a Dublin that looks like a Christmas card helped a bit. I even dug out the Christmas DVD's back at the apartment and I've done my best not to gripe about Christmas music being on in our apartment so much.

So maybe all the Christmas spirit helped me with my post-vacation adjustment back to "real life" or maybe this vacation was just the right length, a week. Enough time with family and old friends enjoying one of my favorite American holidays to feel refreshed, but not so long that I begin to delude myself into thinking that the vacation is a lifestyle.
While my Advent season mood is not as gloomy as I expected, the mood in Ireland is certainly gloomy given the economic developments.

I did my best to ignore Irish news while I was in the US, but everyone kept asking me about the IMF, the EU and everywhere I turned there was Ireland on the front page of US broadsheets. Not only did wife, daughter and I return to a Dublin somewhat trapped under ice, but we returned to an Ireland now in the process of working within the constraints (some self-imposed, others not) of an EU/IMF bail-out and austerity plan. There are three pieces to understanding the direction Ireland is headed in over the next few years.

First, there is the National Recovery Plan (a.k.a. the four-year plan), which lays out the framework for budgets to be announced over the next few years. The most notable aspect of the plan, in my opinion, is the fact that to get back to within Maastricht Treaty provisions, a deficit no higher than 3% of GDP, the Government is engaging in a €15bn correction over four years with "the pain" front-loaded in 2011.

Second, there are the EU/IMF Programme of Financial Support for Ireland Programme Documents, which contain requests for aid and an outline of the standards that the Irish government have to meet on a quarterly basis to stay in good standing. The package, as requested, totals €85bn in the following split:

• €45bn from the European Financial Stability Mechanism/Facility and bilateral loans from Sweden, United Kingdom and Denmark
• €22.5bn from the IMF
• €17.5bn from Irish resources such as the National Pension Reserve Fund (as much as raiding this fund has been discussed over the past two years, I'm surprised there's anything left in there).

The package is coming in at an average annual interest rate of 5.8%.
Finally, we have Budget 2011, which was just announced the other night. This is the Budget which supposedly delivers the front-loaded fiscal correction of €6bn as part of the four-year plan through a combination of tax increases, welfare reductions and the elimination of credits and exemptions in various forms. Not only has the tax-base been widened to include more low-income earners, but pretty much everyone's take-home pay has been reduced by some degree.
I have a few thoughts on the whole economic situation we're in at the moment:

• While Ireland was probably cruising for a recession anyway, given that nearly 17% of economic output was in construction (mostly house-building) directly and a great degree of the economy was overly-reliant on residential construction indirectly, the source of Ireland's ongoing solvency and liquidity issues have to do with the banking crisis (also driven by property-related activities). So while I understand the need for some austerity measures to correct the public finances in a small, open economy, as a taxpayer now taking ANOTHER hit on my take-home pay I want to see the plan for the banking sector.... where is it? With all the plan-writing and Budget-debating going on, we still can't get a straight answer on what is going to happen in the very part of the economy that is now tying the millstone of an IMF "rescue" package around the State's collective neck. Mergers? Acquisitions by foreign banks? Closing down of banks that are now nationalised and will never again operate as proper financial institutions? Tell us something! Stephen Kinsella, University of Limerick, has more on this in a Thanksgiving Day post at The Guardian's (UK) new Ireland blog.
• While there is some talk online in the blogs and in the op-ed pages of a lot newspapers suggesting that Ireland should default on its debts, I don't think this will happen. What I do think will happen, however, is that it will become obvious in the next year or 18 months that the cost of financing the sovereign debt -- both the EU/IMF funds and the previously auctioned bonds -- is unsustainable and there will have to be some adjusting of the terms of the agreement. Ireland is juggling several balls at the moment: restore growth to the economy, restore the deficit to within EU rules, and pay off its debts accrued to finance the deficit. The annual tax take is around €30bn; the cost of the EU and IMF funds will be somewhere around €4bn per annum. Then you factor in the costs of paying back bonds auctioned off previously and Barry Eichengreen's assertion that 10% of national income is going to go to paying off debts is not inconceivable. Of course, it would be far less a burden if the tax take was higher, which could happen if there's economic growth...
• ...but I don't think economic growth is going to accelerate as a result of these budgetary changes. As Karl Whelan (UCD) points out, the rationale behind the front-loading of the budgetary correction into Year 1 of 4 was to reassure international bond markets so that when Ireland ran out of cash sometime in 2011, it could borrow on international markets at more reasonable rate. Now that the EU/IMF package is in place, there's no need to reassure bond markets, because we won't be borrowing from them. So, with the economy still weak -- core retail sales are skipping along the bottom and the long-term unemployment is now at 6.5% -- the extraction of €6bn from the economy is probably going to depress the economy further and make deficit-GDP targets all the more difficult to attain.
• Where is the blood in the streets with regards to the overpaid politicians? I previously wrote here that I thought the IMF would be far more ruthless in cost-cutting than the Government could be due to vested interests, but so far there's no sign in any of the documents that this is going to happen aside from the usual platitudes and vague language about efficiencies and waste reduction. Yes, the Taoiseach and his ministers are taking pay cuts in the deal, but they're still some of the highest-paid politicians in the world. Brian Cowen (or his successor) will still make more than Barack Obama or David Cameron even after taking a €14K paycut. On this issue, I would welcome more ruthless cutting from the new EU/IMF overlords but like the bank restructuring, the exposing of how well the Irish political class has been paying itself has received little attention.

In my humble opinion (and there are plenty out there on this topic to choose from), both the self-inflicted policies and those foisted upon Ireland by its European neighbors are actually counter-productive to the expressed goals of these measures. That leads me to ask, is this a trap? I'm not implying a conspiracy here, but I do think we've laid an elaborate trap for ourselves and we're walking straight into it. We need growth to help pay down the debt, but as a condition of the debt we're now taking measures that will stifle growth. The EU, for its part, doesn't want to see a domino of sovereign defaults or the possible disintegration of the Eurozone, so they're happy to leave certain vested interests untouched.
Don't even get me started on bondholders and the EU. European Commission über alles.
I leave you with the best music for cold weather I've ever heard:

I'm About to Have a Brain Aneurysm - a comment on the Irish media's response to IMF aid

For what died the sons of Róisín?

Was it greed?

Was it greed that drove Wolfe Tone to a paupers death in a cell of cold wet stone?

Will German, French or Dutch inscribe the epitaph of Emmet?

When we have sold enough of Ireland to be but strangers in it,

For What Died the Sons of Róisín, was it greed?

To whom do we owe our allegiance today?

To those brave men who fought and died that Róisín live again with pride,

Her sons at home to work and sing,

Her youth to dance and make her valleys ring,

Or the faceless men who for Mark and Dollar, betray her to the highest bidder?

To whom do we owe our allegiance today?

-- Luke Kelly, The Dubliners

Based on the front pages of the Irish newspapers today, you'd think that the impending IMF/EU aid package made the past eight decades of an independent Irish state irrelevant. The Irish Times today expanded its Letters to the Editor section to two full pages, and focussed the contents on letters responding to their editorial entitled Was it for this? In an opening paragraph lacking entirely in editorial self-awareness, the editorial board ponders:

"IT MAY seem strange to some that The Irish Times would ask whether this is what the men of 1916 died for: a bailout from the German chancellor with a few shillings of sympathy from the British chancellor on the side. There is the shame of it all. Having obtained our political independence from Britain to be the masters of our own affairs, we have now surrendered our sovereignty to the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Their representatives ride into Merrion Street today."

I guess they sort of mitigate the outrageousness of this opener by mentioning (two paragraphs later) that Ireland never had complete sovereignty due to its "enhancement" as a member of the EU. They probably know they have to walk a fine line on this, given the Irish Times' support of the Lisbon Treaty, including the second vote that took place just over a year ago. Apparently supporting the further integration of the EU through a treaty that was a repackaged Constitution of Europe was a fantastic idea; accepting an aid package to rescue to economy and set it back on a sound fiscal path is tantamount to a betrayal of the legions of Irish patriots in their graves. Give me a break.

I'm willing to admit that minds can change and that opinions shift. If I am giving the IT the benefit of the doubt, it could be that now that the crisis has reached fever pitch, the independence of Ireland has a new value. You don't know what you have until you've lost it (even though I don't think they've really lost it).

The Irish Times conflation of IMF aid with a loss of independence looks downright reasonable next to the front page of the Irish Examiner (formerly the Cork Examiner). In a downright embarassing display, Shaun Connolly and the Irish Examiner take the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic and make a mockery of it with their "Declaration of Dependence":

"IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God how have we come to this? And in the name of the dead generations from which she received her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through our new masters at the European Central Bank summons her children to her financial sovereign funeral."

Let's assume for a second that we accept the signers of the 1916 Proclamation as sainted heroes who died for Irish independence. (Note that while this is the majority opinion, other opinions on Easter 1916 are available.) What is a greater disrespect to their memory, the capitulation of the Fianna Fáil government in the face of the worst recession in Irish history or the blatant disrespect shown to one of the modern Irish state's founding documents?

Don't misunderstand me, I'm no fan of the Irish government's policies over the last couple of years. It now appears that after more than two years of being misled by the banks -- please, sir, can I have some more billions? -- that the State is in the position of letting the IMF do what it wouldn't, couldn't or just didn't do: nationalise and restructure the majority of the banking industry. But the decisions of the Government come from the fact that they are, in fact, THE GOVERNMENT and despite my misgivings about the Irish political system as it now operates, they were elected to their positions legally. The old adage about getting the government we deserve still applies. As such, the fact that these folks were elected and are now in the government is a fulfillment of the aims of Irish patriots of the past. I'm sure the "glorious dead" of past Irish independence struggles, both political and by force, would have hoped for a more noble and stable outcome for their nation 80 years after independence and nearly 100 years since the Easter Rising, but a free and democratic society precludes getting to choose your outcomes.

All of which brings me back to the subject of this post: I'm about to have a brain aneurysm. The negativity and self-loathing is now at an all-time high ("all-time" referring to my three years living in Ireland) and I don't think I can take it any more. Yes, your politicans betrayed you and dragged this economy to the edge. Yes, there are a lot of problems to deal with in the economy and in the political system. Yes, we are now "cap in hand" to the IMF and the EU looking for assistance with our problems. Strange days, harsh times.

But, in my humble Irish-American immigrant opinion, this is not the time to begin self-flagellation, dressing in sackcloths or setting ourselves on fire out of sheer embarassment. Now that everything done in print media is online and (mostly) free, everything written in this vein is subject to being picked up and re-reported around the world. You can not complain about the depiction of Ireland as a priest-ridden European backwater on the one hand and feed the international media stereotype monster on the other. So what's the alternative?

Show some self-respect. State the facts. Drop this preposterous obsession with "putting a positive spin on things" and its ugly cousin that I like to call "only in Ireland" negativity. How about some realism? The banking sector and the political classes' enabling of the banking-fueled property bubble has brought the country to this point. Time to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, face up to our problems and take the help needed to get the country back on track.

In a few more generations, what will have been the greater gift? Accepting IMF aid, rolling up our sleeves and getting Ireland back on track OR becoming so obsessed with our own misfortunes so as to establish a financial Great Famine for our grand-children to point to as the source of Ireland's misery? The Irish Economy 2.0 or "Black 2010"? I prefer the former.

What the hell is going on in Ireland?

I've been remiss in my blogging lately (although I've been keeping up with my Trans-Atlantic Throwdown podcasting with Frank Chow), but I've been getting lots of messages through other online channels on the whole IMF/EU bail-out things that's going on these days. A lot of the news reports seem to contradict each other, but what I can say is that there are IMF and EU people in Dublin right now in talks with the Government. The Government is yet to request a bail-out, but is likely to do so over the next few days. The issue with accepting a bail-out is, of course, the loss of sovereignty (IMF bail-outs come with conditions) and this is a thorny issue for Irish people, given the history.

I have a couple of thoughts on the issue:

• If I were running the Government, I would have already figured that I'm out of power in the next election anyway, so why not try to get the austerity budget started and make a go of fixing things in the country? If it doesn't work, THEN I can still request IMF/EU aid.
• As a taxpayer, I'm thinking the IMF/EU conditions might actually be better than letting the Government do things themselves. While we're expecting a €6 billion correction in the Budget in December anyway, the IMF will be far more ruthless in their cuts. A lot of the exorbitant pay, pensions and benefits of the Irish political class will be exposed and subject to severe cutting, one hopes. The little guy gets screwed either way, so at least under the IMF there is hope that the politicians and bankers will take some pain too.

There are a lot of people smarter than me having a go at the current situation, so for those interested in the ongoing debate and negotiations, I have included the following links:

• The Economist's new piece, Threadbare.
• Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan gave his take on Morning Ireland today.
• Corporate tax rate under threat? FT says there will be a showdown.
• Prof. Kevin O'Rourke (Trinity) wonders a) what's more palatable to the Irish public? and b) Is there some logical inconsistency amongst the Irish economic optimists?
• UK paper The Guardian has put together an entire blog devoted to the Irish situation. Several Irish academics are contributors.
• Okay, now the Minister for Finance says they may accept the aid package.

If I can keep up with it, more to come.