November 18, 2010

The Rescue of Ireland

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Irish officials acknowledged for the first time Thursday that the country was seeking aid from international lenders to end the debt crisis that has hurt confidence in its long-term finances and renewed doubts about the stability of the euro….“We’re talking about a very substantial loan for sure,” Patrick Honohan, governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, said earlier in a radio interview on the Irish state broadcaster RTE, and such a rescue would be “in the tens of billions” of euros.

Gee, who could have guessed that Ireland was going to take a bailout even though they kept saying everything was fine? My only real question at this point is whether anyone actually believes this loan is ever going to be paid back. I’m pretty skeptical. Then again, a few weeks ago I read that the final debt payment from World War I had finally been paid off, so I suppose maybe this stuff should be thought of on a century-long timescale. Perhaps by 2110 we’ll all be pure energy creatures and won’t care about money anymore. That should solve Ireland’s problem nicely.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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