Prepare to welcome your new IMF overlords

http://www.walkoffwalk.com/griffey.simpsons.jpg

Yes they plan on changing the name to Anglo Anglo Bank

Taking out?

From the Guardian:

The Irish Examiner reports that the IMF will reveal “significant corruption” in Ireland’s banking sector It quotes economist Dr Daniel Gros, who believes that skeletons will be toppling out of the closet once the IMF delves into the books:

“It’s not like the USA with a highly complicated system. Its simply three to five banks with loan books. It’s typical of what can happen in a small country where everyone knows everyone and as long as everything is going well, nobody notices.”

Noteworthy that this also emerged yesterday - http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/1119/1224283711522.html

Hopefully we’ll be stringing up bankers by the end of next week. Finally.

Apparently the government is seething with Patrick Honohan for telling us the truth yesterday morning, because they “hadn’t wanted to show their hand ahead of the discussions with the EU and IMF by conceding they would definitely need assistance.” :lol: :lol: :lol:

On a date style thing. I believe the format will be along the following lines.

The CEOs of the Irish banks will line up behind podiums with a light on it. The Ceos of the Uk banks will then come onto the stage and start telling the Irish Banks a bit about themselves if the Irish Banks dont like what they hear they will turn out their lights. If they leave their lights on then the UK banks get to chose which Irish one they take out.
Hopefully they all get dates by the end.

Pat Rabbitte’s rant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqx4E5tq1Bo

The British right’s Irish rollercoaster

By Ben Chu

Thursday, 18 November 2010 at 2:21 pm

The BBC’s Stephanie Flanders has a good post in which she notes the Irish government’s “stages of grief” through this crisis: denial, anger, acceptance. First Dublin denied that it needed a bailout. Then Irish ministers became angry at the EU for suggesting that it did. And now, finally, there seems to be an acceptance in Dublin that it will need some support from outside.

But the neoliberal British right has been on an even more dramatic emotional rollercoaster over Ireland.

First they told us that the country was an economic miracle because of its ultra-low corporation tax rates and that Britain should follow in the same direction.

Then they argued that Ireland was doing the right thing by imposing savage budget cuts and that the country would be rewarded by low interest rates and a swift economic recovery.

When this recovery did not materialise and Irish bond yields spiked it suddenly became all the fault of the euro, and the bank bailout.

And now the Germans, who until recently the right has been lauding for their fiscal conservatism and suspicion of monetary easing, have become the bad guys again for pushing Ireland in the direction of a bailout.

I think it is true that the roots of Ireland’s crisis lie in the monetary straitjacket of the single currency and the decision to guarantee all the liabilities of the insolvent Irish banks. And I think that, in the absence of a big move to fiscal union between eurozone members, it might well be in Ireland’s best interests to eliminate its primary deficit as quickly as possible and then to leave the single currency. It is misleading to draw close parallels between the British and Irish economies when it comes to the macroeconomic impact of spending cuts, as the left is sometimes wont to do.

Yet what’s striking is how late in the day the right have started to wake up to Ireland’s structural economic problems. Until very recently Ireland was the neoliberal right’s poster child, despite its membership of the euro and despite its insistence that every bondholder in its banks needed to be made whole. And the right in this country genuinely believed that Ireland could cut its way to health at a time of depressed European and global demand.

Ireland exposes the right’s ideological deficiencies in another way. Conservatives criticise Gordon Brown for failing to “abolish boom and bust” here in Britain. But they themselves cheered on the most disastrous financial and property bubble across the Irish Sea. Through all the years of crony capitalism and banking excess, the British right were nothing but supportive of Dublin’s economic model.

[size=“2”]What happens when right-wing economic ideology meets reality? The answer in one word: Ireland[/size].

There’s some amount of reading to be done on this in the Irish and British papers.

The Star have their front page as: “Ireland R.I.P. Our Future Killed by Wanker Bankers and Stupid Politicians”

Fairly concerned about what the IMF conditions on their bailout/loan will be. We’ll get IBEC telling us it’s the public sector’s fault no doubt and the usual crap about the Croke Park agreement being too generous and the public sector needing to pay for their secure jobs. They might soon be the only jobs left in this country so we may as well keep them reasonably well paid.

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

It was never more relevant in fairness

Senior Bond holders get less of a coupon alright but they still get a coupon. Why do they get a coupon? To recognise that risk.

To be honest the current Irish banks should not be able to raise senior debt again. It makes a mockery of capitalism if they’re able to recover from the fact that they’re deeply flawed and unsustainable institutions. Why bother with any corporate governance or any regulation if the solution for banks failing is simply to prop them up again and then try and protect their reputation so they can borrow more money.

The banks don’t need to borrow more money. The country has enough debt without the banks borrowing more just to service their failed business models. Let them default. We’re already talking about setting the country back for years with the money we’ve already pledged to them. All our tax revenue is now going into the banks. All of it.

We’re actually in a better position than the Greeks were because our country is in reasonable fiscal shape if we cut the banks loose. No matter how much IBEC or anyone tells us differently we’re in trouble because of the bank debt, not because of the minimum wage. End the bank debt and we’ll end the problem, even if our banking system pays a reputational price. There’s plenty of foreign banks that can come in here and operate in the market instead.

and how do you propose to pay them?
with the 80bn outstanding from the IMF loan? (after we piss another 20 bn into the banks)

the money isn’t there. the plan was to burn through the 20 bn in cash the NTMA built up, then flog the NPRF for whatever they could get for it, and run the country on fumes for 12 months. get out just before the end, and back in time for easter 2016.

the banks losing deposits hand over fist put an end to that masterful plan, as we couldn’t cover the 100bn-sized hole they’ve got.

they’ll cut deep and they’ll cut quickly. and as painful as it will be, it is necessary. the banks dictated the timing of this crisis, the lack of basic numeracy skills in the DoF exacerbated it. both issues need resolving.

I don’t disagree about IBEC, or the vicious campaign waged by the Sindo and others.
Regardless, you simply cannot increase the irish domestic tax base to the required 50bn to maintain current pay and service levels.

has anyone seen this man? I am a bit worried about him, should I report him as a missing person to the Garda?

http://www.youghalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/john_gormley_td2-337x450.jpg

Increased revenue from increased taxes.

As I’ve pointed out on here before our public spending is very low in comparison to other OECD countries. Very, very low. I don’t disagree with reforming public spending and we need to get more efficiencies and more work from our public service but that’s a separate point. Our tax take is simply unsustainable at the moment and the focus on public spending is a massive distraction.

We need to replace stamp duty revenue and all other revenues from the construction sector with something else.

Not as apt but still worth quoting. The two lines in italics are really superb.

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save;
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You’d cry `Some woman’s yellow hair
Has maddened every mother’s son’:
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they’re dead and gone,
They’re with O’Leary in the grave.

[quote=“Rocko, post: 518762”]
Senior Bond holders get less of a coupon alright but they still get a coupon. Why do they get a coupon? To recognise that risk.[/quote]

People who put their money on deposit get a coupon too. Its the same thing. You might not think it but as a depositor to the bank your lending them money in return for interest.

Correct, hence the flight of deposits from Ireland at the moment and the ridiculously high interest rates to try and attract money despite the associated risks. The points is there are risks. As a country it suits us to protect depositors ahead of bondholders. It also reflects the hierarchy or risk.

[quote=“Rocko, post: 518768”]
Correct, hence the flight of deposits from Ireland at the moment and the ridiculously high interest rates to try and attract money despite the associated risks. The points is there are risks. As a country it suits us to protect depositors ahead of bondholders. [/quote]

Senior Bond holders signed up for bonds equal in ranking to depositors so since as you argue senior bond holders should get a haircut so too should depositors?

[quote=“Rocko, post: 518768”]
It also reflects the hierarchy or risk.[/quote]

They are taking equal risk for equal reward. Senior Bond holders are legally ranked exactly the same as depositors. They are on the same level in the “heirarchy” as you call it.

why isnt bertie getting any grief?

Bertie is a hero amongst men. Sure doesn’t he drink pints down in his local like any fella.

Bertie would sort those Eurokrauts out once and for all.