Recession? What recession.
I’m alright jack. Are you FF? IMFF!
They’re emigrating
10 years ago Ronan Keating rewrote this song with disastrous consequences. I hope this effort proves more successful.
It was Christmas Eve babe
In the junk bank
An old man said to me: won’t see another one
And then he sang a song
‘bout how the Tiger blew
I turned my face away and joined the welfare queue
Got on an unlucky one
Fell from eighteen to one
I´ve got a feeling
We’re going bankrupt soon
So cancel Christmas
I hate you AIB
I can’t see a better time
'Cause all our schemes fell through
We had cars big as bars
We had rivers of gold
But the crash ripped right through us
We all talked through our holes
When I made my first million on a pyramid scheme
You promised me Wall Street was waiting for me
You were handsome you were pretty
Queen of Dublin City, when the banks finished trading they howled out for more
The Tiger was swinging all the lenders were singing
We got pissed on the corner
And did coke through the night
The boys from the AIB were liars, it all went down in flames
And the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day
You’re a zombie you’re a cunt
You lent crap subprime junk
Lying there almost dead, billions into the red
You scumbag you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse I pray god it´s your last
The shares from the AIB shitpile, got thrown in Dublin Bay
And the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day
I never did the sums
I lent to anyone
You took my cheap money
Now debts surround you
You bought in Mullingar
Commuting way too far
Now you are all alone
With ghost estates around you
The boys from the AIB empire still gettin’ bonus pay
And the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day
Mate, seriously more than a paragraph is waste
It doesn’t scan either
Gormley has thrown out a bit of a curve ball today in regards to the lead up to the blanket bank guarantee being issue. He claims the details of the guarantee were actually agreed at a cabinet meeting on the Sunday, which directly contradicts Lenihans version of the events, where he said that they were forced to act when the heads of the banks came to him on the Monday night and expressed the fear they wouldn’t have the funds to open on the Tuesday morning.
Lenihan has never lied up to now so I’d believe him.
I was reading a good blog last week on the lies of Lenihan, a list of all his crazy quotes from 08 onwards.
http://thepressnet.com/2010/11/22/brian-cowen-and-brian-lenihan’s-history-of-lies/
Max Keiser is coming to Dublin next weekend. Ah lovely.
http://maxkeiser.com/2010/12/05/attention-dubliners-max-stacy-arriving-next-saturady-dec-12th/
You often come across as trying too hard but genuinely think this is class 
Allied Irish Banks to pay €40m bonuses despite bailout
Stricken Allied Irish Banks says court case forces it to give out bonuses while Ireland’s taxpayers suffer
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 December 2010 19.15 GMT
Stricken Allied Irish Banks is preparing to hand out €40m (£34m) of bonuses next week – despite being on the brink of receiving another emergency bailout from the Irish government.
As many as 2,400 bankers in its Dublin capital markets division are to receive the payments on 17 December under agreements struck with the bank in 2008.
The bank, 19% owned by Ireland’s taxpayers but expected to reach 95% state-ownership, had originally been blocked from making the payments under one of the government’s bailout programmes.
But legal action by a trader, John Foy, over a deferred €161,000 bonus awarded in 2008 has led the bank to conclude it will need to pay bonuses to many of the staff to whom they were awarded for that year. The bonuses are being handed out at a time when the government is instigating four years of tax rises and brutal cuts to benefits. The most austere budget in the country’s history was passed this week.
European banking regulators are also meeting in London tomorrow to try to agree a new set of European-wide rules on how bonuses should be structured to avoid paying them when they suffer losses after taking on too much risk. The rules will require bonuses to be deferred over three years and clawed back if losses are made
Once the Committee of European Banking Supervisors makes its announcement, domestic regulators across Europe will have to race to implement the rules if they are to meet the January 1 deadline that Europe has demanded.
Given the Foy judgment last month, AIB says it has little option but to honour the 2008 bonus awards to staff “as per the contractual entitlements arising from the business’s performance in 2008”.
Ireland’s central bank has told AIB it needs to raise a further €5.2bn by the end of February though this is likely to come from the €85bn International Monetary Fund-European Union rescue package rather than the private sector. This will take the bank almost entirely into state ownership.
Bank of Ireland is also racing to raise €2.1bn of fresh cash to avoid falling into majority state control. The government owns a 38% stake and the bank today tried to start generating better quality capital by offering to exchange its existing low quality securities for securities guaranteed by the government.
BoI will be hoping for takers of its so-called liability management exercise as the more money it can raise from private investors the lower the level of bailout funds it will need from the government.
Bankers are receiving much of the blame for forcing Ireland to take international assistance and implement the austerity budgetary measures. But while the public is expected to endure years of pain, the package of measures to save €6bn in the coming year were welcomed by the European commission. An EC spokesman described the budget as “tough and ambitious”. and part of the programme needed to allow Ireland to be granted €85bn of rescue funds.
“It is an ambitious and indispensable tool for the redressment of the situation. There is the right balance between revenue and expenditure measures,” the spokesman added.
John Foy is a legend.
CLAIM THE MORAL HIGH GROUND
March 7, 2011
Posted in Articles | Debt | Sunday Business Post by David McWilliams
Have you ever heard of a ‘debt audit’? It is a fascinating idea.
Together with a referendum on paying bankers and bondholders, a debt audit is another important piece of weaponry which could be deployed by the new government in debt negotiations in the weeks and months ahead.
Before we discuss the debt audit, let’s recap on what we know. We know we can’t pay all the bank debt and sovereign debt together. We know we can, and should, pay all our sovereign debt.
We also know that the more bank debt we pay, the less money we will have to pay the sovereign debt.
We know that the reason we are in an IMF programme is that the financial markets do not believe we can pay the sovereign debt and the bank debt together. That is why they refuse to lend to us.
We also know that the European elite wants us to pay the bank debt to prevent the share price of big German and French banks getting into hot water. Together, Irish, Spanish, Portuguese and Greek banks owe French and German banks over €900 billion.
If Ireland gives the bank debt back to the bondholders who actually own it, this will cause contagion, giving the Spanish ‘permission’ to do something similar and bringing the German and French banks down because their balance sheets would be forced to bear the responsibility of their own actions.
So we know all this. But what do we do about it?
Before you negotiate for your country, why not get onto the moral high ground and appeal to the morality of the European elite?
In passing, we might remind Germany of the Marshall Plan’s debt forgiveness approach, versus the Versailles Treaty’s punitive approach – and the social and political results of each.
Or that more recently, when it unilaterally decided to reunify, peripheral Europe paid for that in penal interest rates, massive capital flight and, ultimately, mass devaluations of peripheral currencies.
As a direct consequence, the wealth of the citizens of peripheral Europe between 1990-1993 was diminished in order to increase the wealth of east Germans.
Irrespective of how we argue or what past events we invoke, morality is key, particularly as we understand that forcing Irish citizens to pay the gambling debts of Anglo’s financiers will force us to default in the end.
The current policy of the European elite could be termed ‘economic nihilism’. If so, what might economic constructivism look like?
Bear with me, and consider the following unforgivable episode. Of all the actions taken in the dying days of the last government, the decision to secretly pay some €750 million of Anglo Irish Bank’s debt is probably the most scandalous.
On January 31, Irish citizens paid a maturing bond worth €750million. The total cut in this year’s welfare budget will be €873 million.
The ‘investors’ who purchased this bond invested their money with Anglo on January 17, 2006.The bond was senior unsecured debt and was not covered by any state guarantee.
It is enough to make your blood boil. But what can we do about it? This is where the idea of a debt audit comes in.
A debt audit is when a country goes through its debts and decides which ones are legitimate and which are not.
On Friday, Greek trade unions, economists, academics and politicians issued a call to set up a public commission to examine their debts. It’s the first ever call for a debt audit in Europe.
Supported by more than 200 prominent Greek and international figures, it is a concrete proposal as to how Greek people might begin to regain control of their economy.
The idea comes from a strategy that was successfully implemented in Ecuador.
Now you might say, hang on – are we following the policies of a banana republic? Well, hold that thought: I will come back to Ecuador in a tick.
The Greeks have called for the debt to be looked into, so that ordinary people have an opportunity to understand properly where the debt came from. The call says: ‘‘The Greek people have been kept in the dark regarding the composition and terms of public debt.
The lack of information represents a fundamental failure of the democratic process.
The people who are called upon to bear the costs of EU programmes have a democratic right to receive full information on public debt.”
Precisely the same could be done here. In fact, given that all the Greek debt was taken out in the name of the Greek people and none of the Irish bank debt was incurred in the name of the Irish people, our case for a debt audit is much, much stronger.
The audit could explore who took out the debts and for what, what the original contracts were and who were the signatories to these contracts.
The interim behaviour of the banks would also be germane. For example, we know that the banks lied to the government at the time of the guarantee. Surely this affects the legitimacy of who pays what.
The audit – and an accompanying referendum – would give us the moral basis from which to argue for the separation of sovereign and bank debt – guaranteed and unguaranteed.
The idea of a debt audit is inspired by movements in poor countries, which had lots of debts.
In 2007, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador – a former economics professor – established a debt audit commission, claiming his most important debt was to the people of Ecuador. In 2008, the commission reported that some of Ecuador’s debts had caused ‘‘incalculable damage’’ to the people and environment of that country.
As a result, Ecuador defaulted on some of its ‘toxic debt’. Interestingly, the sky didn’t fall in.
On the contrary, the country reported 3.7 per cent growth in 2010 and is forecasting 5.1 per cent growth in 2011.
The bond default was part of social change in Ecuador, one of the poorest countries in the world.
The socialist president has focused on education and infrastructural development as his priorities.
The number of children in education has risen from 77 per cent in 2006 to 86 per cent in 2010; the country is engaged in hydroelectric schemes and road building to improve the economy’s growth prospects.
Most importantly, the country, which has a junk credit rating, is back in the market looking to raise funds.
And there is strong demand for Ecuadorean bonds again – just two years after a ‘will not pay’ repudiation rather than a ‘cannot pay’ default.
The market has moved on, and so has the country.
If Ecuador can do this and be forgiven – partly due to the moral stance of the president – couldn’t we? Particularly when there is a black and white case for a debt audit.
The debts of the banks are not the people’s debts – that is clear.
A debt audit followed by a referendum would work here.
The new government could deploy this very effectively.
The Greeks are already agitating for it and their case is much less strong. Maybe the new government could direct the new Seanad to carry out and oversee an Irish debt audit commission with a two-week time horizon.
In the time ahead, we need to marshal all our arguments, change the conversation and thereby change the game.
We could set the example for all of Europe. We need to change our image from that of a beaten down bunch of dodgy bankers to a proud race that is doing the right thing.
This is away of snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat.
Why not go for it?
We in Ireland are so lucky to have responsible politicians and a responsible government.
We’ve got a five point plan, so fuck you South American socialist lunatics and your crazy, backward, irresponsible policies that have stood up to big business and actually improved the lives of your people.
Sunday World gobshite Donal MacIntyre interrupts Seanie Fitz during a round at Druid’s Glen - http://www.sundayworld.com/index.php
“I’m not being difficult…I’m not harrassing you” 
Christ, that is atrocious.
You’d nearly side with “Seanie”.
He was haranguing him.
Possibly the best summation of this whole fiasco I’ve seen:
“The real cleavage in Europe is between European taxpayers and bank creditors… But since the powers that be are ruling out bondholder haircuts and quantitative easing, the only cleavage we are left with in practice is the one between core and periphery taxpayers. Of course ordinary French and German taxpayers are going to be angry at lending their money to an insolvent state with lower tax rates than their own. Why wouldn’t they be? [And they’re also worried that when debt restructuring occurs, they will be the ones holding the debt] Of course ordinary Irish taxpayers are going to be angry at having to pay for high interest loans designed to bail out foreign banks. Why wouldn’t they be? And while ordinary Europeans get angry with each other, with unpredictable political consequences, capital walks away scot free.”
- Kevin O’Rourke, TCD
http://www.irishleftreview.org/2011/01/31/desert-call-peace/
Colm McCarthys report on just how much of the family silver we should flog is out tonight.
Everything is on the table. There’s been talks of him recommending the airports be sold.
Would be no harm for Shannon if a private company took it over because the DAA is strangling it.