NAMA - The I told you so thread..... !!!

jmayo

Sand wrote: »

@Jmayo

Well you did say in response to a comment about letting the banks fail that the ECB practically runs the country, that Lenihan cant take a leak without permission from Trichet and you restate in your reply that the ECB doesnt want to see banks go bankrupt - whatever one thinks about the guarantee, it was issued to try prevent banks going bankrupt.

At the very least, the implication is that the ECB approves of NAMA ( they run the country...)

If I have misunderstood your view based on the above, apologies.

Ok when I say they practically run the country I mean we now have to get ECB approval for anything major that we chose to do with our finances.
Thye don't care about the little day to day things but anything that involves our national debt needs to be run by them or else.

They had to approve NAMA, to them it is ok since the Irish taxpayer is ultimately responsible and it kinda safeguards the banks or at least prevents them going under.
IMHO as regard letting banks go bust the ECB's worry is that a Lehman's scenario ensues leading to an Icelandic situation which must be avoided at all costs.

They also are the ones pushing for government spending to be brought into line and do you think that lenihan would not be getting a call from trichet if he decided this year we will just cut 1 billion, just for the hell of it ?
Thus lenihans budget had to pass ECB approval.

They have been making soundings about Greece and slapping us in the back for making the right moves.

So by deduction I would say he can't really take a leak without them saying it's ok.
Thus they have a damm large say in how our country is run.

Rebelheart

Tipsy Mac wrote: »

The problem with NAMA is it is going to keep property prices artificially high which is what actually brought us where we are at the moment.

And this is my primary problem with the theft which the Irish state has institutionalised in the form of NAMA. I did not take risks and gamble with my money to buy property at ridiculous prices during the boom times. Instead, I defied the incessant societal pressure from all sides and waited for the supposedly ubiquitous "market forces" to assert themselves and bring some sanity to the market/economy.

However, just as property prices were declining, this state decided to direct its resources - taxpayers' resources - into supporting the property bubble. It did worse; it firmly tied the economic success of this economy to the return of the bubble prices of property. But this state is doing even much worse than this: it is "investing" the critical resources of this state, including my taxes, into promoting this rise in house prices to bubble levels and thus using state resources to artificially inflate property prices and exclude people like me from finally buying our own home at reasonable, fair and just prices. My taxes are being used to support the supposed "capitalists", speculators and general losers who gambled their wealth in everything from second houses to bank shares and lost, while people like me who refused to jump on the bandwagon are having our taxes used to make it unjustly harder to buy our own home. In this surreal world, the losers have been made the winners directly by Irish government policy. So much for capitalism.

NAMA is, quite frankly, plainly immoral. There are many words for it, but immoral is among the most accurate. It is unashamedly punishing Irish citizens who kept their feet on the ground during the property bubble, and is using their taxes to keep property prices artificially high today and into the future. As a taxpayer and as a man who is ready to buy a house and settle down in the next year I feel particularly and personally aggrieved by this state intervention in the market to keep property prices at ridiculous levels (and do not be deluded: house prices are still at extraordinarily unrealistic prices). NAMA is wrong as it is outright theft from one section of our society and a transfer of that wealth to another, utterly blameworthy section.

It is time more Irish people began to be honest about the immoral and unethical fundamentals which underpin the Irish government's National Asset Management Agency.

FlutterinBantam

Rebelheart wrote: »

And this is my primary problem with the theft which the Irish state has institutionalised in the form of NAMA. I did not take risks and gamble with my money to buy property at ridiculous prices during the boom times. Instead, I defied the incessant societal pressure from all sides and waited for the supposedly ubiquitous "market forces" to assert themselves and bring some sanity to the market/economy.

Good man, so then you should be in a good position to ride out this recession?

Rebelheart wrote: »

However, just as property prices were declining, this state decided to direct its resources - taxpayers' resources - into supporting the property bubble. It did worse; it firmly tied the economic success of this economy to the return of the bubble prices of property. But this state is doing even much worse than this: it is "investing" the critical resources of this state, including my taxes, into promoting this rise in house prices to bubble levels and thus using state resources to artificially inflate property prices and exclude people like me from finally buying our own home at reasonable, fair and just prices. My taxes are being used to support the supposed "capitalists", speculators and general losers who gambled their wealth in everything from second houses to bank shares and lost, while people like me who refused to jump on the bandwagon are having our taxes used to make it unjustly harder to buy our own home. In this surreal world, the losers have been made the winners directly by Irish government policy. So much for capitalism.

You obviously wern't at the BOI EGM there recently, lot of heavy losers in there.

Rebelheart wrote: »

NAMA is, quite frankly, plainly immoral. There are many words for it, but immoral is among the most accurate. It is unashamedly punishing Irish citizens who kept their feet on the ground during the property bubble, and is using their taxes to keep property prices artificially high today and into the future. As a taxpayer and as a man who is ready to buy a house and settle down in the next year I feel particularly and personally aggrieved by this state intervention in the market to keep property prices at ridiculous levels (and do not be deluded: house prices are still at extraordinarily unrealistic prices). NAMA is wrong as it is outright theft from one section of our society and a transfer of that wealth to another, utterly blameworthy section.

It is time more Irish people began to be honest about the immoral and unethical fundamentals which underpin the Irish government's National Asset Management Agency.

To call it theft it just plain rubbish.
House prices have dropped and should bottom out this year or early next year.
Check the selling prices not the asking prices.

Unfortunately the taxpayer doesn't run the country, we pay people and elect them to do that, therefore there will always be the situation where as individuals we did nothing wrong.

Rebelheart

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

Good man, so then you should be in a good position to ride out this recession?

If your "friends" in NAMA stay out of rescuing your other "friends" in the bank and construction industries, I certainly will. If the former continue to prop up the latter two then that is a different matter. So much for your avowed "capitalism", FlutterinBantam.

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

You obviously wern't at the BOI EGM there recently, lot of heavy losers in there.

Em, the point obviously is that if the taxpayers of this state did not interfere in your beloved "free market" to help the above parasites, then their shares would be worth nothing. Their EGM would have been last year and it would have been to wind up Bank of Ireland.

It shouldn't be this hard to understand.

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

To call it theft it just plain rubbish. House prices have dropped and should bottom out this year or early next year.

No, denying that it is theft is the 'rubbish'. NAMA's raison d'être is intervening in the free market to invest state resources and debt in saving banks and unsecured debt holders such as Seán Quinn - institutions and people of "systemic importance", mar dhea. In doing so it is not allowing prices to tumble to their true market value. That you are in denial of this is plainly dishonest. Moreover, by artificially inflating house prices with this money the state has tied itself to getting the money back through a rise in the property market to boom-time prices and thus using fiscal and political policy to support another property boom. It is now in effect an aim of this state to have a two-bedroom house in Dublin with its "own door" to be selling for over €500,000 once again. Obscene and completely askew with property prices elsewhere in Europe. Capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich, and you are supporting this robbery. So much for your capitalism, Flutter.

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

Check the selling prices not the asking prices.

Even you, even you FlutterinBantam, would be aware that it is currently illegal for sales prices to be given so I can only presume this was an attempt at black humour.

Liam Byrne

Rebelheart wrote: »

Em, the point obviously is that if the taxpayers of this state did not interfere in your beloved "free market" to help the above parasites, then their shares would be worth nothing. Their EGM would have been last year and it would have been to wind up Bank of Ireland.

+1 billion (whatever that is!)

Banks sold their shares to people as relatively safe investments.
Those people got dividends.
The banks mismanaged their loans and those people now lose their investment.

It's cruel, but it's capitalism.

So anyone whinging about "but I lost my money" can feck off, in my book; not in general terms, but in terms of me paying for them. I didn't see any of THEIR dividends along the way over the last ten years.

So the fact that - courtesy of US, THE TAXPAYERS - they're losing LESS than they otherwise would should be treated with some level of gratitude; but no, they're still paying their head guys half-a-million quid each, still walloping said-same taxpayer in a recession, and refuse to operate normally - all despite the fact that we - courtesy of FF - have saved their asses.

Choice A : No government intervention, and you lose everything (courtesy of the decisions of the bank that you invested in - take it up with them).

Choice B : We'll bail you out, but things change - on OUR terms

It shouldn't have been too difficult to impose those terms.

But no, FF decided to follow the Carlsberg ad and give them option "C" - the worst of both worlds for everyone else.

Raiser

Huh - A Billion is whah much???? :P

Anyway, the magnitude of the figures involved are clearly beyond anything you'd comfortably leave in Lenihan and his band of merry faux Economists care.

- I wouldn't trust them to manage my Household budget between a Tuesday and the following Thursday.

Rebelheart

This was a good, perceptive letter in yesterday's Irish Times on the new order in Ireland:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2010/0115/1224262378508.html

Raiser

Thanks for that - one of the scariest things about NAMA is that the Banks have escaped any real assessment, critique and censure for their utterly stupid, half-arséd, monumentally, unbelievable fcukups.

- Rewarding the Morons for their abject failures seems to be an almost guaranteed way to ensure we have a NAMA II :mad: