Anglo Fail

BingoMingo

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Most people in Ireland had nothing to do with Anglo, so why would an Anglo fail have caused a run ?

Liam - There is a point that no one ever raises about the bank guarantee.

Before it was given the Irish Government had already guaranteed all depositors to a max of €100,000 per deposit.!

If Anglo had been let fail the depositors - ALL 50,000,000,000 euros worth of them would have come knocking on Lenehan's door looking for their money.

At the time estimates suggested that the vast bulk of this 50bn was in accounts with a balance of 100K or less. I don't know if this is true but you can bet that the cost to the Irish Exchequer would have been enormous.

The blanket guarantee was given in many ways simply to ensure that the already existing guarantees would not get called in!

This means that even if depositors in other banks did not panic (a ludicrous assumption anyway) - the effect would have still been a massive cost to the Irish Taxpayer.

Let me tell you that I had a deposit in BOI (my life savings) at the time and on the day the global bank guarantee was given I had a meeting planned with Barclays in Belfast to transfer all my deposit out of this country.

Have no doubt - I was panicing and so was everyone else.

Imhof Tank

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Why ?

If Bord Gais Energy goes bust in the morning, people switch to ESB or Airtricity.

Most people in Ireland had nothing to do with Anglo, so why would an Anglo fail have caused a run ?

Re the €6 billion - it's been mentioned a few times in various reports and interviews, so I took it as at least being representative. That said, when it comes to the shady dealings of Anglo, I guess you can't believe a word you hear.

The bottom line is that the secrecy of who has money where is part of the problem; if we knew who we were bailing out and why (and how much, exactly) then we could choose, instead of having shady, lying vested interests decide where our hard-earned cash goes.

An anglo fail would have caused international stock market speculators to take short positions on the other irish banks, reducing their share prices to 0.1 cent, making it impossible for them to borrow money or refinance their existing borrowings on the inter bank market. People would have (correctly) feared the possibility of AIB and BOI running out of money and a run would have followed very quickly.

Sure the Joe Duffy crowd were withdrawing savings weeks before 28 September. People dont have money being minded by Bord Gais or EBS or Airtricity, theres a completely different psychology at play. There would have been sheer panic on the streets.

Imhof Tank

hobochris wrote: »

Would a better solution not have been, put a state guarantee over BOI and AIB, set up an assistance fund(like the EU did for dell) and let Anglo go to the wall.

Anyone who loses out from Anglo going to the wall can apply to the Anglo assistance fund, with bondholder applications being refused as they made a bet and lost, but deposits being taken out of the fund.

For the sake of the other Irish banks, something big had to be done that night - a spectacular if you will - and while with the benfit of hindsight however your plan sounds good there is no way of knowing whether the markets/ depositors would have been satisfied with that form of state guarantee.

Whether or not a guarantee which did not include the anglo bondholders would have stopped a run on AIB/BOI, there is also the fact that Europe didnt want a eurozone bank failing because of the effects they felt it would have on the euro currency system, so that meant Anglo and its bondholders had to be included

wiseguy

BingoMingo wrote: »

Liam - There is a point that no one ever raises about the bank guarantee.

Before it was given the Irish Government had already guaranteed all depositors to a max of €100,000 per deposit.!

If Anglo had been let fail the depositors - ALL 50,000,000,000 euros worth of them would have come knocking on Lenehan's door looking for their money.

At the time estimates suggested that the vast bulk of this 50bn was in accounts with a balance of 100K or less. I don't know if this is true but you can bet that the cost to the Irish Exchequer would have been enormous.

The blanket guarantee was given in many ways simply to ensure that the already existing guarantees would not get called in!

This means that even if depositors in other banks did not panic (a ludicrous assumption anyway) - the effect would have still been a massive cost to the Irish Taxpayer.

Let me tell you that I had a deposit in BOI (my life savings) at the time and on the day the global bank guarantee was given I had a meeting planned with Barclays in Belfast to transfer all my deposit out of this country.

Have no doubt - I was panicing and so was everyone else.

1. How much of this 50 billion was dud? this is the same Anglo moving billions about to make itself appear good :rolleyes:

2. We are spending 29-34 billion directly (this number keeps increasing BTW) on Anglo and another 30 billion indirectly via NAMA, thats more than 50 billion

3. I went to great length in a parallel thread to argue that if Anglo triggered a bank run the EUrozone/ECB would have had to step in with a guarantee and eurozone wide deposit insurance scheme (similar to FDIC in US) in order to prevent a run

4. If Anglo was allowed to fail then all its assets would have been sold and liquidated, since NAMA claims it can make recover a good chunk of the asset value even afted discounts, thats still few dozen billion that could have been used in a liquidation to pay depositors

5. Government could have force moved accounts and instituted tight controls as last measure


Whats ironic is that 2 years later, there is more chances of bank run as public is completely loosing faith in this govt and banks, and of course we have a 1 in 3 chance of default in next 5 years.
There is no way on earth anyone can justify not letting Anglo fail, they were not a systematic bank in any sense and their failure would not have been the end of our economy, I am so bloody sick of scaremongering.

BingoMingo

wiseguy wrote: »

I am so bloody sick of scaremongering.

I am sick of people coming up with solutions that assume we can just ignore the laws that prevail in this country. That assume the rights of creditors, depositors bond holders etc., can be totally ignored just because they themselves are not a creditor, bond holder or depositor.
Guarantees by goverments can be reneged on at the drop of a hat.


Look at the guy challenging the NAMA thing in the High Court. Why don't the Goverment tell him to sod off?. "We can do what we like"

Reason is he has rights and (in a civilized democracy) you cannot ignore peoples right to recourse to the law. Yet we are supposed to believe we can
"burn the bond holders" and they will just shuffle away quietly and say "oh well, better luck next time".

A massive run on the banks would have occurred if Anglo failed - It would have cost more than this state could afford.

Anyone who fails to understand this lives in a cookoo land that resembles the good old Celtic Tiger years!

wiseguy

BingoMingo wrote: »

I am sick of people coming up with solutions that assume we can just ignore the laws that prevail in this country. That assume the rights of creditors, depositors bond holders etc., can be totally ignored just because they themselves are not a creditor, bond holder or depositor.
Guarantees by goverments can be reneged on at the drop of a hat.


Look at the guy challenging the NAMA thing in the High Court. Why don't the Goverment tell him to sod off?. "We can do what we like"

Reason is he has rights and (in a civilized democracy) you cannot ignore peoples right to recourse to the law. Yet we are supposed to believe we can
"burn the bond holders" and they will just shuffle away quietly and say "oh well, better luck next time".

A massive run on the banks would have occurred if Anglo failed - It would have cost more than this state could afford.

Anyone who fails to understand this lives in a cookoo land that resembles the good old Celtic Tiger years!

I've been thru' this already today

BingoMingo

wiseguy wrote: »

1. How much of this 50 billion was dud? this is the same Anglo moving billions about to make itself appear good :rolleyes:

2. We are spending 29-34 billion directly (this number keeps increasing BTW) on Anglo and another 30 billion indirectly via NAMA, thats more than 50 billion

3. I went to great length in a parallel thread to argue that if Anglo triggered a bank run the EUrozone/ECB would have had to step in with a guarantee and eurozone wide deposit insurance scheme (similar to FDIC in US) in order to prevent a run

4. If Anglo was allowed to fail then all its assets would have been sold and liquidated, since NAMA claims it can make recover a good chunk of the asset value even afted discounts, thats still few dozen billion that could have been used in a liquidation to pay depositors

5. Government could have force moved accounts and instituted tight controls as last measure


Whats ironic is that 2 years later, there is more chances of bank run as public is completely loosing faith in this govt and banks, and of course we have a 1 in 3 chance of default in next 5 years.
There is no way on earth anyone can justify not letting Anglo fail, they were not a systematic bank in any sense and their failure would not have been the end of our economy, I am so bloody sick of scaremongering.

1. How much of this 50 billion was dud? this is the same Anglo moving billions about to make itself appear good .

After 2 years the only bit of this that was exposed as being dodgey was 1.4bn from ILP but regardless - The Govt had to work with the figures they had. Remember too - 50bn was just Anglo the other 2 had another
200bn of deposits between them.

2. We are spending 29-34 billion directly (this number keeps increasing BTW) on Anglo and another 30 billion indirectly via NAMA, thats more than 50 billion.

29bn-34bn Is mostly down the toilet. The NAMA money will be recovered by sale of the assets and/or the levy. It is wrong to add the 2 numbers together as one is wasted money and the other is buying an asset. Leave it to Prime Time to do dodgey accounting.

3. I went to great length in a parallel thread to argue that if Anglo triggered a bank run the EUrozone/ECB would have had to step in with a guarantee and eurozone wide deposit insurance scheme (similar to FDIC in US) in order to prevent a run

Sure your thread was wonderful. It is all hindsight. We are were we are.
There were a million ways of doing things. I'm sure the govt would have
done some things differently if they knew how bad things were in Anglo.
If your point is that the Goverment are muppets then you get no argument from me.

4. If Anglo was allowed to fail then all its assets would have been sold and liquidated, since NAMA claims it can make recover a good chunk of the asset value even afted discounts, thats still few dozen billion that could have been used in a liquidation to pay depositors

Now you are claiming that the Nama assets have value. Why write the cost off in point 2?

5. Government could have force moved accounts and instituted tight controls as last measure.

Don't get this at all.


Whats ironic is that 2 years later, there is more chances of bank run as public is completely loosing faith in this govt and banks, and of course we have a 1 in 3 chance of default in next 5 years.
There is no way on earth anyone can justify not letting Anglo fail, they were not a systematic bank in any sense and their failure would not have been the end of our economy, I am so bloody sick of scaremongering.

You reckon the chances of a bank run have increased.
You feel we have a 1 in 3 chance of sovereign default in 5 years.
You are sick of Scaremongering.

Is this an oxymoron?

Sadly I happen to agree with you.

Liam Byrne

BingoMingo wrote: »

I am sick of people coming up with solutions that assume we can just ignore the laws that prevail in this country. That assume the rights of creditors, depositors bond holders etc.

I'm sick of it too. A bankrupt company, proven to engage in dodgy and illegal practices.......the rights of creditors, depositors and bond-holders should be the same as any other dodgy and bankrupt outfit.

There is no obligation on me or anyone else in this country to pay for their corruption and incompetence.

As for your earlier claim re the earlier bank guarantee forcing the blanket one, well that's just living proof that the Government didn't do their job on EITHER.

This government is lurching from one monumental cock-up to the next, each one making life worse for ordinary people.

Liam Byrne

Scofflaw wrote: »

Confidence in the banks,

There is no confidence in the banks......definitely not in Anglo, and the other two don't seem particularly worthy of confidence either.

Of course, Lenihan wants to "return AIB to its former glory", whatever the hell that was......probably around the time they wrote off Haughey's debt and caused us to pay an insurance levy.

BingoMingo

Liam Byrne wrote: »

I'm sick of it too. A bankrupt company, proven to engage in dodgy and illegal practices.......the rights of creditors, depositors and bond-holders should be the same as any other dodgy and bankrupt outfit.

There is no obligation on me or anyone else in this country to pay for their corruption and incompetence.

As for your earlier claim re the earlier bank guarantee forcing the blanket one, well that's just living proof that the Government didn't do their job on EITHER.

This government is lurching from one monumental cock-up to the next, each one making life worse for ordinary people.

Fully Agree - and it is so true that we don't need to make false arguments to support our case.

If we do so it makes us look as dodgey as them. To me the biggest injustices that have occured in this whole saga are:

1. No one is in Jail
2. The Goverment are still in power

Everything else is just BS. And the more we subscribe to it the more we play their little game. Has anyone noticed how the opposition have cooled off on
the Bond Holders issue. - Suudenly it has dawned on them - The world is watching you! - Soon it might be you who has to do the things you are saying you
will do.

In the case of point 2 I know the other muppets are no better but that's not the point. We need to change our political system radically. A Nation gets the politicians it deserves. We have shown them that we are prepared to accept incompetent morons running our country. Self serving corrupt individuals who can BS their way out of any corner.

I saw decades where every election the highest poll went to Charles Haughey. When he died he got a state funeral. Tony Gregory died around the same time and his death was just a footnote.


Here is a link to the first part of "Freefall" which covers this saga (I think) quite impartialy. To hell with Peig. This should be put on the Leaving Cert
curriculum for the next 50 years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdru9kVDvag&playnext=1&videos=fbBPsAdqXDk&feature=mfu_in_order

Yitzhak Rabin

Given that no one has ever revealed who the infamous bondholders are, and the credit unions have denied they were bondholders... I wonder who they were, that made Anglo so 'systemic'.

My guess is, given the closeness between the government and Seanie Fitz and Fingers et al, isn't it likely, at some point, perhaps at one of the Galway tent piss ups, that the government were convinced to invest the pension reserve fund with Anglo. At the time Anglo were offering phenomenal rates, and given the levels of delusions in government, it would have seemed like a great thing to do back in say, 2003. It would also explain why Bertie and his pack of clowns were desperately trying to keep talking up the property bubble.

Because if the bondholders, are just international investors, then we are in a crazy situation, whereby, we are paying international investors 6-7% for cash, in order to inject it into Anglo, so we can in turn give it back to, very likely, the same people.

BingoMingo

yekahs wrote: »

Given that no one has ever revealed who the infamous bondholders are, and the credit unions have denied they were bondholders... I wonder who they were, that made Anglo so 'systemic'.

My guess is, given the closeness between the government and Seanie Fitz and Fingers et al, isn't it likely, at some point, perhaps at one of the Galway tent piss ups, that the government were convinced to invest the pension reserve fund with Anglo. At the time Anglo were offering phenomenal rates, and given the levels of delusions in government, it would have seemed like a great thing to do back in say, 2003. It would also explain why Bertie and his pack of clowns were desperately trying to keep talking up the property bubble.

Because if the bondholders, are just international investors, then we are in a crazy situation, whereby, we are paying international investors 6-7% for cash, in order to inject it into Anglo, so we can in turn give it back to, very likely, the same people.

Conspiracy Theory - Watch my LIPS

Bail Out Essential cos we are trapped in a corner by Guarantees
Nothing more complicated about it. Which part of the word Guarantee do you have difficulty in understanding?

I don't care how many babies Fianna Fail had with Seannie

I want one of em out of office and the other in jail

Scarab80

yekahs wrote: »

Given that no one has ever revealed who the infamous bondholders are, and the credit unions have denied they were bondholders... I wonder who they were, that made Anglo so 'systemic'

As BingoMingo has pointed out Anglo was a systemic bank not because of it's importance to the economy but because of the effect an Anglo bankruptcy would have had on the other irish banks.

From the Honohan Banking Report, much demanded but seemingly never read....

A question frequently raised is whether it was correct to consider Anglo Irish Bank to be a systemically important bank. If not, it could be argued that its bankruptcy should be tolerated, even if losses were imposed on uninsured depositors and other claimants. To be sure, this bank was the third largest Irish-controlled bank in terms of its total balance sheet, and for a time in 2008 even became the largest bank by market capitalisation on the Irish Stock Exchange. But it was far from being a household name, had a branch presence in only six cities in Ireland and measured by employment and number of borrowers, was outstripped by several other institutions. Inasmuch as it had grown twentyfold in a decade, the Irish economy had prospered without much overall contribution from it in the 1990s. It was not central to the payments system or involved in a large range of complex money market transactions with other financial market participants. Nevertheless, as a recent paper prepared for the G20 clearly ecognises, a judgment about systemic importance ―is time-varying depending on the economic environment... It must also be conditioned by its purpose—whether it will be used for example, to define the regulatory perimeter, for calibrating prudential tools including the intensity of oversight, or to guide decisions in a crisis.‖ (IMF et al., 2009) It is the final aspect that is most important for the current discussion.

Three criteria are generally considered according to which a financial institution can be viewed as systemically important, namely: size, inter-connectedness, and substitutability. The preceding discussion suggests that Anglo Irish Bank would be unlikely to satisfy the substitutability criterion (i.e. is there another institution that could perform the same functions) and might not even satisfy the size criterion, even at its peak. But its interconnectedness vis-a-vis the Irish banking system changes the story. Given what was happening in the US and European banking markets around that time, the survival of even long-established and relatively highly rated banks (such as RBS, HBOS, Lloyds, Bradford and Bingley, Washington Mutual, Fortis, Dexia and others) was clearly in question and rescue packages of one sort or another had to be put in place to protect their depositors. Under these circumstances a default by a €100 billion bank such as Anglo Irish Bank would undoubtedly have put funding pressure on the other main Irish banks via contagion, given the broad similarities in the type and geography of their property-related lending, their common implicit reliance on the backing of the Irish State, and even name confusion. In this sense, the systemic importance of Anglo Irish Bank at that time cannot seriously be disputed.

BingoMingo

Scarab80 - In Other words -

When Dr Honahan says

"In this sense, the systemic importance of Anglo Irish Bank at that time cannot seriously be disputed"

he is essentially in agreement with me when I say

"A massive run on the banks would have occurred if Anglo failed - It would have cost more than this state could afford.
Anyone who fails to understand this lives in a cookoo land that resembles the good old Celtic Tiger years!"

Can I be Govenor of the Central Bank Then ?

Scarab80

BingoMingo wrote: »

Can I be Govenor of the Central Bank Then ?

Would you want to be?

BingoMingo

Scarab80 wrote: »

Would you want to be?

I am interested in the Truth and wherever that leads me. Arguments
based on lies are doomed to fail. So Far, No one has come back at me with a single - verifiable FACT!

If they do I will willingly admit it " Yes I am Wrong! - Thank you for making it clearer for me"

Here is DR. Honahan explaining to Vincent Browne why it is a good idea to
tell the international media one thing and the local media another thing.
In other word let's all BS at little bit more and hope we can worm our way out cos the rest of the world are GOBSHI*es!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMN3VqpJ5jk

I Have Got News for you!.

They are not GOBSHI*es.

However, They know full well that we ARE the GOBSHI*es.

We need to convince them.

"Yes we were GOBSHI*es. We have behaved like GOBSHI*es.
If you provide continued financial support we promise to stop being GOBSHI*es."

Watching this video I would not trust Honahan to make a cup of coffee for me!
It tells me that our leaders have learned nothing from this crisis.

Thank you for your support but my ideas do not need the endorsement of
people who say things that they think the people need to hear.

Frankly I Woudn't trust that prick to wash the car.

The truth has no need
of propoganda and maybe you should get off their wagon. Wake up and smell the real coffee.
Stop revering these guys cos they say something that is moderately intellegent. Think for Yourself.

"given the broad similarities in the type and geography of their property-related lending, their common implicit reliance on the backing of the Irish State, and even name confusion."

This Means, People of Ireland, you are all so stupid you can't tell the difference between AIB and Anglo. We had to bail Anglo out in case you got confused and thought we were talking about AIB. !!

4FS.- It Means "We had to spend 29Bn cos our country is populated by idiots who can't spell".

This is,(according to Vincent Browne) Ireland's most powerful man talking. God Help Us.

Sorry Scarab80 but you picked the wrong muppet there!! He is definitely on my No Fly List.

Scofflaw

Liam Byrne wrote: »

There is no confidence in the banks......definitely not in Anglo, and the other two don't seem particularly worthy of confidence either.

Of course, Lenihan wants to "return AIB to its former glory", whatever the hell that was......probably around the time they wrote off Haughey's debt and caused us to pay an insurance levy.

There's lack of confidence, and there's lack of confidence - or, to put it another way, there's "I'm not sure they're a very well run business" and there's "OMG I'd better grab my money right now!". The former causes a share price fall, the latter causes something else.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Liam Byrne

Scofflaw wrote: »

There's lack of confidence, and there's lack of confidence - or, to put it another way, there's "I'm not sure they're a very well run business" and there's "OMG I'd better grab my money right now!". The former causes a share price fall, the latter causes something else.

Well you've hit on an interesting point.

Ordinary people would be expected to grab their money now, for two reasons : firstly, it's THEIR money, entrusted to a bank to look after it properly, and secondly because they're not expert investors.

Expert investors take calculated risks and have come across badly-run (I love the way you soften the truth yet again by phrasing it as "not very well run", given what we've heard) businesses before, and have had to deal with it as part of their chosen professional occupation.

Thirdly, the ordinary people's money is all they have, as distinct from any reasonably competent investor who spread their risk.

Unfortunately it's the expert investors who are being looked after, while those whose money is at unwarranted risk are having to pay more money to ensure that they might at some stage get their original money back.....not only that, but they didn't choose to do this, and gave no-one the authority to act unilaterally on their behalf.

ei.sdraob

Speaking of lack of confidence

I have no confidence left in the government and the banking system (ah sure they the same now anyways as far as anyone is concerned). As seen from comments on this site this is quite a common occurrence among most posters.

Funny how measures to save own skin "increase confidence" are doing the opposite in the last 2 years

* The confidence in this country (the banks and the country are now seen as one) by outside investors is at all time low as seen by our record bond interest rates and the fall of a cliff in foreign investment
* The confidence of the government by its people is at all time low as seen by all the polls
* The confidence in the banks is very shakey, I never heard so many people worry and talk about their savings in Irish banks, definite fear out there in the last month. Each month brings more bad news making the previous worst case scenarios seem wildly optimistic. No one knows how deep the rabbit hole goes.

I do not claim to speak for everyone but thats how I feel from things are going.

Scofflaw

tommol wrote: »

can anyone supply the addresses of the following scum of the earth. apparently the govt cant get the assets of their wives but maybe somebody can!
Seamus Ross, of Menolly Homes
Gerry Gannon
Joe O'Reilly of Dundrum Shopping Centre
Liam Carroll

The answer is no. You are permabanned, and anyone who answers that question will likewise be permabanned. Incitement to crime is not acceptable, and I have no idea why you thought it was.

moderately,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Well you've hit on an interesting point.

Ordinary people would be expected to grab their money now, for two reasons : firstly, it's THEIR money, entrusted to a bank to look after it properly, and secondly because they're not expert investors.

Expert investors take calculated risks and have come across badly-run (I love the way you soften the truth yet again by phrasing it as "not very well run", given what we've heard) businesses before, and have had to deal with it as part of their chosen professional occupation.

Thirdly, the ordinary people's money is all they have, as distinct from any reasonably competent investor who spread their risk.

Unfortunately it's the expert investors who are being looked after, while those whose money is at unwarranted risk are having to pay more money to ensure that they might at some stage get their original money back.....not only that, but they didn't choose to do this, and gave no-one the authority to act unilaterally on their behalf.

Except that ordinary depositors haven't lost their money, Liam - that was kind of the whole point of the bank guarantee. The expert investors have taken a variety of hits instead.

cordially,
Scofflaw

thebman

Scofflaw wrote: »

Except that ordinary depositors haven't lost their money, Liam - that was kind of the whole point of the bank guarantee. The expert investors have taken a variety of hits instead.

cordially,
Scofflaw

It does however look increasingly like the people and our money are the lowest priority for the government when you look at an inability to get public finances under control and a save the banks at all costs but who cares about the people with 100% mortgages we encouraged them to get attitude of the government.

Only really public services costs are increasing for the people. The government is doing everything it can to get as much of the peoples money as possible and then wondering why the economy isn't expanding.

Granted some sort of seizure of deposits is not on the cards IMO but the government isn't exactly encouraging confidence with their mismanagement of the banking crisis and their desire to get the peoples money from any source they can while refusing to accept any changes to their own lifestyles.

When they get the people that angry, they will vent be it in protests or fear or some other way.

Liam Byrne

Scofflaw wrote: »

Except that ordinary depositors haven't lost their money, Liam - that was kind of the whole point of the bank guarantee. The expert investors have taken a variety of hits instead.

cordially,
Scofflaw

But we have to pay €18,000 - €25,000 each in order to get it back. So if you €18,000 savings then they HAVE lost your money.

Boskowski

I don't care what anyone says, call me a socialist, but the banks and the big businesses need to be put on the curb. And the political system needs a bloody cleanup operation as well.

Drastic, is it? Yes, but I think it's necessary.

Doesn't matter what country you look at, western democracies are all about letting the plebs thinks they run the show because the can vote in their representatives every - whatever it is - 4 or 5 years, but of course they're not our 'representatives' at all and in reality we couldn't be farther away from running the show unless we were actually living on the moon.

Behind the curtains the real show happens and this is were big business fights over our money that is supposedly raised to fund things for our benefit like roads, hospitals, schools and stuff. Our 'representatives' are paid off by said big businesses it's so obvious it's actually nauseating. Just look who sits on what board and has shares in what bank and whatnot.

Every state project has exploding costs in the area of trebling or quadroupling. They can't even build a bloody motorway from tax payers money without creating some scam scheme where the tax payer could afford 200 miles motorway but couldn't afford a 350m bridge so despite having paid for the entire thing already we also have to pay fees for the next 120 years so that someone can make a ginormous profit when the whole thing should have nothing to do with them in the first place. Just an example. The scam is everywhere and it's so obvious it's nauseating. Sorry I'm repeating myself.

If the whole NAMA and Anglo scan is not tipping is over the edge I don't know what will.
Ah hold on, no tipping over. We're too busy in the rat race paying our mortgage and numbing our minds with x-factor and premiership football instead of kicking ass where it's warranted.

The whole thing is systemic and needs a rather dramatic cleanup. I'm not saying there should be no businesses and there should be no profits. No problem with that, but our current political and economical system makes a mockery of the term representative democracy and this bullsh1t needs to end. We, the plebs, need to take the power back.

Scofflaw

thebman wrote: »

It does however look increasingly like the people and our money are the lowest priority for the government when you look at an inability to get public finances under control and a save the banks at all costs but who cares about the people with 100% mortgages we encouraged them to get attitude of the government.

Only really public services costs are increasing for the people. The government is doing everything it can to get as much of the peoples money as possible and then wondering why the economy isn't expanding.

Granted some sort of seizure of deposits is not on the cards IMO but the government isn't exactly encouraging confidence with their mismanagement of the banking crisis and their desire to get the peoples money from any source they can while refusing to accept any changes to their own lifestyles.

When they get the people that angry, they will vent be it in protests or fear or some other way.

The problem there - for any government - is that to get the public finances under control requires cutting costs and raising taxes. Neither of those is popular, and neither of them improve the economy - cutting the state bill seems like a no-loss measure, but isn't, because when you cut €3bn from the State bill, you've removed €3bn of demand from the economy.

Bailing out the banking system is absolutely necessary, because the economy won't function without it.

As for bailing out people with 100% mortgages - look at it this way. If public services are cut, if taxes are raised, if the banks are bailed out, then the guy with the 100% mortgage and the guy with no property are affected equally. If the government "sorts out" the guy with the 100% mortgage, how is that fair on someone who either couldn't or wouldn't buy property during the boom?

Liam Byrne wrote:

But we have to pay €18,000 - €25,000 each in order to get it back. So if you €18,000 savings then they HAVE lost your money.

Er, link, perhaps?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Boskowski

Scofflaw wrote: »

Bailing out the banking system is absolutely necessary, because the economy won't function without it.

while that's true as such it's been so overused to muddy the waters I just can't hear it anymore.

Scofflaw

Boskowski wrote: »

while that's true as such it's been so overused to muddy the waters I just can't hear it anymore.

Sure, but the very reason it's been used to muddy that waters is because it is true - and sadly, it seems it has to be repeated quite often, because there seem to be quite a lot of people who don't understand the role banks play.

Really, though, it's an argument for proper bank regulation, maybe more. If you buy a car, you might be a bit annoyed if the CD player isn't great, but the brakes are supposed to damn well conform to a proper specification. Banks aren't ordinary businesses - they usually can't be allowed to fail, so they shouldn't really be allowed to operate with a free hand at all.

At this stage, I'm not really convinced that the major banks should be allowed outside the hands of the state. The state is admittedly incompetent - that's shown by their failure to regulate them properly in the first place - but it's also unadventurous and risk-averse. Let minor banks handle the adventurous lending, and break them up the moment they reach a certain size. They're not normal businesses - why do we allow them to act like it?

cordially,
Scofflaw

oppenheimer1

hobochris wrote: »

Would a better solution not have been, put a state guarantee over BOI and AIB, set up an assistance fund(like the EU did for dell) and let Anglo go to the wall.

Anyone who loses out from Anglo going to the wall can apply to the Anglo assistance fund, with bondholder applications being refused as they made a bet and lost, but deposits being taken out of the fund.

The only problem I see with that is the investors overseas may have interpreted that action as the Government not standing behind the banking sector. This decreased confidence could have led them to think that the government would cut the other banks loose once the going got too tough, possibly triggering a run on the other banks. The other banks and institutions all had money tied up in Anglo too. All the while the fallout from Lehmans was fresh in the mind.

Its hard to know what exactly would have happened, but this was occurring in the middle of the financial crisis and the fallout from Anglo would have been very difficult to contain.

Liam Byrne

Scofflaw wrote: »

Bailing out the banking system is absolutely necessary, because the economy won't function without it.

That should not include bailing out corrupt and insolvent banks.

Scofflaw wrote: »

As for bailing out people with 100% mortgages - look at it this way. If public services are cut, if taxes are raised, if the banks are bailed out, then the guy with the 100% mortgage and the guy with no property are affected equally. If the government "sorts out" the guy with the 100% mortgage, how is that fair on someone who either couldn't or wouldn't buy property during the boom?

Hold on just a second now......no-one was suggesting bailing anyone out until this government decided (without consulting the people and under secretive and dubious circumstances that allows them to make all sorts of outlandish claims) that they would bail out a select few and skew the market via NAMA to ensure that market forces were subverted.

So either you bail out NO-ONE or you bail out EVERYONE.

And given that it's OUR money that's been used to bail out the banks, the above paragraph could be equally applied to that; a select few well-connected people CHOSE to gamble and rip people off.....others didn't.

So ask your own question regarding fairness; is it fair that people who didn't gamble should be not only excluded from the bailout, but also be asked to foot the bill for the bailout and foot the bill for payoffs and pensions for the greedy incompetents AND be hit with additional bank charges and government levies ?

The can of worms re fairness was opened by this government - your party included.

If no-one was bailed out then their exposure and pain would be directly related to the amount that they gambled.

THAT would be fair; but fairness isn't a word that this government understands.

Scofflaw wrote: »

Er, link, perhaps?

:rolleyes: You don't need a link to do basic maths. Check the cost of the bailout and divide it by the population.

Yitzhak Rabin

Scofflaw wrote: »

Er, link, perhaps?

cordially,
Scofflaw

I'm guessing, its a bailout of conservatively 36 bn. Probably in and around 2 million tax paying workers at the moment.

So thats 36,000,000,000 / 2,000,000 = 18,000 per worker.