Comments on: Anglo-Irish Bank Could Cost Taxpayer €64 Billion, Says Cowen

By: John Smith

John Smith — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:05:10 +0000

If we adopted the million million being a billion and the thousand million being a milliard it would not sound so bad! ;-(

By: Abdul

Abdul — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:21:34 +0000

Sixty four billion, imagine if the government did a u-turn in the morn and announced that they were investing 64 billion in job creation – the amount of jobs it would create, the boost it would give to our greatest natural resource, our people.

But then again, imagine Shane McGowan dispossessing Kaka in a Champions League final. nut megging Messi, side-stepping Ballack and with a swivel of his hips and one last swig out of his bottle of Jack Daniels he rifles a 30 yard screamer into the roof of the net, past a stranded Shay Given…..

Our government are more interested in investing in capitol than people.

Meantime, the woman that threw out a mattress containing 1 million bucks in Israel – still no sign of it.

She said she placed the money in the mattress because she had a "traumatic" experience with banks.

She should try living over here, she'd be in a f******g straight jacket by the time AIB finished with her. In fact, she'd had a better chance retrieving her money from a mattress mistakenly dumped in an Israeli landfill than she would after investing it in an Irish bank.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:22:51 +0000

If you really want to read a most insightful and demystifying article on banksters this is it. It is a fifteen minute read but worth the time.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n10/lanc01_.html

By: VincentH

VincentH — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:36:51 +0000

That we needed an Anglo-Irish type of bank during the 90's was as plain as a pikestaff, and that we will need a version of this type of bank in the future is equally plain. The problem is that they never really studied what would happen when a state joined a monetary union. And it was not as if there was not earlier examples within the economic model, there was after all around 20 USA states that did just that, and ended up doing exactly the same as we did over the last few years.
One of the real questions in all of this is how far the banking license extends. How much of the 65B -I never thought I could write that number and not be writing science-fiction- is Island of Ireland paper.

By: King's Bard

King's Bard — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:42:22 +0000

Nick, Of course you're dead right but doesn't that all beg the question as to why our government didn't forsee the potential costs before they firstly guaranted Anglo's liabilities and then nationalised them. If they went bust as private banking institutions it would not have effected the international standing of the State.
Doesn't that show gross incompetence by the Dept. of Finance and the Minister??

By: nick

nick — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:03:55 +0000

The conduct of the Anglo board was both shameful and incompetent, shameful because of their immoral conduct by misleading the financial markets, their investors and depositors and of course their shareholders, incompetent because of the manic lending to the property market both in Ireland and the UK which led to the huge increases in property prices which then resulted in the bubble that burst and as a result led us into the current crises,
Property bubbles are well known by investors, since they have "come & gone" many times, in the same way as stock market bubbles, and for the Anglo board not to have seen the bubble on the horizon, or if they did not to have understood it is a sign of great incompetence, and eventually the board directors must be held to account for both their immoral misconduct and their professional incompetence

In the meantime however, we cannot afford to let Anglo sink for the reason stated by the government who base their decisions on advice received by renown international investment bankers, and their advice cannot be ignored, the government is aware of course of the public outcry given the current economical condition and it would be easy for them to please the masses, but the know they can not do it due to the fact that it will not only cost the country the many billions of EUR (as mentioned) but it will also damage Ireland's reputation as a sovereign state, bailed out by the ECB and perhaps also by IMF with sharp economic conditions, and as a result will politically be governed by Brussels and Berlin,

By: arag0rn

arag0rn — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:18:20 +0000

Hi FPL – Bock's post is scary, but yours is even scarier… It's been said for years that the large global corporations own and run countries (a-la James Bond movies), but other than the tinfoil hatters, there has never really been a direct linkage to support the claims (I am open to correction of course). Now, if what you are saying is true, it seems you can follow the money and hence claim to 'ownership' of Ireland from liability of Anglo debt (taxpayer), through to a guy in an oak clad office at the top of a major bank… What happens if we default, I wonder….

Pints… many of… STAT!!

By: FPL

FPL — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:34:22 +0000

I think the situation is basically that Anglo owes billions to large multinational banks and if it goes bust it would default on those debts.

What Cowen is saying and reading between the lines is that Ireland, i.e. the State has been pressurised by those same large banks into saving a private company and making sure that the State becomes liable for those loans. In other words Anglo is systemic since Ireland is not allowed to allow a bank to default on this scale and therefore the tax payer has to pay.

Remember that the head of the NTMA was instructed by the Minister to hire Merril Lynch.

By: unstranger

unstranger — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:27:52 +0000

They knew. And for sure it's going to get a whole lot worse.

Consider, if they didn't know what this so-called bank and it's directors were up to, the implications thereby are far worse than us merely being straddled with a â‚¬64 billion fuck-up of an overstretched economy which will destroy us eventually anyway.

It is the responsibility of Finance Officials to monitor banking, not simply the Regulator which Office has been part of the scam too.