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Elaine Byrne puts the Anglo black hole in context

August 11, 2010 in Banks & Finance, The State by Anthony | 2 comments

Irish Times columnist Elaine Byrne put into stark contrast the billions being thrown into the black hole that is Anglo Irish Bank (The Dunphy Show, Sun 8th).

The cost is four times what the UN estimates it will cost to rebuild the entire country of Haiti after the devastating earthquake. It is 20 times the cost that BP will spend on cleaning up the worst environmental disaster in US history and it’s equivalent to all the structural funds given to Ireland by the EU since 1973.

Yet only last week the chief executive of Anglo, Mike Aynsley, was admitting that he hadn’t a clue how much more money his zombie bank would need.

He wasn’t shy, however, in effectively telling the Irish people to ‘get over it’ and berating the media for being too negative.

Journalist Robert Fisk was also on the show and at one point, very ungentlemanly, highlighted an error by Elaine Byrne when she used the word ‘antidote’ instead of anecdote.

Byrne’s reaction was interesting; she said she had difficulty in pronouncing some words, something her students picked her up on all the time.

It’s a very honest admission by someone who lectures in Trinity College and frequently speaks on media.

I can sympathise with her as I ‘suffer’ from the same problem myself. For example, I have to speak the word secularism slowly to avoid a complete mispronunciation.

Lenihan – Incompetent

August 4, 2010 in Banks & Finance, Government, NAMA by Anthony | No comments

Irish Times.

Madam,

In response to Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan (July 31st), I would say either he doesn’t understand matters or else he’s being deliberately misleading.

This is the kind of confused thinking and manipulative talking that’s been promoted since he and the Government chose to introduce the far too extensive, far too long-lasting two-year (now further extended) blanket bank guarantee scheme and the hugely costly Nama Project.

Mr Lenihan asserts that “Merrill Lynch also recommended a blanket guarantee of Anglo Irish Bank, including, incidentally, subordinated debt”.

This statement is simply untrue.

This can be checked by re-reading carefully all the notes, draft preliminary analysis, memos and records presented to the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee in relation to Merrill Lynch’s advice.

In regard to the report to Minister Lenihan by the Governor of the Central Bank on The Irish Banking Crisis – Regulatory and Financial Stability Policy 2003-2008, the conclusions are clearly set out on pages 134–136.

In the matter of the guarantee, nowhere in the conclusions, does the quotation “it is hard to argue . . . in the absence of decisive action”, cited by Mr Lenihan, appear.

It does appear that Mr Lenihan has made an inductive reasoning mistake which can easily happen, such as confirming that the sun rose today because a cock crowed at dawn!

Mr Lenihan concludes

“I agree with Mr O’Toole that governments should be sceptical. But they most assuredly should not be reckless.”

Of course governments shouldn’t be reckless. But his Government had been notably recklessly complacent for years leading up to the crisis.

If they hadn’t been so recklessly complacent for so long, the emergence of the full-blown credit bubble banking crisis and the ensuing panic would have been avoided.

It was such reckless complacency, the dereliction from duty by the Government and the supervisory and regulatory bodies to maintain regulatory and financial stability policy, that led to the September 29th panic and the sub-optimal decision to introduce the blanket guarantee for all the banks.

That panic decision, while understandable (to use Prof Honohan’s word) was not excusable.

That’s the point, but Mr Lenihan has missed it entirely.

Yours, etc

PETER MATHEWS,
The Rise,
Mount Merrion,
Co Dublin.

We don’t have a financial regulator in Ireland but if we did…

July 30, 2010 in Banks & Finance, Consumer interest, IFSRA, Regulatory Agencies by Anthony | 1 comment

Did you hear about that ‘systems failure’ at Bank of Ireland? No, no, not the overdraft ‘error‘ – that was this week’s error.

I’m referring to last week’s ‘error’ involving ATMs.

I know, I know, it’s difficult to keep up with the ‘systems failure industry’ in Irish banking.

Anyway, last week’s episode involved what RTE described as silly people walking away from ATM machines without their card or money.

Here’s the RTE report (My emphasis).

But in 2005, Bank of Ireland was upgrading its anti-fraud technology on its ATMs and somehow neglected to reactivate the ‘automatic re-crediting’ process, so if you did forget your money, the machine took it back but your account wasn’t re-credited.

In October 2009, the problem was fixed, but during those four years there were tens of thousands of people who forgot their money.

Half of those people realised something had gone wrong and got in touch with the bank to reclaim their money.

But 44,000 didn’t: 14,000 of them were Bank of Ireland account holders, another 29,000 were other bank account holders using Bank of Ireland ATMs.

Today €1.3m has been returned by Bank of Ireland to its customers; another €1.7m is being given to other banks to return to their customers who were affected.

A lovely spokesperson from the bank gently explained that people did tend to get distracted by phone calls or their children – silly, silly people.

But never mind Bank of Ireland has come to the rescue.

Customers are to be fully reimbursed, enhanced procedures have been introduced to ensure this ‘silly mistake’ never occurs again, and, every customer is to be issued with a free, gold plated, apology.

We don’t have a financial regulator in Ireland but if we did the following question might have been put to Bank of Ireland.

Why did it take you four whole years to act on this ‘error’ when all during that four years thousands upon thousands of customers were telling you that the automatic re-crediting process was dysfunctional or to put it another way.

Why did you allow this situation to continue for four years when you obviously knew there was a problem that was resulting in significant loss to customers?

We don’t have a financial regulator in Ireland but if we did Bank of Ireland would have been heavily fined and the person/s responsible for the four year ‘error’ would be under serious investigation by police.

We don’t have a financial regulator in Ireland but if we did consumers would not be subject to a well established ‘system failure industry’ that ‘somehow’ always enriches the banks and impoverishes the customer.

Some bored and anonymous official within the joke organisation that masquerades as a financial regulator pushed the by now well worn button marked ‘standard press release drivel’ and out spewed:

The Financial Regulator expects all firms to have appropriate systems and control in place to prevent errors, or rectify them quickly.

Hey, did you hear about the latest bank ‘systems failure’? It involves an ‘error’ in overdrafts….

Copy to:
Bank of Ireland
So called Financial Regulator

Official? – Gardai act according to political priorities

July 29, 2010 in Banks & Finance, Civil Service, Gardai, Government by Anthony | No comments

Unwittingly, Michael Noonan, the Fine Gael spokesperson on finance has let the cat out of the bag regarding the relationship between politicians and the Gardai (RTE News, 5th report).

Last Tuesday, after complaining about the slow pace of the so called Garda investigation into Anglo Irish Bank, Mr. Noonan was asked did he think there was some political foot dragging.

His reply was interesting and very revealing:

Public servants, including Gardai and senior civil servants, always try to act on what they regard as ministers and government priorities and they obviously feel that there isn’t an urgency because these matters are not priorities with government.

In real democracies the police act on crime and reports of crime. In Ireland, according to Mr. Noonan, they act according to political priorities.

This explains why white collar crime is virtually unknown in Ireland.

Idiots and the tragedy of Ireland

July 28, 2010 in Banks & Finance, Body Politic, Civil Service, Government, Media coverage by Anthony | No comments

Apologies in advance for the use of strong language in response to an editorial in last Saturday’s Irish Independent.

The piece must surely qualify as the stupidest, most ill informed editorial penned in recent years.

The editorial, responding to the ‘sensational’ revelation that bankers tell lies, needs to be analysed line by line to expose the full ignorance of the idiot who penned it.

The level of ambiguity displayed by the banks in the lead-up to the €440bn bailout by those taxpayers was finally laid bare before the Dail Public Accounts committee.

Only now is it beginning to impinge on the brain of this idiot that Irish banks are ‘ambiguous’.

At this rate it will take him decades to realise that the Irish financial sector is infested with ruthless scumbags who are supported and protected by politicians and an incompetent ‘regularity’ system that does exactly as it’s told – to do whatever it takes to protect the interests of the scumbags.

It is these scumbags, in collusion with a corrupt political system, who are principally responsible for the destruction of our country and the strongest word the idiot can muster is ‘ambiguous’?

It smacked of an attitude and era which fostered recklessness and risk-taking beyond belief.

Obviously, the idiot believes that the ‘attitude’ and the ‘era’ are behind us.

He obviously believes the bullshit that spews from the mouths of Cowen and Lenihan about the country/economy turning corners.

He believes the bullshit that spews from the mouths of politicians and so called regulators that a new era of financial regulation has dawned, that Irish citizens are now safe from the thieving maws of the scumbags who infest the financial sector.

This is a typical, narrow brained, Irish reaction to unpleasant realities.

Brutal realities can be safely ignored if they’re consigned to the past. And because they’re in the past they don’t require any action so everybody can ‘go forward’ into the future full of light and happiness.

Never mind that the same ruthless bankers are still in place, never mind that the same corrupt political system is still in place, never mind that there is, in reality, no financial regulation whatsoever in this country, never mind all that.

The important thing to keep in mind is that, finally, bankers have been found to be ‘ambiguous’ – halleluiah.

We should not forget what was divulged this week. Banks bluffed in public about the state of their finances. They were, at the very least, disingenuous in the way they presented their financial health.

The idiot obviously believes that Irish bankers getting caught bluffing in public is an event of earthquake proportions, that nothing like it has ever happened before, that such a ‘crime’ must never be forgotten.

Clearly, the idiot has lived his entire life in a hole on the Skellig Islands

In doing so, they (the bankers) increased exponentially the amount of liability taxpayers have had to guarantee. They left our senior politicians and civil servants with few options.

The depth of ignorance displayed by this statement is deeply disturbing. The idiot seems to be totally unaware of the part played by incompetent and/or corrupt politicians and civil servants in the destruction of our country.

He believes, apparently, that all this came upon the politicians and civil servants suddenly, that they, like the idiot, were completely unaware, over many decades, of the rampant criminality common within the Irish financial sector.

It hasn’t yet occurred to the idiot that the total absence of effective financial regulation is no accident.

Perhaps he believes that the Soviet style secrecy laws that provide water tight protection for the scumbags just suddenly dropped out of the sky leaving our politicians and civil servants with few options.

Perhaps the idiot thinks that, despite decades of fraud and criminality within the financial sector, there’s nothing odd about the fact that not a single official or institution has ever faced a judge; that it was only in 2008, after beggaring the nation; that a financial institution came under investigation?

Perhaps the idiot even believes that the current investigation is an actual real investigation and not the standard Irish strategy of bluff, delay and obfuscation that will, ultimately, result in a non effective/irrelevant report years down the line.

What we have learned, and no doubt have yet to discover, about how some lending institutions behaved should never, ever be forgotten. Not this year, not next, never.

What we have learned has already been forgotten. Ansbacher, DIRT and dozens of other scams, costing Irish taxpayers countless millions, have all been forgotten.

How many times have we heard a politician/banker tell the nation – the past is another country, we must move forward, must make sure this never happens again – blah, blah, blah. Apparently, the idiot believes it all.

It is to our eternal credit as a nation that we have, despite a deep-seated anger, knuckled down and borne the inevitable.

The impression given here is that the people of Ireland, realising the seriousness of the situation, have united in a patriotic movement to save the nation.

This, of course, is total bullshit. Irish citizens, since independence, have sold their votes to the local chancer in return for small favours. The local chancer was more than happy to buy power so cheaply and use it to his own advantage.

This buying and selling of votes/democracy has corrupted the administration of the country and resulted in a politically ignorant electorate.

Irish citizens are incapable of voting, thinking or acting in the national interest, they act solely in self-interest or in the interest of a particular group of which they belong.

If Irish citizens were politically educated, if they were aware that it is they and not their corrupt leaders who hold power, the current government would have been thrown out of power in 2008 when disaster struck.

The greatest indictment of Irish democracy is that this government and in particular Fianna Fail are still in power, still working in their own interests at the expense of the nation and Irish citizens just lie down and take it.

Yet when we look in on ourselves, there is a source of great hope. And it is to ourselves we must look, because we are the ones carrying this country on our shoulders.

I don’t know what circles this idiot operates in but my sense of the country is not one of hope but despair.

Yes, ordinary citizens are carrying the country on their shoulders but it is not by choice. Citizens are being forced to suffer and pay for the corruption, incompetence, greed and arrogance of the ruling elite while that same ruling elite are busily insulating themselves against the disaster.

Bitter lessons have been learned.

What lessons? Could this idiot provide the nation with a single example of a lesson learned?

The tragedy of Ireland is that its people are oppressed by their political ignorance to the point of docility when, in this time of national crisis, the complete opposite is required.

The people of Ireland need to do what the people of Iceland did – eject from office all those responsible for betraying the nation.

They need to educate themselves on what real democracy is all about so that if a politician or banker ever threatens the national interest again they will quickly find themselves behind bars.

The very last thing the Irish people need is the self-indulgent; everything will be all right if we just ignore reality, kind of drivel contained in this editorial.

Copy to:
The idiot

Year 2000: Corruption is rampant. Year 2010: No change

July 10, 2010 in Banks & Finance, Government by Anthony | 1 comment

From the Attic Archives

The Examiner January 28th 2000

Care is needed to avoid an impression abroad that Ireland wallows in endemic corruption the President of the Institute of Bankers, Brian Goggin, warned last night.

“We must be conscious of the external perceptions of the many enquiries, tribunals and parliamentary committees which have become a permanent feature of our landscape in recent years”, he told the attendance at the institutes Cork regional annual dinner.

“This is patently not the case and our record relative to other developed countries bears critical scrutiny.

However, viewed from afar, a different impression may be emerging which will ultimately damage our industrial prospects.

He said the banks were in the sights of the Public Accounts Committee and its report, published just before Christmas, was unpleasant reading.

“While many would argue with aspects of its content and, in particular, the indiscriminate nature of some of its conclusions, it must be acknowledged that it has uncovered issues that need to be addressed”, he said.

“Ireland during the 1990s has engaged in rigouous examination of conscience, with both industries and institutions being called to account for a variety of past practices.”

“The various inquiries of recent times, necessary as they may have been, run the risk of demonizing both individuals and businesses unjustly, of suggesting that entire classes of people are seeking to exploit every opportunity to gain an illicit advantage.”

Brian Goggin is the former chief executive of Bank of Ireland. He is one of the chief architects of the destruction of Ireland’s economy.

We now know, of course, that entire classes of people were exploiting every opportunity to gain an illicit advantage. Bankers, politicians, estate agents, auditors, solicitors, etc. etc. etc.

These people are still there, still exploiting every opportunity to enrich themselves at taxpayers expense, still protected by a corrupt body politic and Soviet style secrecy laws.

Mr. Coleman is in for a shock

July 6, 2010 in Banks & Finance by Anthony | No comments

I see Shane Coleman of the Sunday Tribune has swallowed the myth that Ireland has come out of recession.

He also believes the banks have been fully recapitalised and are now fixed.

Mr. Coleman is in for a shock.

Bankers pining for the good old ‘Wild West’ days

July 6, 2010 in Banks & Finance, Government by Anthony | No comments

‘Sources’ in the banking industry claim that restrictions on salaries imposed by the Government’s CIROC (Covered Institutions Remuneration Oversight Committee) were making it hard to fill vital posts (Irish Independent).

Translation: Drop these awkward restrictions on our activities so that we can return to our secretive and non accountable ways.

Attic Archives

June 26, 2010 in Banks & Finance, The State by Anthony | 1 comment

I’m in the process of sorting out old newspapers that have been stored in my attic for some years now, some dating back to the mid 1980s.

From time to time I’ll publish articles that may be of interest.

The following article, by Pat Brosnan, was published in the then Cork Examiner on Monday 11th March 1996.

A very disturbing story was related to me this week, and the unfortunate aspect of it is that the victim of this sorry tale didn’t even know he was taken to the cleaners.

A friend of mine told me how his brother was telephoning a branch of a bank in Cork and happened to get a crossed line.

It was a coincidence that he happened to overhear a conversation that was taking place between and bank manager he was ringing and the manager of another branch of the same bank.

What he overheard related to a discussion the two managers were having about a customer who had complained either about his overdraft or bank charges.

Either way, the customer felt he had paid too much.

The substance of the phony conversation was that the bank had, indeed, overcharged the man – to the tune of £25,000.

And what were they going to do about it?

In this case their customer was the owner of a small business which was in trouble, a fact that they knew only too well.

So what was the advice one of those miserable weeds offered to his colleague?

Offer him £9,000 and he’ll be only too happy to accept it because of the state of his business.

Because this happened some time ago I don’t know what the final upshot of it was. The one regret my friend’s brother had was that the name of the bank’s customer wasn’t mentioned during the conversation, because if it had he would have phoned him and told him what the real score was.

I’m sorry myself, that he was not in a position to do so.

As Irish citizens know to their great cost, nothing has changed. Still rampant criminality within the financial sector, still no regulation.

Traitor Dukes tells the people of Ireland to fuck off

June 17, 2010 in Banks & Finance, Fianna Fail, Government by Anthony | No comments

At least €20 billion of the €22 billion poured into Anglo Irish Bank will never be seen again (RTE News, 2nd report).

This was obvious for quite some time but to actually hear the Chief Executive, Mike Aynsley, casually admit the fact was still shocking.

Ireland is ruined despite what Klaus Regling says.

If the people of Ireland remain docile, if they continue to wallow in their political ignorance they will be reduced to a standard of living similar to that of the 1950s.

They will be living in poverty with no self respect and no hope for the future. For generations to come Irish citizens will work long and hard to pay back their personal loans, their mortgages and the billions gambled away by the corrupt banks and politicians.

At the very least the people should rise up and throw those responsible for our destruction out of office. Not only is there no sign of this happening but members of the ruling elite who have betrayed Ireland continue to give two fingers to the people.

Alan Dukes is one such traitor.

He was questioned by Senator Ross in front of the Joint Oireachtas Finance and Public Service Committee regarding the appointment of Gary Kennedy, an AIB insider, and Fianna Fail hack, Aidan Eames, to the board of Anglo Irish Bank.

Here’s part of the row as broadcast on The Late Debate last night. (Remember, Dukes, allegedly represents the public interest on the board of Anglo).

Senator Ross: What input did you have in interviewing these guys?

Dukes: That’s as much an answer as you’re going to get Senator.

Senator Ross: Why?

Dukes: Because I’m not here to write a column on the back page of the Sunday Business Independent

Senator Ross: That is gratuitously ridiculous and insulting.

We’re entitled to answers to questions about people who are on nationalised banks and for you to say you’re not going to answer a question about who they are and what procedures were followed is completely unacceptable.

Dukes: It is perfectly adequate…

Committee Chairman: He has answered the question…

Senator Ross: He hasn’t, he said he has great confidence..

Dukes: It is perfectly adequate on my part to say that the three appointments have gone through due process and I’m perfectly happy with each member of the board we have.

Senator Ross: It looks to me as if these were imposed upon you and you’re not prepared to say so.

Dukes: That is not true, all due procedures were followed.

Senator Ross: Nobody interviewed them, they were parachuted in, they’re part of the old guard.

Dukes: That’s an allegation that you cannot stand up Senator.

Committee Chairman: Could you back up that allegation?

Senator Ross: I want to know how it happened, that’s all I’m asking.

Committee Chairman: You’re not allowing the chairman to reply.

Senator Ross: Ok, how did it happen?

Dukes: All of the due procedures were followed in making those appointments and in all previous appointments to the board. They have been approved by the Financial Regulator and that’s all I’m going to say.

Senator Ross: Were they interviewed by the board?

Dukes: I’m not going to reply to that.

In case there’s anybody out there with the slightest doubt about what the traitor Dukes is saying here, let me spell it out in crude but plain English.

He’s telling Senator Ross to fuck off, he’s telling the Dail committee to fuck off and he’s telling the people of Ireland to fuck off.

He is supremely confident that he can do what he likes, supremely confident there’s no authority in the land capable or willing to make him accountable.

Sadly, very sadly, for the people of Ireland, his confidence is justified.

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