Today, I was informed by a source in New-York that our very own movers & shakers have been hitting the streets of the Big Apple in a last breath attempt to attract the finance needed to prevent the nationalisation of yet another major Irish bank.
That would be another of the Irish banks that according to Matthew Eledrfield, Head of Financial Regulation at the Central Bank of Ireland, were well on the way to recovery. That would be due to all the generous help they have received – the billions you and I have given to them. Let’s remember that this regulatory genius wrote just last April in the Irish Independent:
“It will take time to recover to a stronger banking sector, backed by more effective regulation, and to sounder public finances. But the road to recovery has started.
The recent Central Bank stress tests are an important milestone on that road…. “
How much do we pay this man? For those of you who perhaps don’t know him. He is a graduate of Cambridge University. He was also the official at the British Financial Regulator, the FSA, who was responsible for Northern Rock in the months before it collapsed (way to go Mathew!). That was apparently more than enough of a recommendation for our government to hire him.
Back in the Independent in April, Mathew went on to gush,
“…I meet so many people in Ireland who want to get on with it and demonstrate a hugely impressive determination to face up to the task. I’m determined that the Central Bank builds a regulatory system that learns the lessons of the past and works hard to rebuild the banking system step by step. And I’m optimistic that the recent stress tests were a very big step in the right direction.”
http://www.independent.ie/
Nice that he was determined. Sadly not determined enough to stop another bank going under, on his watch just 3 months later. To paraphrase a famous Irishman, Oscar WiIde, “To lose one bank may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness, Matthew.”
And so here we are with another bank rumoured to be going broke and the financial titans of Dublin desperate to flog it to whoever will take it off their hands. And remember, they’ve had practice at this sort of grovelling. Our Fine Gael leaders were practising bank-flogging even before they came to power. No sooner had the Fianna Fail government raided our tax payers pockets to resuscitate our defunct banks, our ex Fine Gael Prime-Minister was out in the Arabian Gulf flogging said banks:
Ireland looks to Persian Gulf to buy its banks – Tehran Times, December 2010
“Top Irish officials have approached Persian Gulf sovereign wealth funds to gauge interest in the sale of Ireland’s banks after the €85 billion (Dh412.26bn) bailout from European governments and the IMF.
John Bruton, a former Irish prime minister, is leading a delegation from the country on a whistle-stop tour of the region as Ireland prepares to sell assets….”
http://www.tehrantimes.com/
So, where are we? We have a new Irish government and a new Financial Regulator. What has changed? Very little.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WhistleblowerIRL resigned from his position as UniCredit Bank Ireland’s Risk Manager in 2007. He did so in order not to incriminate himself. The bank had been severely breaching liquidity regulations. Neither the bank’s management, nor the Financial Regulator – who was officially notified of a 1900% breach, acted upon his alerts. The matter has been raised in the Irish senate, the Irish parliament and the Austrian parliament. Village magazine’s cover story last Christmas demanded answers from the Regulator:
http://www.villagemagazine.ie/
Protocols to the parliamentary debates and newspaper articles about this affair can be found on Whistleblower’s blog at:
http://whistleblowerirl.
Am I right in thinking that this bank would have passed this years stress tests.
EBA, Dohh !!!!
Yes.
Apologies, just read again, slower, The EBA must just love the Irish banks.
WhistleblowerIRL
It's really quite incredible isn't it? People like Elderfield seem to inhabit some parallel unviverse along with the assumptions upon which modern mainstream economics is based. A state nurtured over decades by the vampires of the financial sector.
Hi WhistleblowerIRL
"We have a new Irish government and a new Financial Regulator. What has changed? Very little. "
Are there signs the current government in Ireland are suffering politically because of this?
@WhistleBlowerIrl
I really hope you are right and one of our banks implodes and I really look forward to the face on Enda Kenny when it happens, can't wait to hear his BS excuse!
@Daveholden
Our Prime Minister is about as popular as they get at the moment, his little outburst at the kiddie fiddlers and their Roman head office no doubt helped this, it's a pity he can't put it up to the banks with the same venom but he is just another string of the puppet masters.
He even looks like one of the thunderbirds 😉
@ Golem
Am I right in thinking that all of this money that has appeared in Euroland to bail out Greece again and give Ireland a better deal is planned to come from the Germans? I can't see the German people being up for that at all, Maybe it's just a delay tactic to hold off until August 2nd in the hope that the Americans default and cause the start of the end game, what do you think?
Good morning Whistleblower and Golem –
these bods look as much in control of the situation as James Murdoch,with the similar robotic politico-managementspeak, and … similar success.
Keep up the good work mes amis.
frog2
For a solution, look to those who told you it was coming, not those who fed the credit boom, losers!
Paddy Fiekdss,
I think you are correct that there is a large element in all this of Europe and AMerica rtying to fordce the other to blink first.
I believe the Americans are actually consciously following a strategy they first used in the VIetnam war. It is a strategy invented for them by an American Economist. I think it is quite possible the Europeans are using it as well.
@ Fungus
'Look to those who told you it was coming..'
Quite agree, and ensure you look to those who had a robust methodology by which they could do this.
Interesting 2009 paper on this subject:
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15892/1/MPRA_paper_15892.pdf
Not an exhaustive list of economists who saw it coming, when & could explain why, but some interesting names. Two stand out for me.
Michael Hudson, associated with University of Missouri Kansas City MMT economists and who has 'big picture' of the bankstas & financial elites scam spot on imo.
Steve Keen, an economist who, since the 1990s has developed thorough body of work proving the key assumptions of the now mainstream neo-classical/neo-liberal economics are nonsense – and by implication, the mainstream approach produces similar nonsense.
Notably, the paper shows how mainstream economics analysis & modelling essentially ignores the flow of wealth (& build up of debt) from the 'real' economy to the 'financial' (casino) economy. Which is why the mainstream had no clue. Wonder how that omission came about eh?
@Paddy Fields,
"Our Prime Minister is about as popular as they get at the moment,"
Wow I'm surprised.
Meanwhile in the Irish Times & Irish Independent lots of smiley faces & backslapping, forecasting Irish economy to grow by 2.5% next year, happy days are here again.
I am assuming that Kenny & Co know the situation with the banks, ( I'm not really sure of anything anymore) so when the pile of crap in question does go down, besides Barossa wetting his pants again, Kenny's European masters will not be at all happy with him. Unless of course they also know & it's part of a bigger plan, like the one mentioned by Golem above.
I do hope that WhistleblowerIRL is vindicated one day & hopefully not in a pile of ashes.
@ Golem, when you get the time, please elaborate on your comment. No pressure.
@Paddy Fields I think the whole European response to the Global Financial Crisis has been a waiting game to see what happens in the US. It is known that certain large growing economies would like to move away from the dollar as the rserve currency. If the Euro could take its place … Oh, you can see Baroso et al rubbing their hands in glee.
@Ken
I think Barosso would love that, but I don't think he will get it. It's hard to figure out ( for me anyway) what all the various groups of power junkies are at, except the fact, that they are holding onto what they have already got & trying to add to it.
I have been reading the comments on Guardian articles recently, including Golems. I think what this blog describes is that we are now in a new game & that things have changed. Judging from the comments written in, by the standard of UK newspapers, a pretty open & progressive publication it seems to me that a lot of people are viewing this crisis rigidly, in terms of the past, left/right, euroscepticism, just another recession which will pass etc.
Obviously history teaches us a lot & shouldn't be ignored, but it kind of reminds me of the 2 world wars. The 1st where the prevailing opinion was that it would be over by xmas & would be something like the battle of Waterloo, instead of the disgusting carnage it turned out to be & the 2nd where the major opinion was it would be like the 1st, the BEF would go to Belgium to dig trenches.
There was little account taken of how the improvement in weapons & tactics would effect the outcome. I think it's the same now with the bankers, technology has given their weapons huge power, derivatives etc & they have become an international force, as opposed to those former powers that were limited by borders & sovereignty. They have given us the financial equivalent of a nuclear timebomb, while wearing us down with attrition.
I don't think people know what they are up against, I'm just hoping that we don't have to go through the financial equivalent of a Stalingrad or Passchendaele before they find out.
Keep posting links, do what you can, plant seeds it all adds up. I have been annoying the hell out of a lot of people for some time, but more & more of them are now seeing things differently & others are at least beginning to think that there might be an alternative to the spoon fed bullshit.
Fungus said, " Look to those who told you it was coming" So therefore, we have to tell others on behalf of those who told us.
More than one currency in eurozone? http://bit.ly/qyHKM1
Charles Moore in yesterdays Torygraph ((
"And when the banks that look after our money take it away, lose it and then, because of government guarantee, are not punished themselves, something much worse happens. It turns out – as the Left always claims – that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few. The global banking system is an adventure playground for the participants, complete with spongy, health-and-safety approved flooring so that they bounce when they fall off. The role of the rest of us is simply to pay."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8655106/Im-starting-to-think-that-the-Left-might-actually-be-right.html
Dave from France,
when even the Torygraph finally admits it, then it has become as blatent as it is possible for it to be. Next stop civil unrest.