Financial Apocalypse Now

So, we have a figure, more or less. Anglo Irish Bank will set us all back by €29bn. Throw in €6.5bn for Allied Irish, €5.4bn for Irish Nationwide, €3.5 for Bank of Ireland, add €5bn for a worst case scenario and bob’s your uncle. The total is not far off a billion a week for a year.

So, what’s to be said?
The Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance keep repeating their mantra that anger is not a policy and they’re right. But that doesn’t mean that anger isn’t justified and necessary, nor that vengeance should be foresworn.
As the (more or less) final cost to us – that’s you and me, folks – of the bank bailout was finally and very belatedly revealed last Thursday, the Hog was inundated with texts and emails from dumbstruck, frightened and furious people.
One said ‘I’m weeping as I listen to the cost…’ She wasn’t alone. I asked ‘are you weeping or gnashing your teeth?’ ‘Both’, she replied.
So, what’s to be said?
The bleakest pessimists have been vindicated. In April 2009, 20 leading Irish economists argued that temporarily nationalising the banks was the best option.
They disagreed with the Government and its adviser Peter Bacon, who recommended the NAMA plan and argued that nationalisation was ‘the inevitable consequence of a required recapitalisation of the banks done on terms that are fair for the taxpayer.’ They advanced four reasons in its favour:
“We consider that nationalisation will better protect taxpayers’ interests, produce a more efficient and longer lasting solution to our banking problems, be more transparent in relation to pricing of distressed assets, and be far more likely to produce a banking system free from the toxic reputation that our current financial institutions have deservedly earned.”
So, the Government was warned early. They chose to ignore the advice. We are all faced with the consequences.
You could say that the government were misled by the banks, that they were duped, that it bought into the notion that each bank was linked to the others in an incestuous web so complex that bringing one down would endanger all and fair enough, these are sustainable views.
But on the other side of the coin, you can’t also sidestep the Government’s mistakes, of omission or commission, in facilitating the mania of the late Celtic Tiger years and in failing to adequately oversee the situation within which the disaster took shape. They even argued that NAMA might even turn a profit for the taxpayer…
But many people are running short of charity. One, a relative of the Hog, phoned Hog House on Friday and raged:
“Government politicians keep talking about ‘we’ as if it was us who were swigging champagne in the Fianna Fáil tent at the Galway Races and that Governments of the last 14 years have only been doing our bidding, that it’s our fault, not theirs, and now they have to put manners on us.
“Well we weren’t. We were just getting on with life…”
He was especially exercised by an interview given by Mary Harney on the radio the other day. “To listen to her you’d think she wasn’t in power for the last decade and a half,” he bellowed, adding that “you’d think she hadn’t been at the forefront of the low tax hysteria that gripped the Government.”
He wasn’t done.
“Mary Harney is now charging the homeless for prescriptions… the homeless! And this was brought in while everyone was focused on the banks! Pure Sir Humphrey!
“We’re not to blame,” he concluded, “but we’ll have to pay.”
Anger may not be a policy but sometimes it’s good to lose your temper and let it all out. If someone else hadn’t driven a truck into the Dáil gates, this guy might well have. As far as he’s concerned, Joe McNamara is a folk hero.
And isn’t it really perverse that McNamara is the first person to be charged as a consequence of the bank collapse? None of those who created this perfect storm are charged with anything. A terrible irony is born…
So, what is to be said?
This. We’re in a deep deep hole. But some things are about to change. Be prepared. Ensure you are registered to vote. When the time comes, use your vote. That’s what it’s for.
Those who think the Government has done a good job in very perilous circumstances, and clearly some people do, will support them. Those who think they have screwed the pooch or, by commission or omission, allowed the pooch to be screwed, won’t. The endgame may be lengthy but it’s already underway...