Thursday 5 January 2012

The Dirty Dozen w/e Jan 8th 2012

Ah January, a new month, a new year, and a very happy month it's going to be for the bondholders of Anglo Irish Bank (and let's not any of us, please, start using its new nom-de-plume). A dead bank, a zombie bank, a bank with now just a single reason for its own continued existence - to pay Irish taxpayers' money on its own failed bonds.

It started on Tuesday of this week, a mere €2,000,0000 paid out to a lucky US$ Bondholder, it continues for the rest of this month, five Anglo bonds in total including a €1bn 'covered' (by us) bond on Jan 22nd but culminating surely in the unsecured €1.25bn bond on Jan 25th.

We've had so many months of national shame since the original sell-out to the ECB by our own government on Nov 2010, that sell-out now being continued by this new government, so what's one more? Still though, over €3bn in bank bonds this month - at what stage do we, the people, shout stop?

5 comments:

  1. Hi Diarmuid
    Scary scary stuff. The question I keep coming up against is 'when are we the people going to shout stop?'

    The thing I can't pull together in my mind is a practical and effective strategy - a cohesive set of actions that can be taken collectively by the people to put a stop to the madness. The Occupy movement seems to be a start,and your Ballyhea march brought a smile to my face.

    I am curious what you would propose. I quite frankly haven't a clue where to even start.

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  2. Never was an answer to a question more obvious:labour strikes, mortgage strikes, commercial rent srikes, marches, etc etc - bring the country to a halt until this rape of our country is stopped. It won't stop because of polite requests, twitter and facebook protest or reasoned argument on blog posts.

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  3. Exactly, we need mass strikes! Just look at the French they would never stand for this.

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  4. Given that these repayments are continuing despite the opposition of many, I assume that all remaining bondholders will be repaid.

    So, when does it end - how many more years, how many more billions do we need to pay? I'd rather know that, so that the repayment news next month and next month is no longer a depressing surprise.

    When they are all paid, do we then finally see the end of this failed institution, Bank of Dukes of Hazzard of whatever its called this week.

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  5. Other positive options are to join and get involved in your local occupy movement, and/or your local household charge campaign group.

    Help in starting to "occupying neighbourhoods" and creating public assemblies there to meet weekly or biweekly. This would create a mass democratic counter power to the dail.

    Such a mass, federated movement, expressing its democratic preferences in this manner, is something very hard for the elected dictatorship of a parliament to handle.

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