Monday 30 April 2012

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e May 6th 2012

Ten of the dozen this week are unsecured, totalling approx. €288m, Anglo coming in with a nice one for some very lucky bondholder, a £60m bond that falls due on May 14th, which translates at around €74m.

The one that really interests me though is the AIB bond of May 28th. A €2.25bn bond, taken out on May 28th 2008, months before the blanket bank guarantee offered by our then government in Sep 2008. That guarantee was offered based on false information given by the banks (€5bn going to be the total bank bailout cost - remember those heady days?) and therefore - surely - a worthless guarantee. Yet look in the fourth column and there we see it - Covered.

Who, besides those of us who march every week in Ballyhea and Charleville (latest march last Sunday, week 61 - video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc3wQA9Tsf8&feature=youtu.be), is going to challenge this? There is all this focus on Anglo, and rightly so, the failed bonds from a zombie bank, but does anyone know that in the four months Feb/Mar/Apr/May, AIB - which we also own, to the tune of 99.8% - will pay out €5.9bn in bonds?

Who is even going to publicise this, who is going to bring this into the open?
TWITTER LINK: @ballyhea14
SISTER BLOG: thechatteringmagpie14.blogspot.com



Tuesday 24 April 2012

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e April 29th 2012

When most in our media talk about the bank bonds at all (which is rarely) they say they've nearly all been paid at this stage. Not true of course - over €10bn already paid out by our five banks this year, €9bn to go before year's end; a total of €55bn over the years 2012-2015 (incl.) which averages out at nearly €14bn/yr, all bled from the crippled banks of an ailing economy - this sum does NOT include the truly odious Promissory Notes of €3.1/yr.

When this is pointed out to them they then say - 'Ah but most of the remaining bonds are government guaranteed'. Well, as of Mar 1st, a couple of months ago (apols, don't have time to update the figures), in the five remaining banks (Anglo, AIB, BoI, EBS, IL&P) there was still nearly €13bn outstanding in subordinated and unsecured debt. Question though - for what were all those new 'government guaranteed' bonds taken out? To pay other bonds that were coming due, more than likely.

Anyway, take a look at this week's 'Dirty Dozen'; note the senior unsecured Anglo bonds, four over the next four days totalling €56m, another 'maturing' on May 15th, £60m (pounds sterling) which comes in at around €73.6m at today's rates - that's nearly €130m from Anglo in the next dozen bonds.

Irish Life & Permanent - which we also own - also features, a bond of €52m, as does EBS, another of our fine banks, a mere €1.84m - sure that wouldn't even get you a down payment on a Ministerial pension.



Tuesday 17 April 2012

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e April 22nd 2012

Didn't say a word about it, deliberately, just to see if ANYONE in our national media would pick it up - they didn't, thus it is that barely a sinner knows that yesterday, April 16th 2012, Anglo Irish Bank (I absolutely refuse to call it anything else) paid a bond of €1.5bn. Yes, another bond of one thousand five hundred million euro, every cent of that our money, to go with the one thousand five hundred million euro paid out by AIB last week, again almost every cent of which (we own AIB 99%) WAS ours. I stress WAS - that money is now gone.

It was a Government Guaranteed bond this time, as opposed to the €1.25bn senior unsecured bond of Jan 2012 - so what? It's STILL our money, that bond taken out when and for what? Taken out on Apr 15th 2010 to pay off other bonds then coming due, that's when, that's for what.

RTE's main news on Sunday contained a report of news on the jobs front - 20 new jobs being created; it had a report on a partnership agreement with China in the equine industry that will generate €40m over the next three years. Good news, undoubtedly, though the fact that the creation of 20 jobs is now a story of national importance shows how deep in the hole we've been buried. Yet, not a whisper about this ongoing haemorrhaging of our lifeblood from the Irish economy.

Why is that?



Monday 9 April 2012

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e April 15th 2012

No change in the actual numbers this week but am utterly baffled at the fact that there isn't even the merest whisper over the next bond due, the €1.5bn AIB bond of this Wednesday, April 11th. That's €250,000,000 MORE than the Anglo bond paid on Jan 25th, about which there was so much fuss, a hell of a difference, yes? We own AIB, 100%, just as we own Anglo, so this is our money, just as surely as it was on Jan 25th last.

Additionally, AIB also paid out three bonds in the last six weeks that came to a total of over €2bn, which means that by Wednesday afternoon it will have paid out over €3.5bn in six weeks of OUR money. And not a peep from our media, not a whisper from a single business or political commentator. What a betrayel of their mandate.



Tuesday 3 April 2012

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e April 8th 2012

Anyone wondering why AIB are in such financial straits lately? Anyone wondering why they've had to change their current account free banking conditions? Take a look at the next bond due, at the top of this list - €1.5bn, senior unsecured, on Apr 11th - and wonder no more.

It caps off a bad few weeks for AIB. On Feb 20th they paid a bond of £750,000,000 (around €900m); on Mar 2nd, it was a dollar bond, $250,000,000; on Mar 19th a Euro bond, €1,000,000,000. Adds up to over €2bn which, added to the bond due on Wednesday week, means a sizeable dent in their reserves. And the source of those reserves? Us, who else, bankers to the banks with the recapitalisation programme.

We own AIB, 100%, that's our money being used to pay that bond on Wednesday week - will we read or hear a word of it from our media over the next couple of weeks?