Much has been made of Michael Taft's illuminating recent article in thejournal.ie on Ireland's 'contribution' to Europe's bank bailout, general outrage at the fact that according to Eurostat, the EU's own statmasters, little old Ireland, with just 0.9% of the entire EU population, has so far contributed 42% of the total cost of the European banking crisis. That's an average per capita payment of of €8981 which is over 18 times what Germany - who come second on that inglorious list - has paid per capita.
How much greater would be the outrage, however, if Eurostat had published the true numbers? As Micheal points out in that same article, the EU statmasters do NOT include the €21bn taken from our National Pension Reserve Fund and given to the banks. Add that to the Eurostat figures, redraw those bar graphs, what then? Where would we be, how much more outraged?
According to my calculations, and based on a blog by the excellenent Namawinelake, when everything is included the actual total bank bailout cost so far is €69.7bn which, based on the 2011 census, means a per capita figure of over €15,200.
It's obscene, that's what it is. How can any government stand over this imposition of debt on its own people, private debt that was never ours? And it's still going on.
In the last few days I've again read reports that the bank bonds are a dead issue, that they are now all paid. Usually in this blog I give only the next dozen bonds but this week, at the bottom of this page, I also include the entire list to the end of 2015. Scroll down through them, total them, then tell me the bank bonds are history, all done with.
Oh, they're mostly 'guaranteed'? Two things to remember: 1) Guaranteed or not this is all money leaving the Irish banking system over the next three years, the lifeblood being drained from an already weakened economy; 2) How many of those guaranteed bonds are the result of unguaranteed bonds being rolled over, merely taking advantage of the new system?
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ReplyDeleteDid we pay 1.8Billion for AIB last Monday?
ReplyDeleteYes, without demur, else AIB wouldn't be operating today.
ReplyDeleteHi
ReplyDeleteI am but a poor programmer who aspires to be numerate. My sums seem to indicate that we're paying about €10 Billion per annum for "the banks", irrespective of what it's called or whom it's paid to, and these payments are likely to continue at about that level for several if not many years - that depends on "renegotiation"