Monday 25 February 2013

THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e Mar 3rd 2013

In the week that's in it, the 2nd anniversary in Ballyhea of our weekly protest against the bank bailout, turns out that 11 of the next 12 bonds being paid by our Irish banks are senior unsecured. Think what those millions would do in our health service, in education, for our hard-pressed GardaĆ­.

Then again maybe it's better that we don't think along those lines, that we don't think of the €10.3bn in bonds our banks will pay over the rest of this year, not including the estimated €1bn Anglo will have to cough up now that it's been wound up, at a time when those same banks can't afford to write down the mortgages of its own myriad home-owners in negative equity.

By the way, does it strike anyone else as odd the way Minister Noonan and all the various government apologists seem to have gotten away with the explanation as to why they never even asked for debt writedown? 'The ECB has never granted such a request!'' spake Michael, dismissively, and that then was where it was left. But Michael, the euro itself has only been in existance since 1999, 14 years; this crisis has been there only for the last five of those years. Everything the ECB has done in the last few years has been unprecedented, much of it has been outside its own existing parameters, has bent almost beyond recognition many of its own biggest rules. 

Noonan's 'reason' has to be the most lame, the most lamentable, the most ludicrous excuse ever offered for failure in negotiations; it's the line of a loser, perfectly illustrates (if it needed any more illustration) just how inept he and his negotiating team has been in Europe.


The next dirty dozen.

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