THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e July 22nd 2012

Happy birthday to some lucky punter who took a gamble on a failed docket from five years ago which today, nevertheless, gets paid out in full. Yes, another unguaranteed bond, this time from Bank of Ireland, £200,000,000; That's pounds sterling, or €250,000,000 give or take a few million - who's counting? 

Some will point to the fact that we own only about a sixth of Bank of Ireland so that our share of this is 'only' about €40,000,000 - I ask, from which economy do ye think the balance is being drained? Which economy is producing all that money, all that profit, to enable our banks pay all these bonds?

Oh, ye've heard and read that these bonds are no longer a factor, that most of them have actually been paid by now? A few numbers for ye, and I guarantee ye, these numbers are rock solid:

• €15.2bn - paid to date in 2012
• €4.8bn -   yet to be paid in 2012
• €17.4bn - yet to be paid 2013
• €5.9bn -   yet to be paid 2014
• €11.7bn - yet to be paid 2015

You think maybe it's German businesses and German people generating this profit in our banks so they can pay the failed bond investments of the German banks in those bailed-out Irish banks? No my friends, this is our money being bled from our economy, the ongoing ECB-ordered transfusion to the major financial institutions who made what turned out to be a bad investment in Irish banks, investments the ECB in turn blackmailed and bullied successive Irish governments into paying.

Under pressure from Spain and Italy the EU has finally admitted that the policy they forced on us has failed. They have a made a very vague statement on Ireland that appears to have got a lot of people very excited here - 'oh, we're going to get our money back'.

Let me emphasise this - WE ARE NOT GOING TO 'GET' OUR MONEY BACK. 

The EU/ECB have blackmailed and bullied us once, to get us to pay the €69.6bn we've so far put into our banks; they will try to blackmail and bully us again. Anyone who seriously believes we're just going to 'get' that money back is naive beyond belief.

Anything we now get back from the ECB on the strength of their admission and change of policy, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIGHT for TOOTH-AND-NAIL.

Who's going to be fighting for us? The same people in the permanent government (the civil servants), the replacement people in the elected government (the Oireachtas) who are implementing to the letter the same EU/ECB-led policy of the previous government, the same people who have already been cowed, coerced and scattered by the EU/ECB negotiators, that's who. We know - because Enda has told us - they'll use words to communicate their message, but what words?

One word I would use - demand. We demand back from the EU/ECB what they took from us. We demand:

• €30.6bn - Promissory Notes - tear them up
• €22bn - National Pension Reserve Fund - replenish this fund, plus interest lost
• €17bn - Writedown of money owed to the EU emergency funds.

Until agreement on the above has been reached, those of in Ballyhea and in Charleville who have been marching every week since March 6th 2011 in protest at what the EU/ECB have been doing to us will continue to march. This Sunday, week 73, we're in Charleville, meet at 11.30am at the Library Plaza. Please join us.

THE NEXT 12 BONDS:

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e July 15th 2012

According to the Namawinelake blog, with the injection last week of a €1.3bn payment to Irish Life and Permanent the gross cost so far to the Irish exchequer for bailing out our banks and their bondholders is  €69.7bn, made up as follows:  

AIB/EBS:                                      €20.7bn

Bank ofIreland:                                €4.7bn

IBRC (formerly Anglo/INBS):           €34.7bn

Irish Life and Permanent:                 €4.0bn

NAMA                                            €5.6bn

(that's state aid to the banks when it acquired €74bn of loans for which it paid €32bn.)

According to Census 2011 the population of the Republic of Ireland last year was 4,581,269, which means that between them, this government and the last has agreed a debt for every single one of us of €15,214 to bail out our banks and those to whom they owed those billions. In return for this largesse on the part of our government the ECB allowed us borrow those billions from them, with interest.

With all our energy a few of us in Ballyhea and Charleville are fighting this crime. We marched again last Sunday, week 71 of our protest, we'll march again next Sunday, and the Sunday after and the Sunday after, until this wrong is righted.

Our media again last week is selling the idea that everything has been sorted, has highlighted the claims of Enda and Michael that they have secured a great deal for Ireland in Europe, just a matter of ironing out a few details. Nothing is secured, everything is still up in the air. As a people we have got to start doing things for ourselves, we've got to start making our own demands. If we don't, then how can we complain about what befalls us?

This Thursday, July 12th, we pay a sterling bond of £1.5m to some lucky punter in EBS, lucky because this an unsecured unguaranteed bond that we have no duty to pay. Relative to the other bonds we - through our banks - pay out on a regular basis it's only a baby bond; I hope it's going to someone on the other side of the border here, a happy 'Twalfth' holiday to someone in Belfast perhaps - at least the money would be staying on the island.

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e July 8th 2012

Many times over the last 70 weeks of the Ballyhea bank bondholder bailout protest I've been asked why it is that there isn't mass protest all over Ireland at what's being done to us, the imposition of an additional debt burden to satisfy the ECB's diktat that every bondholder in every bank must be paid in full, a burden that currently stands at €67.8bn or €14,799 for every resident of this state,

There are many reasons people aren't on the streets but one of the most shameful is the part being played by our national media - all elements of it - in spreading a false gospel; last week offered the perfect example.

Two zombie banks, Anglo Irish and INBS, paid out two bonds each, the four of which amounted to over €1.1bn, each of which was unsecured, unguaranteed. That €1.1bn is our money, comes from our pockets, yet in a week in which there were yet more announcements of cuts and projected cuts to the budgets of the weakest in our society there was no outcry from our national media, no major big-spread investigations into how, where, why, who.

On Friday morning, after those bonds had all been paid, at the end of another EU Summit in Brussels to try to solve this ongoing crisis (the 20th over the last few years), I was on my way to Clare when the news came on the radio, a breathless announcement - major breakthrough after an all-night session, Kenny and his doughty team had secured a major victory for Ireland in Europe on the issue of bank debt.

Brilliant news, fantastic news - now watch this country soar!

If only it were true. Once again our media almost en-masse hadn't bothered to question what they were being told by Enda and the rest, once again what we got was straight, undiluted government spin, once again we were completely betrayed by our fourth estate.

In the 307-word statement issued by the EU on that Friday morning there isn't a single word informing of a single cent of either debt writedown or debt writeoff for Ireland. There's a sentence in there that got people excited: When an effective single supervisory mechanism is established, involving the ECB, for banks in the euro area the ESM could, following a regular decision,have the possibility to recapitalize banks directly. I see two very big words in there - 'could' and 'possibility'.

 

Further on we get a mention - 'The Eurogroup will examine the situation of the Irish financial sector with the view of further improving the sustainability of the well-performing adjustment programme'. Will someone please explain to me how that can be parlayed right now into us getting any kind of debt writedown or writeoff, how anyone can claim with any kind of certainty that we're going to benefit to the tune of billions?

The reality of our situation is that we still have that massive bank debt burden, we still have those odious Promissory Notes to pay (in full, including the coupon/interest), we are still paying off every single bond from every single bank. If it's decided to apply those bank bailout conditions retrospectively (and with the likes of Belgium, Spain, Italy and even Germany itself then all likely to be looking for backdated billions that they have poured into their banks, that is by no means certain), there is a possibility that with a little imaginative financial engineering (buzzwords for Enda these days) we'll be able to take that bank debt off the sovereign books and make ourselves look better for the almighty markets. The actual debt, however, will still remain, we'll still be paying it all off.

It's like this my friends; we've been lumped with a mortgage we never took out on a house we never owned and now, with the possibility of a change of mortgage-holder, we're all supposed to celebrate. Not in Ballyhea. Our protest goes on, 12 more reasons why below.

THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e July 1st 2012

This is Patrick O'Brien, son of John and Clara O'Brien, grandson of Pat and Frances O'Brien, the youngest participant (if a child can be said to be a participant in anything!) on Sunday last in the weekly Ballyhea/Charleville march in protest against the ongoing bank bondholder bailout.

Patrick was born on Jan 2nd 2012, by which time our weekly protest had already been going for 43 weeks and during which time our banks paid out nearly €10bn in bonds. 

Since Patrick was born our banks have paid out a further €13.7bn. Because we now own outright (within a percentage or two) five of the six remaining banks (AIB, Anglo, EBS, IL&P, INBS), with a considerable stake in the sixth (BofI), the bulk of those payments have come from us, from money we have poured into those banks.

Patrick O'Brien, and all the other Patrick O'Briens out there, will pay and pay dearly for that bank bondholder bailout. This is the legacy being left to this generation by our generation, this is the policy adopted by Brian Cowen, the late Brian Lenihan and the Greens in the last coalition government, this is the policy now being pursued by Enda Kenny, Eamon Gilmore and the others in this coalition government. Cuts in health and education, those two basics of any civilization, additional taxes when they finally reach working age, that's the future as now being presented to Patrick.

To try to end this lunacy, to try and awaken people to what's happening, the crime being committed against us all, John and Clara march with us.

This week, for example, two zombie banks will pay four bonds valued between them at over €1.1bn. Those bonds are from Anglo and from INBS, are totally unsecured and unguaranteed; to pay them we will be taking from the future of such as Patrick, to give to failed bondholders from failed banks.

Yesterday I was 59. This is what my generation is doing to Patrick's generation, this is the option taken by Enda Kenny, Michael Noonan, Eamon Gilmore and Pat Rabbitte, to bail out bank bondholders at the expense of the new and future generations of Irish. This is our legacy to them.

As a member of this generation I feel shame and I feel anger, deep shame and deep anger. Gutless and gormless, those have been the hallmark qualities of our political leadership, craven capitulation in the face of the ECB's financial blackmail and the Merkle-led political bullying. Fear has been their guiding light, a stark contrast to the those who founded their parties. Michael Collins cycled around Dublin when he had a price on his head, Enda Kenny skulks around the country with a bevy of heavies in two whenever he does choose to appear but refuses to engage in public debate.

This week in Ballyhea we will be holding our 70th weekly march to protest this crime against the people, not just a crime against Irish people but against people right across Europe, including the German people. Be under no illusion, what Europe is suffering is a banking crisis; the ECB's solution is to ordain to the individual governments that the people must bail out the banks. The banks, they tell us, are too big to fail; our message to them now must be - No! We the people are too big to fail!

This week's table of shame - note the three bonds due today, think of the ethics involved in this transfer of wealth, the morality. March with us.

THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e June 24th 2012

And so, the trick is complete, Minister Noonan's 'where's the pea' con-job on the Promissory Note for 2012 sold to the Irish public as a 'deal' that has postponed payment. The mainstream media has been mesmerised by all the sleight of hand of the past few months - where exactly did Michael slip that €3.1bn?

Our man 'Marcel-so-what' at the BofI EGM on Monday morning

Now we know. On Monday Bank of Ireland finally held their EGM and decided by an overwhelming majority (I think the final vote was over 99% 'for') to buy from NAMA the sovereign bond it (NAMA) had been ordered by Minister Noonan to purchase from Minister Noonan, a bond which will 'mature' in 2025. Well they would, wouldn't they? Bank of Ireland will simply take the cheap money on offer from the ECB (ah, generous selfless people, those ECB bankers), then charge the government (that's us, people) a nice little markup to assume this bond. Their annual take? Oh, around €38m - money for jam.

While all this has been happening though, all this moving around of the 'cups' to distract people, what has happened to the pea, or in this case, what has happened to the P Note of €3.1bn? Why, it's gone! Anglo took from NAMA the €3.1bn given to them of OUR money (thanks...), in turn gave it to our Central Bank (thanks again...) who in turn, and by order of the ECB (did I mention them earlier?), destroyed that money. Every cent of it. Thus was the Promissory Note of 2012 paid, in full.

The deal? A sordid, shameful episode of 'financial engineering' (get used to that term) whereby a problem debt of this generation's creation that was eminently arguable has been transformed into a sovereign bond, but a bond that will be paid by the NEXT generation, when Minister Noonan and his friends are long gone from office.

We've been conned, people, and even as we speak the same Minister Noonan and HIS people are looking to pull a similar con-job on us on the remaining P Notes, taking today's problem and very arguable debt and transforming it into sovereign bonds to be paid by our children, and possibly even by our children's children. Is that how you would conduct your own affairs?

Anyway, to the latest dirty dozen and watch for the bonds coming due next week. Four bonds, two each from the rotting corpses of Anglo and INBS, all four totally unsecured, coming to a total of over €1bn. My friends, we are locked in a dance of death with those zombies. Time to break free.

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e June 17th 2012

'I'll do everything I can to lighten your load but I'm not getting off your back.'

 

For those who state that the bank bonds are a dead issue, a few numbers:

€106bn - amount paid in bank bonds since Sep 2008 blanket bank guarantee
€21bn - amount paid in bank bonds since May 27th 2011
€52.5bn - bonds outstanding in the six Irish banks (per info on May 27th 2011)

€13.7bn - amount paid in bank bonds so far this year
€6.2bn - amount still to be paid in bank bonds this year
€13.7bn - yearly average in bank bonds to be paid 2012/12/14/15

€2.4bn - next 12 bonds (see table below), of which
€1.5bn - unsecured unguaranteed, of which
€1.14bn - Anglo and INBS combined.

This is the lifeblood of the Irish economy being drained from us through our banking system on an ongoing basis. Guaranteed (immorally and unethically so anyway) or unguaranteed this is mostly our own money (we own five of the six Irish banks) but it is all money we simply can't afford to give away without a fight. 

It is for this and for this alone that our banks were 'saved', so they would continue paying out those bonds week after week in full (including their 'coupons' or interest), as they came due. WE didn't need to keep those six banks alive; the ECB did and it was at their insistence that it was done. 

It's also at the ECB's insistence that we are picking up the full tab for this. They strongarm our weak government into taking out huge loans from them, we give it to the banks, the banks pay the bondholders, we now owe the ECB what previously the banks owed the bondholders and we repay it with interest.

They will keep a close eye on us and if it appears as though we're going to break under this imposed burden they'll give us a break on the interest rate or the terms - they will not give us a break on the principal sum.

Bank debt writedown and the Promissory Notes written off in their entireity, that's what we need, that's what justice demands.

 

TAKING THE FIGHT TO THE ECB

In July last year, this government and its predecessor having failed miserably to negotiate with the ECB a single cent of either writedown or interest relief on the bank debt, a break on the interest payments fell into our laps, a by-product of the Greek bailout. Hasn't stopped this government from claiming - shamelessly and blatantly dishonestly - that they 'secured' the subsequent savings.

This week, having since then failed miserably to negotiate with the ECB a single cent of either writedown or interest relief on the bank debt, the Irish government is 'watching carefully' as Spain's negotiators look like securing a deal which will see the Spanish banks bailed out directly from the ESM rather than through government, as was done to us; if that happens our government has hopes that a similar deal will be gifted to Ireland, to be applied retrospectively. They will then of course again claim - shamelessly and blatantly dishonestly - that they 'secured' the subsequent savings.

What are those savings? What it amounts to is this; IF there's a deal done and IF it's applied retrospectively, the government will be able to take the bank-debt element from its gross government debt, transfer it to the banks and VOILA! Just like that, as the great Tommy Cooper used to say, over €40bn of debt is magicked away.

But of course it will still be there, every dishonest red cent of it. All our remaining five banks will continue to pay out the failed bonds, every cent of the principal AND of the coupon; the remaining Promissory Notes will all still have to be paid, in full. So it is that the next dozen bonds (see below) WILL be paid, a total of €1.53bn in totally unsecured bonds, an additional €925m in 'covered' bonds, a grand total of €2.46bn sucked from the Irish banks and by extension from the already banjaxed Irish econony over the next six weeks.

After 66 weeks of marching locally, we in the Ballyhea and Charleville protest group have had enough. Our officials don't negotiate, they beg, and in the process have beggared this country. This week we're going to Frankfurt, a dozen representatives from the protest reinforced by several others from the Anglo Not Our Debt group. We will not be begging; we will be demanding that which is our basic right - justice and fair play. Our intention is to hand in a list of our demands to Mr Draghi of the ECB, and to spend June 6th protesting - peacefully and with dignity, as is our practice - outside the ECB building. We wouldn't say no to a bit of support, from home and from Europe.