THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e Sep 16th 2012

"A billion euro," someone said to me recently, "What's that? I think most people find it hard to get their heads around it."

"Simple!", sez I; "A billion euro is exactly €100,000 relief each for 10,000 of our many badly stressed mortgage-holders; or if you prefer, it's the amount AIB - one of the several banks we were forced to buy out by the ECB - will pay to one unsecured unguaranteed bondholder on Oct 1st, just over two weeks from now."

Take what Tough Reilly and his HSE are planning on cutting from the health service budget for the remainder of this year, the 600,000 hours of home help plus all the other various cold-hearted cuts, add it to the €700,000,000 in cuts the same Tough Reilly plans on taking from the HSE budget for next year, and you would still have enough change left over from a billion euro to either a) restore all the cuts to the Special Needs budgets for the next few years or b) fund a few Ministerial pensions.

How and why our national media insists on ignoring this ongoing obscenity, I've given up trying to fathom. What I have not given up on, and never will, is trying to get this information out there, for which we all now must depend on ourselves, on Twitter RTs, on Facebook sharing, on word of mouth.

What we in Ballyhea and Charleville haven't given up on either is our protest, Week 81 coming up this Sunday when we plan to take it further afield - a three-day crusade to Kildare Street, ending on Tuesday afternoon to coincide with the reconvening of the Dáil. If we're passing anywhere near a town near you, please join us.

THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e Sep 9th 2012

Look at the table below and weep; weep for those who ever the next few months will find themselves without one of the 600,000 hours being cut from the home-help service. To this government, to the HSE, those 600,000 hours are expendable; to all those who benefit, every single minute of every single one of those hours is precious.

But weep not just for those who are thus reduced; weep for yourself, weep for us all. Today the putrid, rotten, zombie Anglo Irish Bank pays a bond of €600,000,000; on Oct 1st (four weeks from today) AIB pays a bond of €1,000,000,000; already this year our banks have paid bonds of over €16bn; before the year is over that will grow by another €3.75bn. Yet you don't know.

You don't know how the lifeblood is being drained from this economy week by week, month by month through our six banks (five of which we own) because you are not being told. The government (I won't say 'our' government because even from the day they were elected they betrayed us to the ECB) doesn't want us to know; our national media (with a few honourable exceptions) seems to know only what the government wants them to know.

And so we suffer, and so we weep, some more than others. The priorities of Ireland 2012, where an hour of home help to the most vulnerable in our society is sacrificed even as we pay bonds we never issued to big-time financial gamblers, failed bonds in failed in failed banks.

This government will bleat that they are taking the 'hard decisions'. No my friends. When you've decided to hurt the very weakest, that's not the hard decision; face down the ECB, face down the vested interests in this society, cut the fat from the highest earners rather than the lean from those who have nothing - now you're taking the hard decisions.

Enough, I really can't say anymore. Below, the next 12 bonds.

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e Sep 2nd 2012

'We affirm that it is imperative to break the vicious circle between banks and sovereigns.'

That was the opening line in the now-famous EuroZone leaders' statement after their meeting at the end of June. Two months later and back in dear old Ireland that circle is as vicious as ever.

On September 3rd - this coming Monday - Anglo Irish Bank (you can have your IBRC, a name-change won't disguise who and what they are) will pay a bond of €600,000,000.

On Monday October 1st, just four weeks later, AIB will pay a bond of €1,000,000,000.

Between times Bank of Ireland and AIB will pay a few smaller bonds, amounting to a 'mere' €14,500,000; afterwards, and per the table below, before the next 12 bonds have been paid our banks will have paid out almost an additional €2bn.

The argument will be made in the media - if they bother to cover this at all, which they probably won't - that many of these bonds are now guaranteed (the Oct 1st billion-euro bond is not). So what? 

In the first place this is still money being sucked from the Irish economy, which partially explains why our two so-called 'pillar' banks are in such dire straits.

In the second place, why were those now guaranteed bonds taken out in the first place (pardon the convoluted question)? Look at the Anglo €600,000,000 bond - it was taken out two years ago, Sep 3rd 2010, at a time when Anglo was already well and truly a zombie bank. For what? To pay bonds, that's for what, just another version of the odious Promissory Notes.

We must stop this madness. We're being warned of possible street-light turn-off, of possible ambulance shortages, because of a shortfall of €60m in the Household Charge collection; James Reilly has issued a circular in the Dept of Health alerting them to possible cuts in the HSE for next year of over €900,000,000, assuring them that 'services won't be affected'. How the hell can the already hugely disrupted services not be affected  even further by a cut as deep as this.

And meanwhile, our banks - all of which we own, bar one, Bank of Ireland, in which we have a one-sixth share - continue to pay out billions in failed bonds. The vicious circle, the vortex into which we've been thrown by the ECB - when do we start to fight our way back?

THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e Aug 26th 2012

Late last week our media went to war again on behalf of the government, scaremongering about possible cuts in local services because of the continuing non-registration by a huge number of home-owners for the Household Charge tax, a reported shortfall of €60,000,000. Street-lights would be turned off, they warned, ambulance services cut - a blatant effort to turn neighbour against neighbour.

 Such a pity the same media won't go to war on behalf of the people. Have a look at the bonds below, the next 12 bonds due. Have a look at the bond at the top of the list - €600,000,000, Anglo, Sep 3rd, ten times the Household Charge shortfall. A zombie bank owned in its rotten entireity by us, the people. Have a look at the bond due on Oct 1st, one billion euro - €1,000,000,000; that's with AIB, which we own 99.8%. Just two bonds, a total of €1,600,000,000 over the next six weeks - that would turn on a lot of street lights, don't you think?

Where are you reading about this? Where are you reading that in just the list below, the next 12 bonds (I'd hate to publish here the full list), the total of unguaranteed bonds is €1,034,726,369. Nowhere, that's where.

You'll read that the most of the remaining bonds are guaranteed, as though that somehow should end all discussion - why? The next 12 bonds also have a total of €2,478,640,395 of various Covered bonds, including another billion euro from another bank we own, EBS - what does that mean, covered? Right from the first day Brian Lenihan offered the blanket bank guarantee, has ANY of that been legal? Brian was acting on false/incomplete/inaccurate information, €5bn he was assured the total exposure - how then can that guarantee have any basis in law?

Since then we've been blackmailed by the ECB into assuming the bank debt, even noted economist Colm McCarthy now joining us in proclaiming the injustice of this act. So why shouldn't we question the legitimacy of ALL these bonds? In Ballyhea we do, in Charleville we do, 77 weeks of protesting now; we'll continue to do so for as long as is necessary.

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e Aug 19th 2012

Apologies, last week was a hectic week on the day-job front, two All-Ireland senior hurling semi-finals on the horizon, writing about one, doing interviews etc. for the other.  A few minutes to draw breath this week so herewith the latest 'dirty dozen', the next 12 bonds as they fall due from our various banks.

You'll note that the next bond due is for €10,000,000, an unsecured unguaranteed bond from Anglo; you'll note also that a few weeks later, on Monday fortnight (Sep 3rd) Anglo is paying out again, this time a bond of €600,000,000, those billions drained from the Irish economy.

You'll note all of this but only if you happen on to this site. Those who don't will note nothing because none of this detail will appear on any mainstream Irish national media outlet. If there is any mention of the €600,000,000 bond it will probably be to point out that this is a 'Covered' bond, as though this means we have a moral obligation to pay. But that bond was issued two years ago, for what? To pay other bonds, that's for what, because at that stage - as at the moment - Anglo was being kept alive for that purpose and for that purpose only.

Look down a few lines, to October 1st - a billion-euro bond, this one from another bank we own outright, AIB, this one also unsecured and unguaranteed. Will you read about this in our mainstream national media, will you hear about it?

We are sold out by successive weak governments but we are betrayed by our media. The fourth estate? Protecting the interests of the people? Objective, investigating, exposing, challenging? As ever there are honourable exceptions but where is the coverage of this issue?

You will have read Enda's trumpeted 'triumph' after the Eurozone Leaders' Summit a few months ago, splashed across every front page, the €40bn won back for Ireland; you won't have read on those same front pages with the same prominence the subsequent realisation that this was all just hype and hot air, that not a single cent has yet been won back by anyone.

We'll keep banging on here, nonetheless, even if we're only sharing this among ourselves!

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e Aug 5th 2012

A big weekend coming up for us in the Ballyhea/Charleville bondholder bailout protest, our 75th week of protest. We'd like to make it a bit of an event so if anyone out there feels like joining us, this is the time. It's in Charleville this week, meeting at the Library Plaza in the centre of town (formerly the Protestant church) at 11.30am, all done and dusted by noon.

We will be joined this week by an old friend of the campaign, Constantin Gurdgiev, along with Stephen Donnelly, the independent Wicklow TD, who has also volunteered his time afterwards to give a short talk/answer questions - this will probably be at the Park Hotel, on the outskirts of town.

No change in the dirty dozen this week but have a look at what's coming, have a look particularly at October 1st, a nice round billion euro of unsecured bond from AIB. Ye might have read that this bank isn't doing very well lately - quelle surprise, given that it has already paid out €5.9bn in bonds this year, still has that billion-euro-bond to come. It's not all our money of course, we own only 99.8% of AIB...

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e July 29th 2012

For many months now we've been hearing that the bank bonds are a dead issue, all paid, no longer relevant. Today, along with publishing the next 12 bonds due, I'm adding a number of extra smaller tables, summary tables and I'm asking any economist out there to look at the numbers then please explain to me, to all of us, how in heaven's name this economy is going to grow its way out of this mess.

Even as the Irish economy is on its deathbed, comatose, our lifeblood is still being sucked from us. Do ye know that our banks paid out over €1bn in bonds last week? They did. Do ye know that in the next 12 bonds there's a total of over €1bn in unsecured unguaranteed bonds? There is. 

Ye DO know that all of that money is generated in this economy? Ye DO know that our banks (and they are our banks - we own outright five of the six banks, have a 15.1% share in Bank of Ireland) are selling off property assets at the moment to meet their growing commitments?

Paired with the money being stolen from our economy in this way is the growing national debt and the growing interest thereon. Partnered with it also, the annual Promissory Notes, plus the government's own sovereign bonds maturing in the coming years, plus the repayments of the EU/ECB 'bailout' funds which starts in 2015.

Downstairs from here I have all the relevant tables; don't be put off, they're simple, straightforward, very easy to follow and to understand. Read especially the final table, the final totals for the coming three years. Every year, before a single Minister, Judge or Consultant (my answer to their teacher/nurse/guard trio) collects their inflated salary, our ailing economy will have to produce that money - €41bn in 2013, €28bn in 2014, €32bn in 2015. How? Growth, on a land where the topsoil is being stripped?

Dammit my friends, we must fight back; as a nation we must stand up and fight for ourselves. 73 weeks we've been marching in Ballyhea and Charleville; week 75 is on Aug 5th and we want to make it a national event. Please, join us.