THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e Apr 21st 2013

Apologies for the lateness, hectic week on the job front this week with two hurling league semi-finals on this Sunday.

Hard times recently for Bank of Ireland, of which we own 15%:

• billion-euro bond paid out last week;
• £500,000,000 bond due on Monday next;
• €750,000,000 bond that it issued to itself in 2010 due next month;
• then the real doozy, a €2.1bn bond that was issued in 2006 and on which it has since (presumably) been paying a 'coupon' or interest, maturing in July. That means Bank of Ireland will have to find that €2.1bn or - more likely - borrow again by issuing another bond.

Not that Bank of Ireland are having it all their own way on the bonds front - far from it!

Next week also Irish Life & Permanent (one of ours, in its entirety) has a €1.25bn bond falling due. As with the Bank of Ireland bond above, this was a bond it issued to itself, on exactly the same day, falling due now on the same day - ah, such symmetry!

On April 30th AIB (another bank of our own) will pay out on a €1bn bond that it issued on Apr 30th 2006. Luckily for the holder of that bond, it's 'guaranteed' so it will be paid. So much for the famous statement of last June about separation of bank and sovereign debt, eh?

Anyway, enough of all that, here they are in all their glory.

THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e April 14th 2013

I wish I had eloquence, I wish I had influence; eloquence enough to be able to tell the true tale of what's happening in Ireland in the last five years, influence enough that this news would negate the lies and propaganda being spread both at home and abroad by our own government (growth, falling unemployment - that one debunked in no uncertain fashion by the IMF who have pointed to a 'staggering' 23% unemployment/underemployment figure, which would of course be far worse but for the safety valve of emigration).

Contrary to the message being spread worldwide, Ireland is not doing fine. On March 27th last the Ballyhea & Charleville campaign group, part now of the 'Ireland says NO! to bank debt' movement, delivered six letters to Sharon Bowles MEP, Chair of ECON, detailing the effects of the current austerity programme; it could have been six thousand letters, six hundred thousand, and we could have brought them from Greece or Portugal or Spain or Italy or Cyprus.

When bankers and financiers (as in the ECB) are making their decisions all they see are numbers, figures, credits and debits, profit the bottom line. But when parliaments are making their decisions our politicians are supposed to also factor in the human cost. Across Europe for the last five years of this crisis, even within the EU parliament itself, that has not been happening. The banks, the financiers, the markets, they have all had the whip hand, every decision (including the 'haircut' in Greece, which should have been more) has gone in their favour.

The ECB will protect its own, isn't going to stand for the people, ever; it's time our politicians did, in every individual government and in the EU itself. Banks should be subject to the power of the people, to the power of sovereign nations, not - as is currently the case - the other way around. Time to tilt the balance.

The following is what we in the 'Ireland says NO!' propose as a solution to Ireland's current ills:

• Destroy the €25bn in sovereign bonds currently held by our Central Bank in lieu of the Promissory Notes, Notes/bonds issued to cover a flagrant abuse of the Emergency Liquidity Assistance fund when €31bn was pumped in to two already insolvent institutions, Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society, abuse the ECB itself approved;
• Restore to the Irish Exchequer the €6bn already destroyed on the basis of those Promissory Notes;
• Swap all of Ireland's remaining interests in the various Irish banks for a) the €20.7bn taken from our National Pension Reserve Fund to bail out those banks and b) write off the remaining €13bn or so borrowed from the various emergency funds to bail out the Irish banks.

The first move above will ease the long-term debt burden, making Ireland more attractive to the damned markets; the other two measures will put money back in the national accounts, money that can be used to invest in infrastructure, to kick-start this ailing economy. Do this and Ireland will soar.

We'll be told of course that it can't be done, that it's not in the remit of the ECB/EU. So what?

For years we were told that bondholders couldn't be burned, until it happened, in Greece.

We were told that was a one-off, couldn't be applied anywhere else, til it happened again, in Cyprus - so much for that one-off.

In Cyprus you had the initial proposal to burn all depositors including those under €100,000, agreed to by the Eurozone finance ministers despite a supposed EU-wide guarantee to the contrary and (shamefully) welcomed immediately afterwards by our own government; when the proverbial hit the fan those same Finance Ministers (including our own Michael Noonan) all did a Pontius Pilate, washed their hands of a decision they had approved when they should never even have allowed it be debated; it took an outpouring of popular protest for the proposal to be overturned - another one-off, though this one was stymied by the people.

In the second Cyprus proposal we did see depositors burned, another first (albeit above the €100,000 guarantee threshold) but again, according to the ECB/EU, a 'one-off'.

So, how many 'one-offs' is that? Where, we ask, is Ireland's 'one-off' deal? So many times we've been told we're 'special' - let's see the money. Our government may not be fighting for it - we are.

By the way, did anyone notice that Bank of Ireland paid nearly a billion euro in an unsecured bond yesterday? No? It's okay, we own just 15% of that bank so it cost us a mere €150,000,000, and we're now left with just over €8bn in legacy debt junior and unguaranteed bonds to pay off. Happy days, eh?

THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e Apr 7th 2013

When the meeting of Euro Finance Ministers chaired by our own Michael Noonan agreed that under the terms of its proposed 'bailout' every depositor in every bank in Cyprus would be burned there was uproar on the island. The people took to the streets, besieged parliament as the vote was being taken, forced a mind-change, saved the savings of all depositors of under €100,000. Small mercies.

I've heard it said many times that if the same thing were tried in Ireland we too would take to the streets, we too would be up in arms, our media leading the charge.

Wake up my friends. It has been done to us, albeit far more insidiously.

You've heard of the National Pension Reserve Fund? That is real money, our money, our national savings. We used to have well over €20bn in the fund, until it was raided. €20.7bn, that's how much has been taken from the Fund, €20.7bn of our money.

Taking the figures from Census 2011 there are approx. 1.1m families in Ireland; €20.7bn, 1.1m families - 'do the math' as our American cousins might say. That's nearly €19,000 per family taken from our national savings fund. That's our own government putting their hands into your pocket, taking nearly 19 grand, then giving it to banks and bankers to fund themselves, their salaries, their topped up pension funds, but most of all, to fund foreign financial gamblers whose punt on Ireland had failed.

You didn't feel it? You weren't supposed to, we have been robbed by stealth. But look around at the pain and misery being inflicted on you and on your friends and neighbours, then think of what that €20.7bn might do for us. A representative group of us from the Ballyhea & Charleville campaign group were in Brussels last week to meet Sharon Bowles where we made a presentation of our case for bank-debt writedown in Ireland, brought her six letters illustrating the pain of emigration, of family stresses, of marriage break-up, of health cutbacks, of a man's struggles, of losing the family home; those letters should be mandatory reading for all who legislate for the poor to bail out the rich.

How much employment could be created from using those funds to invest in infrastructure here? Even if it were just sitting there, a conservative interest-rate return is 5% - that's over €1bn a year; think of what could be done with that billion.

Because it wasn't taken directly from us as individuals, because we never saw that massive sum lifted from our savings, we didn't complain. But it happened. Oh, we got shares in the banks, may  even be worth a few billion now - we're happy with that?

There's worse, of course, far worse. The €30.6bn in Promissory Notes, billions poured into banks that were already dead, already rotting, to bail out more international financial gamblers, to pay more obscene pay and pensions for those at the top in the dead banks - we're on the hook for that as well. The recent stunt by Minister Michael Noonan in transforming that truly odious and thus very arguable debt into rock-solid sovereign bonds, debt to be paid by future generations of Irish, isn't in the least surprising. The same Michael Noonan has 'form' when it comes to hitting the vulnerable, his uncompromising attitude during the Hepatitis C blood scandal of the 90's forcing dying women through the courts.

But what of Labour? How can the party of James Connolly, of James Larkin, stand over all this? What happened in the lead-up to the global banking crisis was greed at its most extreme, financial greed, obscene profits being made by obscene people whose God is money. They created their own bubble, they burst their own bubble, and now we're forced to bail them out?

A few of us are on a crusade to expose this robbery from the Irish people for what it is - extortion by the ECB, sellout by our own governments, this one and the last. Four weeks ago, after over two years of weekly marches, we launched the 'Ireland says NO!' to bank debt initiative. Village by village, town by town, city by city, the message is spreading. We're asking people now to come alive, to see what's being done to us, to rise up and join the march in their own locality, or if no march currently exists, to start it off. The details of how it can be done are here.

Finally, the list of the next 12 bonds. The 'agreement' of last June, separating sovereign from bank debt? Doesn't apply, not to Ireland.

THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e Mar 31st 2013

Amazing isn't it, how often since this global banking crisis began that we in Ireland have been told 'this can't be done, that can't be done', only to subsequently find that actually, it can be done. And so it is that now we learn that senior bondholders can, in fact, be burned. So we have Angela Merkel declare that tax-payers, in fact, should not have to bail out failed banks. 

"I am very pleased that a solution for Cyprus was successfully reached last night which meant that the country's insolvency was averted," she said in a statement released by the chancellery. The deal, she added, represents a "fair distribution" of the burden and "also requires those who have contributed to causing these undesirable developments to take responsibility, and that's as it should be...On the one hand, the banks must take responsibility for themselves. That's what we have always said. We don't want taxpayers having to save banks but that banks save themselves."

Where then does that logic leave Ireland? How does that balance with the fact that we, the Irish people (it's not just 'taxpayers' by the way), have had to pump €69.7bn into our failed banks; how especially does it square with the fact that under pressure from Angela and the ECB henchmen we had to pump €31bn into Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide when both of those weren't just failed banks, they were already zombie banks?

Once again of course our own Michael Noonan covered himself in glory. He chaired the meeting at which the original Cyprus plan was concocted, signed off on the 'taxing' of the savings of even the smallest depositor, then sat back as this government - not for the first time - issued a smug, self-congratulatory statement extolling the terms of the deal, declaring it as a “positive development for Cyprus, the eurozone as a whole, and Ireland”. 

It wasn't of course, and when the shinola hit the fan Minister Noonan quickly washed his hands of the deal, declaring it was that unfortunate little nation's own idea to hit its own bank savings, down to the littlest cent. He conveniently overlooked the fact that as chair of the meeting he could have and should have immediately ruled out any such proposal, on the simple grounds that all deposits Eurozone-wide up to €100,000 are supposedly guaranteed. He could even have ruled out the proposal on the grounds that it was patently daft, destructive, likely to cause panic. But he didn't; not alone did he go with it, he sat back as the Irish government officials went on to extol the 'deal'.

A forgotten element of the original deal also - Cyprus would have to raise its Corporation Tax rate by 2%; now, when the pressure comes on Ireland again to raise our Corporation Tax rate, who do we appeal to in Europe for support? Ah, our great negotiators.

This week a representative group of us from the Ballyhea & Charleville campaign group are going to Brussels to meet with Sharon Bowles MEP, Chair of ECON, to put to her Ireland's case for bank debt writedown, and to request that she help us set up a meeting with ECB itself. Sad, isn't it, that even with one of the highest-paid governments in the world, a citizenry is reduced to having to go to Europe and negotiate for itself. We're told that we're only wasting our time and our money but if we come back with even one euro of debt writedown, that will be one euro more than Kenny/Noonan/Gilmore/Howlin has even asked for.

By the way, just so ye know, already this month our banks have paid out over €106,000,000 in senior unsecured bonds.

THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e Mar 24th 2013

So, Cyprus said NO! and sent the EU/ECB back to the drawing-board.

To what? First of all the cost applied only to those who had bank deposits and even then, only to those who had deposits greater than €20,000. Up to a limit of €100,000 they would have had 6.75% of their savings grabbed from them, a maximum of €6,750. Unless Cyprus is one hell of a wealthy society, I'd reckon that's the vast majority of Cypriots covered right there. They rejected that proposal, and in no uncertain terms - they were right to do so. If they want savers to take a hit let it be those who can most afford it, the big savers.

Here in Ireland, and when the €5.6bn NAMA 'contribution' is taken into account, we've already sunk €69.7bn into our banks - that works out at €15,200 per capita. Not per bank deposit, per capita, €15,200 for every man, woman and child in the country, many multiples of what was being proposed in Cyprus.

Here in Ireland also, we've had all private pension funds raided by the government, an annual 'levy' impose.

Where is the media exposure of what has happened here? Where is the forensic investigation of what Minister Michael Noonan has recently done, transposing €31bn of very challengeable Promissory Notes to rock-solid sovereign bonds that will make debt slaves of generations? The then Irish government was forced into guaranteeing the issuing of €31bn to Anglo, Irish Nationwide, and EBS at a time when those banks were already well past the point of no return. Of what benefit was that to the Irish people?

This sellout has now been accepted as a fait accompli by the majority of the Irish media, Noonan lauded for doing a deal that simply takes the pressure off him and off his cabinet colleagues for the few remaining years they have in government, at which point they ride off into the sunset with their fat pensions, leaving behind 40 years of debt, with balloon payments at the end.

Cyprus said NO! to far less. It's time for 'Ireland says NO!'.

In Ballyhea and then in Charleville,for over two years we've been campaigning for the lifting of the bank debt burden off our shoulders. Next Tuesday, as part of that campaign, we go to Brussels to meet Sharon Bowles, chairperson of ECON, the only body to which the ECB is answerable. Even if we continue to work in a media vacuum at home we are determined to expose the ECB for what they did in Ireland, we are determined to right the wrong that has been done to us.

Today, March 20th, and again without a word of publicity, Irish Life & Permanent paid an unsecured bond of €10,000,000. Below, the updated tables.

THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e Mar 17th 2013

"Look, we had to recapitalise our banks!", so declared Minister Simon Coveney on yet another national radio programme this week, and yet again a blatantly nonsensical statement was allowed go unchallenged. We had to Simon? We had to recapitalise Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide, we had to sink €31bn into two already dead, zombie banks?

Why? For what benefit to the Irish people? Would someone - anyone - in this government please explain that to me, explain it to the nation, explain it to the world? Would you then please explain why this government has now converted the very dubious Promissory Notes backing up that 'recapitalisation' into solid, sovereign bonds, bonds that enslave us for four decades at least as we are now forced to pay for loans we never took out?

This was the triumph trumpeted by Michael Noonan a few weeks ago, then taken up by so many in our national media, again allowed go almost unchallenged.  Michael's explanation as to why he hadn't asked for debt writedown? 'The ECB has never granted debt writedown.' Never Michael? The euro has been in existence since 1999, all of 14 years, the crisis has been there for a mere five. Never? Never, in only five years? Michael, everything the ECB has done so far in their bumbling efforts has been new and unprecedented for them, everything they've done has been something they never did before.

Making matters worse,  even as all those billions were still being drained from Irish banks and from this economy, how many times in the last few miserable years have we been patted on the head and told we're 'special'? If we are so special, then surely we merited special treatment, surely we should have demanded special treatment, surely we should at least have asked for special treatment?

Yet Michael never did, never even asked 'because it had never been granted'. And again, he has never been fully and properly challenged on this, that one-liner accepted as full and final explanation time after time from him and from every other government spokesperson, all the government cheerleaders spinning their web of lies and deceit, the truth kept from the people.

That €31bn, along with the tens of billions plundered from our National Pension Reserve Fund and the billions borrowed from the ECB's emergency funds, is money coerced and extorted from the people by an institution which, in threatening the weak government of one of its smallest constituent nations, didn't just go outside its own remit, it went outside the law. That is why, for over two years, we've been marching in protest in Ballyhea and now in Charleville, that is why we are now asking all of Ireland to join us in our new campaign, Ireland says NO!, details on @ballyhea14 on the Twitter machine.

Anyway, in the tables below some more bitter truth - oh look, another billion of unguaranteed bonds coming up! But you won't read these details anywhere else. Unless of course you RT on Twitter, or Share on Facebook.

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e Mar 10th 2013

It slipped everyone's notice, except of course those millions who are tuned in here (right!), didn't merit mention in any publication or on any media outlet anywhere, but last week our banks paid out €80,000,000 in unsecured unguaranteed bonds. Today, another unsecured unguaranteed bond, from Irish Life & Permanent, $8,745,000 of our money gone south. Or maybe it's east, west, north - who knows? Our Finance Minister has never bothered to ask.

Interesting too to note that according to reports just out, last year Bank of Ireland made a pre-tax loss of €2.1bn; not mentioned, the fact they paid out €5.5bn in bonds, have another €6bn to pay this year. But sure that's all fine, aren't the doors still open?

As a result of the deal proposed by Michael Noonan a few weeks ago (it hasn't yet passed full muster with the ECB) the cost to us now of Ireland's bank bailout is a locked solid €69.7bn, the €64.1bn as detailed by Mr Noonan in reply to a Parliamentary Question plus the additional €5.6bn contribution from NAMA to the banks when it was taking over the bad debts. That's a baseline cost, by the way, does not include the interest or 'coupon' being paid annually on those bonds, nor the interest on the borrowings we have made to date to bail out those banks, coupons and interest that will continue to be paid and thus to accrue as part of the bank bailout in the coming years. When all those costs are added, then before we're finished that €69.7bn will become €100bn.

Unless we do something about it. 

In the weekend just past, and to mark the 2nd anniversary of our weekly protest, we in Ballyhea and Charleville launched a new campaign, 'Ireland says NO!', a flag under which all the various 'says NO!' groups can gather and  march.

On March 27th we'll be in Brussels, meeting with Sharon Bowles, the Chairperson of ECON, the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, the body to which the ECB is answerable. At that meeting we will be doing what our own government didn't even attempt to do when 'negotiating' its recent deal, we will be presenting a case for bank debt writedown for Ireland. Wish us luck.