THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e Nov 24th 2013

This week, a guest columnist, Fiona Fitzpatrick, teacher, mother of three fast-growing young kids.

THEY HAVEN'T GONE AWAY, YOU KNOW

What really happened to the promissory notes - and what you can do about our crushing bank debt, according to Fiona Fitzpatrick.

First published in the Cork Independent

Wednesday, 13 November 2013

Fiona with Brian Crowley MEP in Brussels

I am somewhat confused by the jubilant declarations that we are poised to successfully exit the bailout.

What bailout? I ask. The term itself implies assistance, or help. It’s true that the troika loaned us €62.5 billion. But it wasn’t a gift and it came with plenty of strings attached.

More importantly, though, not one cent of that money was for the benefit of the Irish people. Look at the facts. The money came in one door and out another to repay banks and bondholders elsewhere. We got just over €60 billion in troika loans; we ploughed almost €70 billion into our banks. The banks were bailed out. The people were screwed. We got debt piled on debt, crushing not only this generation but ensuring that the next generation will remain debt slaves also.

So, I ask again – why the celebration? Look around. Everywhere, we see the result of our bank recapitalisation. High unemployment, soaring suicide rates, increased emigration, mortgage arrears crisis, cuts to payments to help the sick, the disabled, the elderly, children. We crush the very people we are supposed to protect as a society. We are draining resources from our health service, education and community projects. And for what? To repay private bank debts. Debts which were not and, are not ours.

In Ballyhea, we have been marching for 141 weeks now in protest against the bank debt burden. What started as a small weekly march has become a focused, determined campaign which has travelled from Ballyhea to Brussels, with plenty stops along the way, while all the while maintaining that weekly protest.

We have held discussions with MEPs, Sharon Bowles Chair of the ECON Committee, European Commission personnel, Council of Europe representatives and, most importantly, ECB officials. There is an acceptance everywhere that Ireland's people have had an unfair burden placed on their shoulders. And the most odious part of this debt is, without question, the now-infamous promissory notes.

Of course, we are told that those pesky notes have gone away. This is also untrue. They are hiding out in a new home, with a new name. We refer to them as the promissory note bonds. €25 billion of sovereign bonds issued in February of this year in lieu of the remaining promissory notes sit with the €3.06 billion bond also being held by the Central Bank of Ireland, payment of the 2012 Promissory note. Waiting.

If you wonder what will happen to them, it’s quite simple. They will be sold on. The money received will be destroyed. We will pay interest on them and, when the time comes, we will have to repay the money destroyed. My children will pay this debt unless they take off to far flung places, like so many young people today. The only other option is to get this debt written off.

Many people feel powerless, but the truth is we have so much more power than we think we have. Our government representatives are in power because we elected them. Whether they like it or not they are answerable to us, although many of them may need to be reminded of this.

On 26-27 November the technical group, in the Dáil, intends to put forward a private members’ motion asking the government to ask the ECB to destroy the 'promissory note' bonds. It is actually incomprehensible to me that anyone, with the people’s interest at heart, could vote against this motion but we all know how politics goes. We need to remind our local representatives that we elected them and ask them to support the technical group’s motion. This is a chance for every party to put the people first. This is a chance for us, the people, to begin the process of fixing a system that appears so badly broken. This is a chance for politicians to fight for us, and not against us.

Imagine our country with the debt burden lifted? We would have a real opportunity to soar, to reform the way we do business and to create a more equal and just society.

The bank debt burden is destroying us. €69.7billion.

So, who was bailed out? Not us, that’s for sure.

Fiona Fitzpatrick is a member of the Ballyhea Says No protest group.

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e Oct 20th 2013

In the week that's in it, the corporate entity of Kenny, Noonan, Gilmore & Howlin having come up with the latest attacks on the old, the youth, the infirm, to maintain the protection they offer to their friends in banking and big business, isn't it good to know that we continue to pay in full all those failed bondholders in the failed Irish banks? Isn't it good to know also that all those Fine Gael and Labour backbenchers continue to offer their unqualified support to those measures?

'No more Promissory Notes!' crowed Minister Noonan, yet again publicly proclaiming this utter untruth - the €25bn in P Notes were converted to Sovereign Bonds, are all still very much alive and current, sitting in the Central Bank awaiting buyers, every cent of that €25bn then to be destroyed, just as was the case with the Promissory Notes.

For your perusal then, here they are - eight unsecured bonds in the this next dirty dozen, averaging over €10,000,000 per bond.

THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e Oct 6th 2013

I was going back through a series of newspaper headlines from the past couple of months. This is what I found:

Jun 17^th 2013               Irish Times               PROVISIONAL FIGURES SHOW 20% INCREASE IN RECORDED SUICIDE

 Aug 24^th 2013             Irish Examiner        100,000 MORTGAGES OVER 3 MONTHS IN ARREARS

Aut 28^th 2013               New Statesman    THINK OF BOSTON, NOT BERLIN - Ireland is second only to Greece in terms of the scale and speed of health cutbacks undertaken by “developed” countries

Sep 8^th 2013                 Sunday Times          IRISH OUTLOOK: WAVING FAREWELL TO OUR SMART FUTURE

Sep 24^th 2013               Irish Examiner        POLL: 85% OF WORKERS EXPERIENCE FINANCIAL STRESS

Sep 27^th 2013               The Irish Time          EMIGRATION RISES TO RECORD HIGH – ‘GENERATION EMIGRATION’

Sep 28^th 2013               Irish Independent   WE ARE NOW €1.64 TRILLION IN THE RED, SAYS CSO

Coming in the midst of all the above, the announcement that Ireland is now out of recession:

Sep 19^th 2013               Irish Times                NOONAN WARNS OF TOUGH BUDGET DESPITE UPBEAT DATA - The recession is over but budget will still bite

I like to get my news also though from independent sources – here are two.

Sep 23^rd 2013               Irish Left Review    SINCE THE GOVERNMENT TOOK OFFICE

Sep 26^th 2013               C Gurdgiev blog     EVEN WITH HOPIUM INJECTIONS WE’RE NOT THAT FAR FROM GREECE

Read down through the above – suicide on the increase, mortgage distress, cuts in health and education services, emigration at record levels, stress and distress everywhere, a combined national debt with so many zeroes that even the Irish Independent is confused.  

And still Finance Minister Michael Noonan will introduce another Budget of more cuts and more taxes.

Through all of this increasing misery we have a Taoiseach who goes around the country and around the world sporting a permanent inane grin, impervious to any blame, to any shame, feigning fellowship with those who are suffering, pretending all is well and about to get even better.

Those of us living here know the truth; not all the truth but enough to know our way through the tissue of lies being presented to the world.

Here is another dose of truth, the next 12 bank bonds due for redemption. This Wednesday AIB has a billion-euro bond maturing - thank God it's 'Covered'! By whom though? Why, by the shareholders of course! And the shareholders are???

THE DIRTY DOZEN - w/e Sep 29th 2013

Just so you know - today, EBS (we own it by the way) pays yet another unsecured bond, a mere €50,000,000 but sure what would you buy for a mere fifty mil these days eh?

Go to the '3-yr debt summary' tab in the table below and check out the combined projected debt payments of our banks and our government for the three years 2013/14/15, then tell me how a banking system already up to its tonsils in mortgage problems, how a government up to its tonsils in debt (€192.5bn at the end of 2012, and growing rapidly), can survive - either one of them.

Our government and its media cheerleaders are living in lu-lu land, whistling past the graveyard as they continue to try to convince the world that Ireland is thriving, recession over. As our friend - Ireland's friend - Constantin Gurdgiev puts it, however, we are not a patient in recovery, we're a patient in an induced coma. Europe has helped put us in that coma, Europe is helping keep us there, but not in the way they would have it portrayed, the way they do have it portrayed.

The incomplete launch of an incomplete currency is at the root of this Europe-wide crisis; in Ireland it was the subsequent influx of cheap European hundreds of billions to this tiny economy, fuelling a property bubble that subsequently and inevitably exploded. To save the euro, to save the big European banks, the EU/EC/ECB ordained that Ireland would have to bail out every one of its banks and every one of the bondholders in those banks, thus the continuing bond payments above.

In Ballyhea we've been campaigning for 134 weeks against that bank-debt imposition, marching every week. In our efforts to get that bank-debt written off we have developed our own proposals, we have walked the corridors of the highest powers in Europe, sat face-to-face with senior people from the EU Parliament, the European Commission, the ECB, the European Council.

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e Sep 8th 2013

It's been a while and apologies for that, busy on other duties. I see it's being widely reported that we're almost out of our 'bailout, that Ireland will be all free and clear in a few months, Europe even providing a new multi-billion-euro backstop for us to help us regain our economic independence.

That's it then, mission accomplished by the Troika.

Man, how we've been rolled over, how we've been sliced and diced and neatly packaged. How much debt write-off did we get in this 'bailout'? By how much has our national debt been reduced? Not a cent you say, in answer to the first? Not a cent you say again, in a reply to the second? What, the national debt has increased to the tune of tens of billions? And that's a bailout? 

I saw a clip during the week showing Richie Boucher again doing his thing at the Oireachtas Finance Committee meeting. In explaining how it is that at least 90% of the Bank Of Ireland's renegotiated mortgages will end up paying the bank more than what had been agreed in the original mortgage deal, the bould Boucher put it very bluntly to Stephen Donnelly TD -"Unless there is a writedown, the total repayment by the customer increases."

Doesn't exactly the same principle apply on a national level - if Ireland didn't get debt writedown (and we didn't), doesn't our total repayment increase? Extend and pretend, that's the policy of Bank Of Ireland, that's the policy of the EU/EC/ECB in dealing with Ireland. We are debt slaves, our children are debt slaves, their children likewise.

Nearly €70bn we've been forced to plough into our banks, to rescue the euro, to rescue the big investment banks in Europe and elsewhere, to rescue those Irish banks themselves. We know the projected cost of the €25bn Promissory Note Bonds currently held by the Central Bank, €25bn which will be burned in its entirety as it's taken in by the Central Bank but €25bn that will cost several generations €47bn in interest, plus the €25bn itself - that's €72bn. So how much will the remaining €45bn that we've ploughed into the banks cost us? It won't stop at €200bn, be sure of that.

But the con-job is complete. Just as Irish people nowadays speak of the Great Famine of the 1840s, now we speak of the 'bailout for Ireland' - the propaganda has worked. There was no famine of course; there was failure of the staple crop of the people but there was still food a-plenty, denied to the starving millions. There was no bailout for Ireland here either - bailout for the banks, the euro, the banks bondholders, the EU/EC/ECB, but for us? Debt piled on debt.

Ye know of course that we're still bailing out the banks and their bondholders (see the tables below), ye know they'll soon be back to us again, begging bowl in hand?

Ye know too ye can put an end to this. If ye just take a stand.

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e July 28th 2013

Apologies, hectic times still on the work front, at the height of a fantastic hurling season (so far!); hectic times also on the bank-debt front, a meeting with Patrick Honahan (Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland) followed by a meeting with the ECB Troika reps in Ireland. You won't have read or heard of either of those meetings on any of our mainstream media - kind of surprising even from a news colour point of view, David gets to meet Goliath kind of thing, never mind the actual news value of what emerged.

Anyway, to the bonds. You'll notice that on Tuesday last Irish Life & Permanent - which we now own - paid an unsecured bond of $6,000,000, over €4,000,000. Small potatoes relative to what we're paying on an annual basis (those tables are also below), but I wonder what effect it would have had in the following case:

http://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2013/0723/world/sick-children-face-4-year-wait-list-at-crumlin-237674.html

Not that this is going to have too much impact on our rapidly increasing debt:

http://www.irishexaminer.com/business/government-debt-in-eu-at-all-time-high-237618.html

THE DIRTY DOZEN w/e July 14th 2013

It's been a few weeks since this blog was updated, hectic times in the All-Ireland hurling championship, the day-job taking precedence. However, time, tide and now Irish bank bond payments wait for no man, the haemorrhaging continues unabated.

In the week that's in it though, the continued leaking of the Anglo tapes, a bit of advice to all so outraged by the damage to our national reputation, in Germany especially. You see Germany - especially - has gained hand-over-fist since this whole crisis began.

When the reduced interest rates they're paying on their bonds is added to the income their banks are gaining from the influx of deposits, the Germany economy has already benefited to the tune of well over €100bn.

Add in what the German banks got directly from the so-called 'Greek' bailout (Greek-default-watch website: 'Foreign creditors received back €59.9 billion in maturing debt and they received a (likely) majority of the €37.9 billion spent on interest. In all, therefore, almost half the funds provided by the European  governments went back to pay foreign (largely European) investors' - the 'largely European' surely includes quite a few German institutions!); throw in the additional billions we've donated from our total bank bailout (to date) of €69.7bn, and well, you know, dear old Angela and her constituents aren't doing half badly from all of this.

Ireland? Well, we don't have that €69.7bn anymore and we've left our kids and grandkids a legacy of debt but aren't we restoring our reputation? By the way, that link is to a short video which explains in crystal clear fashion the 'deal' done by Michael Noonan when he transformed the Promissory Notes to Sovereign Bonds. Watch this clip, then decide for yourself if it was indeed a great deal.

Meanwhile, back at the banks, €50,000,000 unsecured bond will be paid today, another €15,000,000 likewise in the next couple of weeks. Drip, drip, drip, the life-blood drained from our economy...