so sad sarah

http://galwaytent.blogspot.com/2009/01/sold-hole-in-ground-bought-by-taxpayers.html

By nationalising Anglo Irish Bank the taxpayers have just bought a hole in the ground for €450,000,000. The former glass recycling site where 300 Ringsend workers were fired is now worth perhaps €45 million, or less. The exact value is a secret and even if Anglo Irish Bank published a value who would believe them?

Is this Galway Tent directed bank-and-developer-rescue a legal theft of more than €400 million of taxpayer’s cash?

The cross-contaminated(a) Dublin Developer’s Autocracy (DDDA) is a co-investor in the site along with the Becbay group of property developers. The Dublin Developer’s Autocracy also decides the planning permission and denied a conflict of interest, at a June 2008 statutory public event.

Anglo Irish Bank provided €288 million for the site (Did Mr Quinn invest €288 million in Anglo?). One of the developers is obliged to pay seventeen percent interest (17%) on money borrowed from someone. Perhaps to someone with an interest in Bolivian airlines.

The site has been excavated and is now literally a hole in the ground, possibly even below current sea level, yet somewhat higher than the scuttled Anglo Irish Bank.

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(a) The site is in a contaminated Dublin City refuse dump situated Banana Republic style on Sandymount Strand and on the foreshore of Dublin Bay.

http://galwaytent.blogspot.com/2009/01/sold-hole-in-ground-bought-by-taxpayers.html

The bank was a solvent bank but was “in a fragile position”, he said.

“Nationalisation makes it clear that the State unequivocally stands behind the bank.” He indicated that last December’s revelation concerning the former Anglo chairman, Seán FitzPatrick, who hid loans of up to €87 million he had from the bank over an eight-year period, had “caused serious reputational damage to the bank at a time when overall market sentiment towards it was negative”.

“The Government believes that recapitalisation is not now the appropriate and effective means to secure [the bank’s] continued viability. Therefore, the Government must move to the final and decisive step of public ownership.”

So it was the reputational damage that Fitzpatrick’s loan did which broke the camel’s back, so to speak? Either that or it was the due diligence which opened up some horrendous numbers-turning the recapitalisation into a black hole. A solvent bank being nationalised is either a bigger mess than we thought or it is a case of taking out the bank when it is politically easiest to do so.

Also interesting to note that cowen had to run a cabinet meeting from Tokyo. What bad timing and bad optics to be out of the country when a bank is nationalised.