Head over to our T
Buddy can you spare a billion euro?
Read more about: Economy 
RTE seems to have a stunner of a scoop: that Irish Life and Permanent moved a massive deposit into (and then out of?) Anglo Irish Bank to help Anglo’s results look good last year. The Sean Fitzpatrick loan-shifting looks tiny by comparison. This will yet again renew questions (which Brian Cowen cagily dodged in his Marian Finucane interview) about the processology of the decision to guarantee bank liabilities last September. Was IL&P at risk of losing the deposit if the plug was pulled too quickly by other lenders to Anglo? And was the government told this when it implemented the guarantee? Note that the window for Anglo’s preliminary financial results for 2008 ran to 30 September — just when the guarantee was brought in.
UPDATE: It gets stranger. IL&P says it made the deposit (“exceptional support”) in September, after the guarantee came in. But the guarantee only came in on the 30th — when Anglo’s reporting year ended!
FINAL UPDATE: It was €7 billion over the course of September, with €4 billion coming immediately after the guarantee.
Crooks, Cons and Caper….or to put it more simply systemic corruption.
It would seem that Ireland’s cosy coterie of financiers were well practiced at both sleight of hand and self-denial, whilst they busily pulled the wool over the public’s eyes ( I was also going to say the regulator’s eyes…but even his objectivity is now open to question).
In any other country this revelation would be enough to bring the government to its knees; but, not Ireland, the country that gave us Charlie Haughey and the kickback.
Nonetheless, in taking on Anglo (for which it had no choice), the present administraion has sown the seeds of its own downfall.
It’s a good job that the Irish general public was so restrained in their personal debt, isn’t it?
250,000 unoccupied dwellings tells a hell of a story. The Government opened up the development casino with the ever-willing banks running the tables. We, the Irish punters, were only too ready to step up and try to win our millions.
Repeat after me: in general, Irish banks are not the same type of banks as those that created the type of securities that brought down the Western financial system. They are a completely different animal.
Blaming the banks for lending you the money to buy a house you couldn’t afford is like blaming McDonald’s when you spill hot coffee on yourself (what, you mean my cup of steaming hot coffee might burn me if I’m not careful with it?). It’s a risk you take in life. Some risks pay off, and some don’t. Deal with it.
Of course that lawsuit re. the hot coffee actually happened.
Which means that we’re now assuming a similar worldview to our nutsy American cousins.
Wow. We really are f**ked.