Garret can have his apology now

From 2 weeks ago, the Sindo’s Jody Corcoran giving an unnamed government spokesman a free shot at Garret FitzGerald who had critiqued Brian Cowen’s North Dublin Chamber of Commerce Speech needs another look.

First, Garrett  –

he [Cowen] clearly felt unable to make any reference to the public policy blunders for which he shared collective responsibility in the years after 2000, in the form of grossly excessive public spending, price inflation and public service pay policies, which together had made us uncompetitive before the housing bubble and bank crisis.” 

Now, the spin from Cowen’s handlers, typed up by Corcoran –

Sorry, Garret, but you missed the whole point of the speech … The very title of the speech should have informed Dr FitzGerald that the speech was never intended to be about the issues he raised yesterday, but about the banking crisis and housing bubble more generally. The title of the speech was: ‘The Irish Banking Crisis — the Mistakes, the Responses and the Lessons’.”

Brian Cowen’s statement today in reaction to the Banking Inquiry scoping reports –

The reports:

- confirm the need for an extensive Guarantee;
- confirm that Bank failure would have been disastrous for our economy;
- confirm that the timing in the nationalisation of Anglo did not result in higher costs;
- confirm that steps have been taken to correct main issues relating to regulation;
- confirm that the advice given by the Central Bank, the IMF, the OECD and others was that the Banks had adequate capital and that a soft landing was expected;
- recognise that capital requirements on speculative property loans was increased from 100% to 150% at the start of 2007 despite opposition from the banks;
- conclude that major responsibility lies with the directors and senior management of the banks.

In other words, Cowen’s view is that the overall crisis is the fault of the banks, and and his own policy errors are minor and basically involve not having perfect foresight.  In contrast to what the snarky spokesman (collecting a taxpayer salary) says, the title of Cowen’s speech could have referred to the Irish Economic Crisis and the content would have been identical.