Yearly Archives: 2011

It really was rather frank, wasn’t it?

“As the credit crunch struck and Lehman Brothers collapsed. Pressure mounted from the United States government to underwrite the debts — Timothy Geithner, United States Secretary of the Treasury, feared that an Irish bank debt default, while not threatening of itself, could have spread contagion to the entire European system, to which American-backed “credit default swaps” were exposed to the tune of 120 billion euros.

This was later confirmed by State Department cables leaked through WikiLeaks. Alistair Darling, then Britain’s Chancellor, was severely critical of the guarantee, which put the British financial system at a disadvantage in the markets. Lenihan described the guarantee, which other countries soon copied, as “the cheapest bail-out in the world”, words which would haunt him…

If, in fact, the whole European system was at risk, critics suggested, then Lenihan could have extracted more generous terms than the crippling 5.8 per cent interest rate agreed with the IMF and EU, and which was considerably higher than the rates applied to Greece and Portugal. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said that the Irish government was “squandering” public money with its plan to bail out the banks.

Brian Lenihan Obituary (The Telegraph)

(Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland)

From last night’s show. After a hard day’s saloning, the celebrities were treated to a boozy ‘casino night’, at the end of which, Alan Hughes totted up the imaginary pot:

‘Between us all we would have won about 5000 euro…more than the bleedin’ fee we got for this shite…’

Booyah!

Watch Alan’s single finest broadcast moment (from 29.00 to 30.00)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6v-kI_rBEY&feature=related

Not unlike his native country, a more wistful Farreller recites Yeats for Imagine Ireland. Stay with it. This man has slept with Britney Spears and blokes (appara).

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

When You are Old

by W. B. Yeats