Monthly Archives: July 2012

Chairman of state-owned AIB David Hodgkinson (top), and Michael Noonan’s top NAMA adviser Michael Geoghegan (above), are both named in a 330-page report that follows an investigation into HSBC by a US Senate subcommittee set up in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York.

…Crucially, the damning report makes clear that both Michael Geoghegan and David Hodgkinson were aware of the major issues at the bank during the period under investigation, including HSBC’s processing of billions of dollars worth of hidden deals for Iranian banks.

 

*whimpers*

Pair hired To Clean Up Irish Banks Named In US Scandal (Donal O’Donovan and Peter Flanagan, Irish Independent)

Earlier: Not Their Finest Hour

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A30J2dq23d0

It’s rainin’ but there ain’t a cloud in the sky
Musta been a tear from your eye
Everything’ll be okay
Waitin’ on a sunny day

Niamh Hassell writes:

6 year old [Sophie Sutton] is taken up on stage by Bruce [Springsteen at the RDS, Ballsbridge, Dublin] last night. Mmmmmf

 

Sophie  and her father Paul spoke to Newstalk’s Breakfast Show AND gave a reprisal of her Brucie duet. Listen here.

(Pic via Newstalk)


Come here.

Ten days before the opening of the London Olympics, Tourism Ireland has launched the second phase of its ‘Escape the Madness’ campaign in Britain.

The €500,000 advertising campaign presents Ireland as a hassle-free holiday option to harassed Londoners during the games.

The campaign began last month with ads on the London Underground. This is stage two: a Youtube viral voiced (and briefly appeared in) by Chris O’Dowd.

That’ll get them over.

Ireland Promoted As Olympics ‘Escape’ (Meadhbh McHugh, Irish Times)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZDkjpHGOyo

The driver of a car who lost control and crashed through the front garden of a house in Dudley in the West Midlands wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. The owner of the house, on whose CCTV the crash was captured, said:

“He was flung from the car like a rag doll and it is amazing no-one was more badly hurt. A woman got out of the car and they were hugging each other. It was like they couldn’t believe they were still alive.”

awesomer/arbroath

Lax controls at HSBC allowed Mexican drug cartels to launder billions of dollars through the British bank’s operations in the US, an investigation has found.

The report by a U.S. Senate committee also claimed that HSBC provided banking services to some lenders in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh

HSBC Allowed ‘Mexican drug Cartels To Launder Billions Of Dollars Through Its Banks’, Reveals Scathing Report From US Senators (Mail Online)

Also:

This is the British economic-policy establishment under unprecedented pressure – and what an unseemly, blame-ducking, buck-passing panic it presents. Not just the humbling of some of our most senior and respected officials but also the erraticism with which they have been making policy.

Libor Scandal: Gunfight On Threadneedle Street (Editorial, Guardian)