Governor Honohan: Brian Lenihan didn’t want to cover subordinated bond holders on night of 2008 guarantee but was overruled. #bankinginquiry
— Ciaran Hancock (@CiaranHancock1) January 15, 2015
Honohan now admits to #bankinginquiry that his current view on liquidating Anglo was not the view he had in September 2008 — Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) January 15, 2015
Anglo should have been allowed to fail, says Honohan. #bankinginquiry
— Irish Sun (@IrishSunOnline) January 15, 2015
Honohan seems very determined to get across the point that Anglo could have stumbled to the end of the week and didn’t need Monday guarantee
— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) January 15, 2015
Meanwhile…
So Irish media is suddenly discovering that Anglo should've been let fail, now that Prof Honohan says so. Where were you all these years?!
— Constantin Gurdgiev (@GTCost) January 15, 2015
Watch live here
Banking Inquiry: Patrick Honohan’s introductory statement (Irish Times)
Irish banking inquiry: Bailout ‘cost 40bn euros’ (BBC)
Man who fupped up in the past has twenty twenty vision of his failings in the future.
No sh*t Sherlock.
#bankinginquiry = #wasteoftimeandmoney
and of course every useless fupper points the finger at a long deceased Lenihan, poor guy always looked like he was under so much pressure. I hope his family dont get dragged into it
Lenihan is a long, long way from qualifying for a posthumous pardon. I don’t give two fupps about his family – they’ll never see a poor day. My thoughts are with all of the familes destroyed and devastated by his actions, inaction, and incompetence. Fupp him and the horse he rode in on.
it all depends on intent. I’m sure, as are most, that his intentions were good but he made the wrong decision.
that makes him culpable of course but statements like yours suggest he acted to screw people over intentionally and should burn
Lenihan was a smug arrogant fool. He should have stood down when he got sick.
never said i pardon his weakness, just that i feel sorry for his family. money doesnt make grief any easier to deal with
Didn’t Lenihan get up and praise Haughey after he’d stolen money from Lenihan Snr’s medical fund?
Some family.
No loss on the family they have plenty of money.
Captain Hindsight!
It’s only hindsight if it’s honest.
Far too often the talking heads know they just have to bluff for a certain amount of time, until it’s too late to change course, and then throw the hands up and say ‘of course, if we had 20/20 vision at the time’.
It was clear at the time that Anglo was only of benefit to a small circle of well connected people. The spoofing by talking heads and the media lasted long enough to bamboozle and soothe the majority of the public, and now they can say ‘we’ve learned something’ as if the whole thing was some kind of personal growth experience, rather than a giant swindle.
Fupp the lot of them, and damn us for our passivity and gullibility.
Someone as the Governor , who benefited from not allowing it to fail?
Sshhh… none of that kind of talk. stick to the cue cards… “hindsight is 20/20” “green jersey” “acted on best information we had” “best international practice”..
the ‘you scratch my back’ card isn’t part of the allowed discourse, and would be a serious allegation against such a fine, upstanding man like our hero Honohan… * turns and spits on ground…*
this
http://www.tickld.com/x/economicsexplained
Why do they have to be unemployed alcoholics? Couldn’t they be low earners who are contacted by their banker and told that they can have a new car like a nice middle-class person, all they have to do is take out a loan, it’s what all the ballsy guys are doing now, etc.?
Not everyone can be middle class, some people are working class, because that’s what society has allowed for, or perhaps they take pride in their working class occupations, cleaning the city’s streets gives them a sense of civic pride … Your analogy needlessly and quite stupidly, singles out society’s lowest earners as the villains of the piece. That would suit the top earners though, wouldn’t it? The bankers and the bubble’s media cheerleaders, if they could just set the middle classes against the lower classes in order to distract from their criminality, they’d be on the pig’s back, again. But of course that wouldn’t happen, would it? In a democracy, with an impartial media, like ours? Surely not … And it’s not like the gombeens would fall for it, I mean it’s the oldest trick in the book, isn’t it?
read it again.
Hey! I knew back in 2008 we shouldn’t have saved Anglo, when is it my turn to be Governor of the Central Bank?
You start tomorrow. Quit your current job, NOW.
P.S. The pay is rubbish and your work will be under-appreciated.
Honohan wasn’t in charge. Hurley was the Central Bank governor. And, even the Irish Independent has recorded, career bureaucrat Hurley seems to have been made of Teflon…
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/john-hurley-last-of-the-breed-26570864.html
His opinion on the bank guarantee is well known
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/fatal-guarantee-by-finance-was-heroic-hurley-28894958.html
The real mistakes were all made from 2002 to 2007. Honohan wasn’t in the country. Lenihan wasn’t really involved. Cowan was Minister of Finance throughout and did Bertie’s bidding for him, pumping up the bubble and blowing all the temporary revenues to buy votes. If we are to learn anything useful, the focus should be on Dept of Finance, Central Bank and (in particular) how much they can get ignored or overruled by the Government of the day. By the time 2008 came around, Ireland had no control over its destiny. Whether it was letting a few banks go to the wall (and trying to stop the others being pulled down), giving two fingers to the same bond market that funds our spending or guaranteeing debts, the outcome was beyond our control.
I don’t understand what the difference would be, to a potential lender to our banks, whether the guarantee guaranteed all existing and future debts, or just all FUTURE debts. It could have allowed the slightly less crippled banks to fund themselves back to life and not exposed Ireland to it’s legacy bad lending?
Well, there’s two groups to consider there – the hedge funds who had already held bonds in those banks, and those that did not.
The first group will raise the spectre of Ireland being ‘shut out’ from the markets if they don’t ‘honour’ the debts of the banks with whom they speculated.
Whereas, those who didn’t hold bonds considered us to be worse risk if we bailed out zombie banks like Anglo, because the financing of those bonds would make it harder for us to pay off any other bonds.
It’s fairly likely that some hedge funds made out like complete bandits, holding bonds in Anglo, having bought them at a discount, and then getting paid in full, when the govt forced the state to borrow from these same shysters, in order to pay off the first set of bonds.
The head of Bank Paribas’ bond desk said it was ridiculous that the state was paying these bonds off.
Anglo’s loan book increased from €35b in 2005 to €65b in 2007. That was the very real damage in a nut shell.
@jimmythehead
Your comment:https://www.broadsheet.ie/2015/01/15/regrets/#comment-1286928
I quote you “…every useless fupper points the finger at a long deceased Lenihan, poor guy always looked like he was under so much pressure…”
Unless you’ve been living in a parallel universe, you will have noticed that many families in this country are mourning the loss of loved ones driven to taking their own lives. Many of those suicides are directly attributable to the actions of the former minister for finance. Few of those families benefit from the munificence of the former minister’s pension provision.
Spare me the misplaced sentimental shyte, please.
that’s horse and you know it
Any more info on this?
“Governor Honohan: Brian Lenihan didn’t want to cover subordinated bond holders on night of 2008 guarantee but was overruled.”
yep, by whom?
Presumably by the only person who could, Cowan.
…yes…Cowan…unless of course it was the big boys…sir….in this case it may well have been the big boys but we desperately need to know who the big boys were/are.
What will Honohan’s view be after Greek Election, are the ECB trying
now trying to prempt the fall out by “quantative easing” ie
printing more Euros to evade the full impact of a Greek 243 Billion
Euro default and the alteration GDP Debt ratios for Italy, France
and indeed Germany…..We need to develop the political initative,
to demand back the money, that we have been propping them up
for the last five years in order to save their Banks from going Bankrupt: