Author Archives: Aaron McAllorum

Don’t ask them. They run Nama.

Let’s ask the Financial Times:

“Nobody knows. That is all that can be said in reply to Ireland’s most pressing question – is the National Asset Management Agency working? Nama was established to absorb €81bn of bad property loans held by Irish banks, allowing the lenders to recapitalise. Yet the country’s banking crisis continues, two years after Lehman Brothers collapsed. The banks remain on life support through a blanket guarantee on deposits and most debt; Anglo Irish Bank continues to make ludicrous losses; and there is growing scepticism over official assurances that the cost of rescuing the system has been contained.”

Yeah. Yeah. We know that.

Nama is an odd creature: part debt collection agency, part property developer. As well as toxic loans, it may end up with a portfolio of property which was collateral for the banks’ lending binge. It was meant to fix the broken banks, convince taxpayers they might be repaid and reassure the markets the banks’ liabilities would be met in full. Facing in three directions, it has not appeared convincing in any: slow, bureaucratic, initially indecisive and almost excessively transparent (every toxic loan is assessed individually).”

Translation: Probably not.

(No link as FT operate a paywall. Harrumph).

The proposals are also expected to include a new restricted driving plate, known as an R-plate, when a person has completed the first phase of their L-plate training. They can then apply to get their full unrestricted licence following a further training period.

If you see one back into it. Nobody believes the R-guy.

There’s also homework and at least 12 hours of lessons.

[smooth=id:45]

Bewildered. Confused. And that’s just the teachers!

Gardiner Street Convent, in Dublin, this morning.

Their first day at skool.

They’re too young to realise we’ve destroyed their future.

And whatever you do don’t let them read Vincent Browne today.

(Check out the tearful boy in front of the Virgin Mary statue. He’s just been told about original sin)

(Photocall Ireland)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3lxuLkS4vI&feature=player_embedded#!

You laughed because he sang gibberish, right?

He mangled Walk Like An Egyptian with his own lyrics and incomprehensible rural patois?

Wrong. He was almost word perfect. Go on. See if we’re wrong.

All the old paintings on the tomb/ They do the sand dance, don’cha know? If they move too quick (Oh-Ah-Oh), they’re falling down like a domino./And the bazaar man by the Nile. He got the money on a bet For the crocodiles (Oh-Ah-Oh), They snap their teeth on a cigarette./Foreign types with their hookah pipes sing:Oh-ah-oh-ah-ooo-aaa-ooo-aaa,Walk like an Egyptian./The blonde waitresses take their trays, Spin around and they cross the floor.They’ve got the moves (Oh-Ah-Oh), You drop your drink then they bring you more. All the school kids so sick of books, They like the punk and the metal band. When the buzzer rings (Oh-Ah-Oh), They’re walking like an Egyptian. All the kids in the marketplace say: Oh-ah-oh-ah-ooo-aaa-ooo-aaa,Walk like an Egyptian. Line your feet astreet, bend your back, Shift your arm, then you pull it back. Like Sergeant O (Oh-Ah-Oh),So strike a pose on a Cadillac. If you want to find all the cops, They’re hanging out in the donut shop. They sing and dance (Oh-Ah-Oh), They spin their clock and cruise on down the block. All the Japanese with their Yen,The party boys call the Kremlin. The Chinese know (Oh-Ah-Oh), They walk along like Egyptians./ All the cops in the donut shops say: Oh-ah-oh-ah-ooo-aaa-ooo-aaa,Walk like an Egyptian,Walk like an Egyptian.



Can one bank (that’d be Anglo) bring down Ireland? Asks the paper this morning.

And, because they don’t know, they ask: how could this have even been possible?

“Ireland was also the country that took the most direct route in tackling the problem [Banking colapse], by recognizing upfront the bad loans of its devastated banks and transferring them to government ledgers.

“Both the United States and Britain avoided such a move by taking stakes in their troubled banks and, in the case of Britain, insuring their worst-performing loans. Now the Irish government’s strategy is being called into question as its credit rating suffers and its borrowing costs resume their upward trajectory.”

Thank heavens nobody outside of New York reads the New York Times. It’s basically a local paper. Like the Evening Echo in Cork. If it had won 104 Pulitzer Prizes.

Bank Strains Ireland (New York Times)