At a Ballyhea Says No protest in North Cork
Diarmuid Flynn writes:
Last protest march of 2019, continuing our campaign against the imposition of private bank debt on the public purse.
On the 19th Nov our National Treasury Management Agency announced that ‘NTMA cancels €500 million of the Irish Floating Rate Treasury Bond 2051’.
That’s a Promissory Note bond, the 4th such announcement this year. In plain English, it means that in exchange for four of the Prom Note bonds created when IBRC was liquidated, our NTMA has given 4 x €500 million to our Central Bank this year, that’s €2 billion, billions it had already borrowed on the open markets and for which we are now liable.
What the announcement DOESN’T say, however, is what the Central Bank did with those billions. To ‘cancel’ that €500 million, the Central Bank actually destroys the entire amount.
It’s all done via computer of course; there isn’t a van-load of hard currency delivered from the NTMA office to the Central Bank vault, there to be physically burned – a push of a button here, and the €500 million appears on the Central Bank books, a push of a button there and PUFF, it disappears, gone.
Four times this year this has happened, €2 billion borrowed and burned, and not a word of protest in the Irish media, not even a word by way of inquiry, even as pages are filled (justifiably so) on the waste of billions on the National Childrens’ Hospital, on the National Broadband Plan.
But we in Ballyhea Says Know continue to campaign, we continue to march. I will sit and debate this with anyone, anywhere, on any platform. Meanwhile, you’re welcome to join us this Sunday.