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He's Seen The Future And It Hurts

If you wonder why our EU partners want our taxpayers to pay off the loans of a failed private bank, just look who it owed money to – some of the biggest names in Europe. If we don’t prop them up, how many will have to be bailed out by their governments? (Cut-out-and-keep guide to Anglo bondholders by politico.ie)

Listening to Michael Noonan yesterday worried me for a number of reasons. Firstly, because he’s Minister for Finance. That never strikes me as an ideal arrangement. Worse though, he sounded worried and downcast. This on the day when, at long last, it looks like we’re going to get some deal on the bank debt burden. That’s supposed to be about the best news you could possibly hope for.

If you’re a Noonan, that is. In a world where there is no choice but to force the taxpayer to reward the speculator, the best it seems we can hope for is to get the immediate liability for those bond repayments converted into a long term loan from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), so taking away the looming danger of default. This will improve our credit rating, meaning we’ll be able to borrow the money to repay the bank debts all by ourselves. Whoopee!

Yeah. No wonder he sounds depressed.

The even less joysome part is that there is clearly going to be no write-down. Arguably in fact, the new mechanism will mean that we’ll be closing off any future possibility of burning the bondholders because now the debt will be to the ESM rather than the reckless lenders themselves. So less of a deal, more a sort of… trap.

And now I’m depressed too.

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