FF Myths Lies and Spin

Can anyone explain how levying the banks for any losses made by NAMA won't cost the taxpayer money when we own so much of them?

Matt Cooper let whatever party donkey he had on the radio yesterday weasel out of the question with the assertion that the bank share prices will have risen and the state should be able to sell them by then.

Surely the sale price of shares in a bank that's liable for a levy on profits over the next few years of it's business will have the level and likelihood of that levy being imposed factored into it? Ergo, we'd be accepting a lower price for our shares in order to allow FF / The Greens to look "tough" by levying the bank's profits...

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Considering you're perfectly happy that your party vote confidence in con-men, I'm not surprised that we have differing views.

It's far from "inexplicable" to go WTF at a government that invests billions in a corrupt bank and doesn't ensure that it won't be wasted - for example - on golden handshakes to those being fired because of their greed and incompetence.

It's far from "inexplicable" to question the competence of those who didn't put in a single caveat that said "if ye are lying to us, the deal's off and ye're on ye'r own".

Mind you, there's little point in discussing corruption or competence with you, considering your expressed view of those who backed O'Dea.

OK - when I said "whose position in government is frankly inexplicable", I meant that if we take your view that they're literally equivalent to a gang of sightly dim robbers, then their being the government is inexplicable. The clue is in the sentence structure - but, as so often, you have assumed instead something to get cross about.

wearily,
Scofflaw

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Ah but you had already assumed that I viewed them as "a gang of dumb robbers", so therefore the above is just waffle.

Their actions in not protecting the interests of the country while bailing out their buddies could be incompetence, or it could be calculatingly doing as much as they can get away with in order to bail out their mates, cover their own hide as to the skeletons in their Golden Circle closets, and maintain power at all costs.

I don't know which, but I do find it astonishing that even FF would that incompetent as to overlook an "if you're telling porkies, the deal is off and we're not bailing you out" clause; IF they had wanted to include one.

So they're somewhere between completely incompetent and completely corrupt. I myself don't even know where exactly on that scale they are, so your initial assumption about how I view them is already completely wrong - a pretty bad starting point from which you built your argument.

I'd said that's how it comes across - and that's how it comes across in post after post. I don't even disagree that they're corrupt, and have said so - but I don't step from there to "this is done by Fianna Fáil, therefore it must be corrupt in such a way as to rip us off, and we should reflexively be angry".

If you tell me that NAMA contains a bailout for Fianna Fáil's supporters, I'm disposed to believe you - they always do look after the interests of their supporters. I argued elsewhere, when people say maybe Fianna Fáil are 'planning' on being out of government, that they're a factional oligarchy who never intend being out of government, because it removes their ability to look after their supporters with quango posts, tax breaks, contracts and influence.

All of that in the way of agreement between our viewpoints, and still you can't persuade me that NAMA is the worst thing that could have been done. I've looked at the legislation, I've looked at the assumptions and the business plans, and I can see that it could, given the lack of transparency, be used to kid glove particular friends of Fianna Fáil - all that's required is that NAMA make a bit of profit, and everyone's happy, no need for a tribunal. What I'm not seeing is "SCAMA" - the idea that a monumental swindle is all that's happening. NAMA has to survive two changes of government and increased scrutiny at the European level - how is something that's simply a swindle supposed to do so?

And please, try to answer without biting my head off.

regards,
Scofflaw

Laminations wrote: »

Ok lets start with that. I'll ask in relation to Anglo, could we have had a better outcome not guaranteeing and nationalising the bank? Many people like to begin from the convenient starting point of the bank already being guaranteed and our hands henceforth being tied. But show me evidence that Anglo and its investors deserved to be guaranteed. Show me evidence that before a guarantee due diligence was done in assessing the state of what was being taken on by the tax payer. Show me evidence that Anglo was a systemic bank? Show me evidence of a bank (systemic or otherwise) failure that lowered the sovereign credit rating of a country. Explain to me the logic that in order to keep our credit rating high so we can continue to borrow, we must borrow from the market to pay back bondholders who lent to private institutions. We are borrowing from bondholders to pay back bondholders so the bondholders we wish to borrow from dont get angry with us.

I haven't at any point supported the Anglo rescue, though.I'm not convinced that Anglo couldn't have been allowed to fail - whatever about AIB, BOI and the rest, Anglo was more or less a private bank. One could, as devil's advocate, make the claim that of Anglo had been allowed to collapse, it would have taken out a huge swathe of the construction industry, which would in turn have had knock-on effects etc. No due diligence is hardly a surprise, though, given the time frame.

Laminations wrote: »

I expect an evidence based plan. Anglos plan has been rubbished by the EU commission. NAMA forecasts are being rubbished and revised by the month. If you expect me to produce my own plan in order for me to gain the right to be critical you are barking mad.

Not really - if you say something is bad, it's up to you to show why it was bad. The conventional wisdom is on the side of rescuing banks for fairly obvious reasons (every bank failure breeds thousands of business failures), and Ireland's banks weren't able to borrow on the credit markets. If you know better, and believe that economies would survive better or equally well without such rescues, and without inter-bank credit, feel free to demonstrate it.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Laminations wrote: »

I wouldnt go so far as to say it is a swindle but if you are setting something like NAMA up, then you should be doing so on accurate data. They did not do this. And they certainly did not sell it to the people in an accurate way.

But part of the whole point with the debt NAMA acquired was that accurate information was not available - although there's a case to be made that the banks did not give NAMA information as accurate even as they had themselves.

As for the government not selling it accurately - what marketing is ever accurate? Who sells anything other than 'solutions'? It was sold on the basis of what was hoped for - which is the basis of virtually every sale.

Laminations wrote: »

Its as simple as buying a 'sun holiday in the Azores' and after paying your bit finding out that the azores is a B&B in clondalkin. Well you've paid, you've taken the time off, and well you still need a holiday?

Surely that's the question, though - was what was on offer a 'sun holiday in Azores' when what we wound up with was a B&B in Clondalkin?

My view is that what we were offered was, let's say, a hotel in Clondalkin, but it was nevertheless promised that we would have "the holiday of a lifetime". If the hotel turns out to be an oversized B&B, I can't say I'm particularly surprised, and disappointment would have involved me believing that a hotel in Clondalkin would offer the holiday of a lifetime in any case.

Laminations wrote: »

What NAMA is becoming is not what we were sold - can you not see that by the list of things in the OP that have been proven false? The same goes for bailing out Anglo. I cant remember your stance originally but are you now saying NAMA is a great idea?

No, my stance remains that it's the alternative that was chosen, and whether it was the best alternative or not is something that either is demonstrable - in which case the government is either wrong to have adopted it, or right - or is not, in which case the government can be neither wrong nor right to have adopted it.

If it's demonstrable that NAMA was not the best option (and many others were floated at the time), then demonstrating that is surely the route to convincing people of it - indeed, no other route suffices. Certainly, simply saying "look, we know they're crooks, therefore it must be crooked" doesn't really pass muster.

I don't see how that can be put plainer.

Laminations wrote: »

And NAMA will survive all of what you say because it is a juggernaut, its in motion and it cannot be stopped - for legal and cost reasons.

Again, though, that would go for any solution adopted - even if the solution we'd adopted was to do nothing. We could pull out now only at much huger cost.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Laminations wrote: »

If thats how you understand my point then I've not been clear.

Actually, again I'm actually contrasting your approach with Liam's.

Laminations wrote: »

My point is also simple. They said they were setting up NAMA for x,y,z. None of these things have materialised (for whatever reasons). My frustration with NAMA is wholly linked with my frustration with the Anglo rescue as Anglo makes up the majority of loans. I think you need to demonstrate what evidence is there to support NAMA as 'the best show in town' rather than require me to suggest my own solution. All I can see is that due to government decisions NAMA is 'the only show in town' - this is obviously also related to the guarantee.

That's kind of the point, though - NAMA is now the game in town, so it's a case of "that's what's happening - what would have been better?". In other words, I'm not arguing that anyone should support NAMA, that NAMA is the best thing, or anything of the kind. I don't even know that NAMA was the best option - but it's the option we got.

In short, I'm not trying to sell NAMA, because we already have NAMA - if there was something better, then I'm asking you to tell me what it is. Even better, tell me how we could change NAMA as it currently exists for the better.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Liam Byrne wrote:

Tell me this - why do ordinary people who aren't paid hundreds of thousands have to come up with the alternative ?

Because they're claiming that the alternatives would have been better. In order to claim that, presumably either:

(a) the people concerned have looked at the alternatives closely and found that one or more of them is better in specific ways to NAMA - they may have done the analysis themselves, or they may have read the proposals of people paid hundreds of thousands;

or

(b) the people concerned are just saying it because they believe it to be so without any evidence.

Now in case (a), all that's being asked is that the people saying it (that's you) share the benefits of that analysis with those they're making the claim to (and that's me).

Or is it just case (b)?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Liam Byrne wrote: »

or

(c) those who chose NAMA sold it based on a bunch of lies which lots of people disputed at the time and which have since been proven to be so far off the mark as to negate any justification of NAMA

P.S. re (a) : the word "better" is subjective.......if you're a frequenter of the Galway Tent, you're happy out; if you're a taxpayer footing the bill, you're not.

No, it doesn't matter whether NAMA doesn't live up to the initial promises, unless those initial promises were used to sell us something that was worse than the other alternatives - and that's what still isn't being shown to be the case - because it's entirely probable that the alternatives wouldn't have lived up to the promises made about them by the government either.

If someone over-promises and under-delivers, one is entitled to be annoyed about that if one believed them in the first place. If one didn't believe them in the first place, one is hardly going to be annoyed - they've delivered in line with expectations. In neither case, though, is there any point saying "we should have gone with option X instead", unless you know, and can show, that option X was actually better.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Laminations wrote: »

Ok well this is the last thing I'll say on this issue. Your reasoning, that to criticise NAMA requires the presentation of a 'better' alternative. There were alternatives at the time and the existence of alternatives does not mitigate the failings of NAMA in fulfilling it's objectives. Did NAMA do all the things we were told it would? No. Is NAMA or a NAMA type banking rescue needed? Yes.

Your line of thinking draws parallels with those who defend FF and disregard government failures with the question 'what would the opposition (alternative) have done better. The fact is we'll never know but we do know what FF have done. Asking questions of hypothetical alternatives does not gloss over the facts of failings. NAMA will eventually get results I'm sure but that's not what the approach was sold as, there were concrete benefits advertised at the time, these have to be judged.

To the poster who wonders why I started this thread, it was because recently some of the selling points of NAMA - namely the expected return have been called into question. The list highlights the stuff we were told that wasn't exactly true.

And I know some posters think labelling another poster as a 'ranter' counts as criticism but I think this thread is more than a rant.

At no point, though, have I said that those who criticise NAMA full stop have to provide alternatives - I've said that those who claim there were better alternatives have to provide those alternatives. Those who claim that it's a "scam" fall into that category - since calling it a scam implies that there were other options that would not have been - or would not have allowed for - a scam.

cordially,
Scofflaw