David McWilliams is a tosser, here's why...

thebigbiffo wrote: »

ya might want to put the joint down and try again

Maybe you should try picking up a joint. May just calm you the fuck down and not get your knickers in a twist over an article some guy wrote years ago.

thebigbiffo wrote: »

please tell me someone remembers that McWilliams was the first person in this country to suggest NAMA (he just called it a bad bank) was the way to go to help our financial system. he called for it very early on in the banking/property crisis in an article in the indo. i showed it to everyone in the office and thought it was a great idea. he went through in detail using the norweigian model as a base for the argument.

the f'ucking second it was taken up an an official/policy level he started writing against it and still is, even though it was his idea in the first place! and he never once refers back to this and gives any explanation why he changed his mind - he just convieniently ignores it! so it's proven...he's a tosser!

seriously, i'd like to know if anyone remembers reading that

I'm open to correction on this, but didn't just he advocate a blanket guarantee for the banks? Indeed our Minister for Finance called around to his house for a cup of tea one evening, confided in McWilliams that he felt he was getting poor advice/lies from his colleagues and the civil service, and asked for his views.

I don't think - and again i'm open to correction - he advocated keeping an institution like Anglo open, and indeed funded by the taxpayer at a crippling cost to the economy, once the facts about that institution came out.
It wasn't fully in the public domain just how toxic the banks were back then.

He was definitely calling for bank guarantees, he still admits as much. I'd love for you to find the articles where he advocated anything like the mess that is NAMA

thebigbiffo wrote: »

please tell me someone remembers that McWilliams was the first person in this country to suggest NAMA (he just called it a bad bank) was the way to go to help our financial system. he called for it very early on in the banking/property crisis in an article in the indo. i showed it to everyone in the office and thought it was a great idea. he went through in detail using the norweigian model as a base for the argument.

the f'ucking second it was taken up an an official/policy level he started writing against it and still is, even though it was his idea in the first place! and he never once refers back to this and gives any explanation why he changed his mind - he just convieniently ignores it! so it's proven...he's a tosser!

seriously, i'd like to know if anyone remembers reading that

What paper biffo... personally I think he is brilliant.

thebigbiffo wrote: »

i've searched the net to try find the article but i can't. trust me, it was there and i was kind of hoping someone else could back me up that he wrote that article - the details on what was in there are correct as above.

i think he did advocate the gaurantee alright and i'm sure he never advised pumping money into anglo.

Why should we trust you. If he wrote the article it should be out there. Do you think the indo removed it?

Here's one where he said bad bank plan is risky.

As far as i can see he's the only one calling it for what it is ie a royal shafting of the irish public/tax payer

Here, from February 2009, is David McWilliams plan:

http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2009/02/22/my-plan-to-save-the-country

1. Create a ‘financial skip’ and throw all the bad debts of all the banks into it. This bank will be given the mandate to work out the bad debts over ten years. It should be staffed by the best liquidators and recovery experts in the country. These are people who know how to get value out of an asset. They know, not how to lend, but how to sell. Today, everyone is talking about debts, but there are real assets in this financial skip and, over time, these assets -if managed properly – will become valuable. In effect, the new bank will be the Irish property market. It will control the price and control development.

2.The skip has to buy the assets from the banks. It must do this at a deep, deep discount. In reality, this figure could be as low as 20 per cent of the original price. Let us assume the bad bank needs a huge whack of cash; where are we going to get the stuff? Where could we get €40 billion?

3. Here’s where we play the EMU card. We go to the European Central Bank (ECB) and say: ‘‘You lend us the cash. We, after all, gave up our interest rate and exchange rate policy to join the euro, now you have to help us out. You have to prove that the EU is a community of nations, in reality. Show us some practical solidarity.

Otherwise we default and undermine the euro.”

In addition, the ECB is already committed to the Irish financial system. It is drip-feeding money into our contaminated banks every day, keeping them alive. We should suggest they lend us the money at 4 per cent for ten years. This is money that the ECB is spending on the financing of our banks anyway as the lender of last resort, so it should not matter to it. In fact, lending to the solution should be much smarter than lending to the problem.

The ECB would be crazy not to go for this. We then have money for ten years at 4 per cent with which to work out bad loans.

4.The old banks are now clean. They are free of contamination and they can go about raising money from the market, such as our own pension funds, through the normal channels, like rights issues. This means that they can start lending again to good businesses.

The old banks pay the new bad bank a fee for managing their old debts and dealing with their old clients. If the new bank charges 7 per cent for the service, the old banks need to provision for this charge over the next ten years. This means that their profits will be affected, and they must adjust their costs at the beginning of every year to account for the charge. But 7 per cent of €40 billion is manageable. It could operate like a bank tax.

The state then makes money on this plan -a s it would be getting the difference between what the bad bank charges and what the old, forgiven banks pay. So it gets tax revenue of 3 per cent of €40 billion every year -or €1.2 billion. You can build a lot of schools with that sort of bread.

5. Obviously all senior management of the banks must be fired right now to facilitate this financial renaissance.

How much of this has been implemented by NAMA?

brianthebard wrote: »

Nah dude sorry but Nama is not the same as a bad bank. There may be similarities but that doesn't make them the same. Look this is a piece that was written last year and lays out the various options that were on the table before the government ignored all the smart options and went with NAMA;
http://www.progressive-economy.ie/2009/09/if-you-want-to-play-solve-irish-banking.html

That article quite clearly says that Nama IS a bad bank.

It recommends going with a good bank, however.