Brian Lenihan's official letter asking for our bailout has been released.

Zebra3 wrote: »

He was a bigger criminal than any of the drug dealing scumbags and armed robbers who populate this country.

His betrayal of the Irish people will cause far more damage than any of the other degenerates.

But he wore a suit and not a woolly face so that's all right then, yeah? :rolleyes:

He did not do anything illegal.The bankss lied to him more than likely.He believed they were solvent that it was a liquidity issue. But they were completely insolvent. He made the garantee because he did not believe it would ever become an issue where he would have to actually stand by it she was stupid enough to believe them.

Irish banks had trouble borrowing from the world financial service so when the property bubble burst American banks in particular worried about the exposure to the crisis so they stopped lending bankers kept turning up at govt buildings asking for assistance in order to secure liquidity lenihan made a public garantee he believed they were solvent it was to enable the banks to function but borrowing costs and debt soared.

He made a garantee to ensure the world system would allow irish banks to function not just the eu would have put the pressure on but the Americans too..not so much to make the garantee but probably that they would not lend without collatoral or something he made a publiC garentee putting the sovreign behind the banks. He did not have to do it but he had to do something to collatoralize the Irish system.

They would have insisted on something in exchange for funds probably not the way lenihan presented it though he never thought we would have to pay as he though he was garanteeing solvent banks. There were companies that advised against it we know now.So yes thy would ot have lent without collateral but that did not mean they wanted a sovereign garantee specifically.He just wanted to keep cash flowing and needed to.The criminals are the accountants and perhaps the then regulator. Lenihan was just an idiot and very sick.What should have happened was a request for a bailout as soon as the banks had trouble borrowing on the markets ...the banks should have been forced to reognize those losses then recapitalized and certain bondholders burnt. It was the delay and the stupid belief that insolvent banks were actually solvent that made for a disaster.

The whole system cocked it up to be honest. When the IMF and the Americans realized the IMF wanted to write the banking dbt partially off as they tought our theen sovreign debt was sustainable but not bank debt...the fed possibly the ecb was having none of it and insisted it be tied to sovereign debt. They did not just make him give the garantee they made him in exchange for funds which he should not have been putting into insolvent banks anyway.

But it was the banks and reglator at fault legally and the minister was simply in over his head.

up for anything wrote: »

Jesus, the man was the finance minister - that should count for something.

He thought... he believed.. :rolleyes:

If I was to say that I took out a bank loan in 2006 which I thought and I believed I could pay back but can't because I a simpleton... sorry, simply in over my head, there would be a queue of posters to call me a stupid cnut for not knowing that I was putting a further hole in an already sinking ship.

The man was in charge of the country's finances - he should have checked and double-checked and not just thought!

It has been established in the UK that Irish banking acountants neglected Irish company law when doing accounts and that there was a technical flaw in EU banking legislation.

Banks were prohibted from reognizing losses until the borrower contacted them first but in reality the time between the borrower contacting them and the problem of payment causiing a problem could be years.

He did not take out a loan as such. He became the garantee for a loan for banks whose losses according to EU banking law and certain credit rating agencies did not exist yet.

Basically you garanteed for a friend taking out a loan. When you checked their acounts it would have looked ok.

It even looked ok enough for the FED and the ECB or they would not have accepted a garantee as collatoral.

It would have taken a thorough clean independant audit the likes of which they cannot even seem to do now in Germany, France and Spain.

He should not have made the Garantee..but people must know what would have happened. And it is likely we would still be held to aount for it anyway.

Iceland is still actually paying back those loans you know. They just did not pay it through the banks. But they had to pay back all the bondholders with innterest.

http://lucas2012infos.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/all-the-money-from-iceland-comes-back-good-news-for-dutch-savers-24-october-2012/

But Iceland did exactly the correct thing in my opinion...

But we could not have ...we have no currency

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9312181/Iceland-has-taken-its-medicine-and-is-off-the-critical-list.html

You are right to be angry but you are placing the blame in on place and that is incorrect.

You lose your ability to act within a monetary union.

Not that Iceland had a choice ...and the crucial factor in allowing them to function on the international markets has proved to be application to EU membership.

To be honest the Garantee is besides the point...Spain made none Italy made non Portugal made none...

The blame belongs to the whole system. The Irish regulator at the time to be honest was woeful. And yes some to Lenihan and a lot to the Government. But i blame The Irish regulator a lot.

Lenihan was not Minster in Greece and Spain etc....

In placing the blame soley with him you are letting a lot of people off.

Not to mention so MANY people who took on mortgages they knew they had no hope of paying back.

It was a credit binge. And people voting FF

Irish banks lent other peoples savings to some Irish people who had no clue both in business and personal loans.

The garantee is not the reason we are in the state we are in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932012_Icelandic_financial_crisis

Even Iceand had to pay it back...but it worked out better...

And it was PARTIALLY our bailout...

Fishooks12 wrote: »

Some really disgusting people saying disgusting things they would probably never say in real life here, well two anyway.

Dunno if that includes me. Everything I have said here I have said elsewhere and publically.

squod wrote: »

I'm pretty sure it would/will. We have seen so many times politicians backtracking when someone puts it up to them. A multi-billion dollar fraud is
probably going to mean heads rolling here, there and everywhere.

The Irish electorate have known FF and Bertie were committing fraud for years and it was in the Papers. As a sovereign nation with us the people as it's sovereign we elected them. That is what sovereignty and soveriegn debt means. You are responsible for the Govt the majority elect. Saying people were lied to is th same excuse you say is not good enough for Lenihan. Besides the papers were full of Bertie's misdeeds. The EU tore MC Creevy a new one for ages. It did nnot stop the electorate from re-electing them. So they lied?? Well the banks lied to Lenihan...We as an electorate could have checked and re-checked...we could have chosen not to trust those w plaed trust in....That is what you are saying Lenihan should have done. He was an idiot...lesson here is do your research as an eletorate...if you live in a ountry of moronic gombeens ...move or learn to be very understanding


You really think the FED and the ECB would care if Irish politicians were jailed or worse? That it would mean politicians would be able to get a write off that would mean many people in other countries would lose their savings?

It was banks that committed fraud. And it is countries abroad that hold the purse strings.

Anyway there have been court cases and legal preceedings.

poeticseraphim wrote: »

.

But it was the banks and reglator at fault legally and the minister was simply in over his head.

There's no evidence for this. If a hundred and one people are telling you not to guarantee Anglo (as we now know they were) and the bank was very obviously in a complete financial jock then why bother?

You have to question why the guarantee was extended also. It was really, and I mean really obvious a couple of months after the first guarantee was made that Anglo was a black hole. That the now pillar banks needed propping up to secure or insulate them from Anglos loses and various developers were going belly up in a massive market turn around after prices had peaked and started falling.

squod wrote: »

There's no evidence for this. If a hundred and one people are telling you not to guarantee Anglo (as we now know they were) and the bank was very obviously in a complete financial jock then why bother?

You have to question why the guarantee was extended also. It was really, and I mean really obvious a couple of months after the first guarantee was made that Anglo was a black hole. That the now pillar banks needed propping up to secure or insulate them from Anglos loses and various developers were going belly up in a massive market turn around after prices had peaked and started falling.

It has been proven actually. That this was fact in released correspondance between Lenihan and Honohan.

Absolutely there was evidence for this the regulator Patrick Neary has been proven to have written to Lenihan to insist upon the garantee and even going so far as to say he would announce it himself.

This has been released in a letter.

Lenihan was worried he has not enough time to fully disuss it it with the cabinet.


Given a decline in Irish property values and the freezing-up of the world's interbank market in 2007, it was certain by the start of 2008 that the Irish banking system would have great difficulty in financing its day-to-day operations.This trading difficulty, and inadequate and/or lax supervision by the regulator, led to a series of government interventions, starting with a guarantee in September 2008.

The December 2008 hidden loans controversy within Anglo Irish Bank led to the resignations of three executives, including chief executive Seán FitzPatrick. A mysterious "Golden Circle" of ten businessmen are being investigated over shares they purchased in Anglo Irish Bank in 2008.

There have been reports that Patrick Neary knew YEARS ahead of these loans. YEARS BEFORE LENIHAN BECAME FINANCE MINISTER.

Anglo Irish was nationalised in January 2009 when the Irish government determined that recapitalisation would not be enough to save the bank. Since then it has emerged that Anglo Irish falsified its accounts before it was nationalised, with circular transactions between it and another bank, Permanent TSB, being uncovered. Denis Casey, the chief executive of Irish Life and Permanent, the company that owns Permanent TSB, resigned in the aftermath of this revelation.

Recapitalisation was however carried out at Ireland's two largest banks, Allied Irish Bank (AIB) and Bank of Ireland (BoI), with bailouts of €3.5 billion confirmed for each bank on 11 February 2009.


The reason it was extended was simple...when the markets heard the garantee they poured money into solid banks...so they thought , they were insolvent. Certain bondholders threatened to sue such as th Russian Abramovitch. It is almost certain bonds for that time would have to be stood by. The amounted to more that the govt had....even to sustain the system the Govt needed a bailout.



The IMF etc did not make them put up a garantee...but once it was there they were not going to allow it to be dropped and still allow the Govt to borrow at the same rate. That would be crazy.

The deficit was still IS still huge.

It is absolutely clear fat that the financial insolvency went back years before Lenihan and that it was probably known by Neary for years.

And it has been proven accounts were falsified and credit rating agnies with major underwriting relationships with the banks involved advised the Govt poorly.

Lenihan was a gifted Lawyer...no experience of finance.

Do you know on the night of the decision of th Bailout...some of his colleagues refused to even go to the evening meeting ??? Cars were sent around to the house of one TD who refused to leave his house that night.

If you know anything about banking..you know they were trying to prevent a devastating bank run for Ireland the next day.

He had little govt support ...the Banks lying their asses off and losses that technically did not exist and secret loans .....and the regulator had been in the knnow for years and was telling him either make the garantee or i will....(he legally could not but anyway)

The only thing that seemed to worry anyone about the garantee by the way including the EU ...was that it put no cap on bankers pay...NOT EVEN THE ECB HAD A CLUE...

Lenihan was badly advised lied to threatened and backed into an impossible situation.

Prof Patrick Honohan govenor of the central bank said it was not really the ministers fault.

Anyway, even if ministers had taken another decision, European leaders might have insisted on some form of guarantee, in his opinion.

'Mr Honohan said the refusal of Ireland's international lenders to allow losses to be imposed on senior bondholders at failed banks -- such as Anglo -- and the guarantee were key factors that tipped the country into a bailout.

"The extensive socialisation of losses -- initially through the September 2008 guarantee and subsequently when the Troika refused to countenance burden sharing with the unguaranteed senior bondholders -- has been rightly subject to extensive criticism," Mr Honohan said.

"Losses should be shared by both junior and senior creditors, where necessary, in cases where the banks are put into resolution," he added.'

They tchnically did not force Lenihan to baiout the banks...but they probably would have..

But it was a terrible mistake that the Troika now understands....

Stinicker wrote: »

I hate to see people go also but the scale of suffering inflicted by this man and his actions to me saw his quick demise as pure karma. Hundreds of young people have committed suicide the last few years due to the dire state of the country. Their blood is on the hands of Fianna Fail and Lenihan's actions that fateful day and night (of the banking guarantee).

Jesus Christ....you write that like you genuinely believe that he did it on purpose. That he had a painless way out and instead he thought 'no, let's not do that, let's screw everyone'.

squod wrote: »

Are we talking specifically about Anglo here? Have you listened to the Burtons interview about the meetings? Secret loans or no, we were being put in hoc for billions for some poxy little bank for no apparent reason.

Can see me spending time lookin up articles and quotes from four years back. Seems peoples memories are short.

In 2009 Richard Bruton of the opposition's Fine Gael responded by calling the recapitalisation plan a "€7 billion gamble on the wrong horse".

This was AFTER the gauruntee.

The Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton called for the board and senior management of the Financial Regulator to be sacked.They largely were or they resigned.

The Financial Regulator hired a partner from Ernst & Young, to advise on the €440 billion bank guarantee scheme in January 2009, despite the fact that serious questions have been asked about why Ernst & Young did not spot the massive loans that former chief executive Seán FitzPatrick concealed from his shareholders for eight years. Consultants Mazars, which reviewed their operations said "that regulatory expertise was lacking in some areas".

The Chief Executive of the Financial Regulator said that "a lay person would expect that issues of this nature and this magnitude would have been picked up" by the external auditors, Ernst & Young.[9] After receiving legal advice Ernst & Young declined to appear before a parliamentary committee.[10]

This in turn led to inaccurate figures for the total directors' loans given for eight consecutive years in the end of year Anglo accounts. 2008 was the first occasion on which FitzPatrick revealed his true figure, that of €87 million or twice the total of the other twelve directors' loan figures.[11]

The situation has been described as Ireland's version of Enron, the American energy company which went bankrupt in 2001, and it has been said that the principals would be immediately arrested if this had occurred in the United States.

The Garantee happened in September 2008...Richard Bruton started to question the ministers decision in December 2008.

The loans only became known on the 17th of deember 2008...
It emerges that Lenihan had insisted upon a review of these unknown loans ...the regulator wantd to simply continue ...without Lenihans intervention into an area he had no reason to assume his regulator was not dealing with we would not have known for months later...as is happening in Spain..have him to be grateful for on that

It is sept 2008 the garantee is in place and it is Dec 2008 richard Bruton and Mary hanafin start to question Anglo Irish recapitalization....

The six other banks had already also been garanteed in sept 2008 by th way

Their objectins were raised retrospetively BECAUSE OF THE REVIEW DONE AND ASKED BY LENIHAN HIMSELF they only found out because of him....

He was the one who actually found a lot of this stuff out and brought it to light beleive it or not...

Yes he made a mistake.....but people were behaving illegally..

poeticseraphim wrote: »

BECAUSE OF THE REVIEW DONE AND ASKED BY LENIHAN HIMSELF they only found out because of him....

He was the one who actually found a lot of this stuff out and brought it to light beleive it or not...

Yes he made a mistake.....but people were behaving illegally..

This is the political equivalent of saying the dog ate my homework. There's been a load of guff and guille going on that's beyond question.


What you're telling me is that he made a mistake, what I'm saying is that he did not.