I spotted this in a paper the other day. Some clever gimp had written in,
“Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalised, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism”
Sound familiar? You’ve probably had it fired across to you by a co-worker recently. It’s attributed to Karl Marx and “Das Kapital”. Except it’s not. It’s bullshit. You don’t believe me? Look it up clever gimps.
It seems there’s a lot of bullshit going around the last few years. The bankers have been sitting on their gold plated toilets pulling off reams of quilted soft toilet paper with pictures of little puppies and young professional couples queuing for mortgages on them. The toilet paper in case you missed it was freely available loan capital from the European and World banks. Except the toilet paper has run out and the place is really starting to stink.
I’m sorry if my terminology upsets those with gentle constitutions but there is nothing more terrifying that discovering there is no bog roll left, especially when you’ve just dropped a whopper and oh boy have they dropped a big whopper. Developers like Sean Dunne paid €50 million an acre, (€379 million overall) for a site in Ballsbridge with an audacious and ostentatious development in full and calculated contravention of the city development plan. Dublin city council approved the majority of it, out of concern for the welfare of the residents apparently, who naturally were up in arms about the whole thing. I’m not saying hands were greased but I’m sure a few councillors got a nice Christmas hamper that year. Investigations are on-going but the last time we investigated this sort of thing a number of Senior and Junior Council were able to retire to holiday homes in Dubai on their profits and no-one got prosecuted. God save us from these investigations which seem to be more corrupt than the spoofy little bastards they are investigating. An Bord Pleanala has recently rightly overturned this decision. The only oasis of government that has followed procedure and Sean’s left shovelling. More stink. The last ten years of corrupt, ahem, careful planning that have led to thousands of apartments being built without a thought to ancillary developments. Hundreds of houses without proper access roads or footpaths not to mind a local shop, left poor Sean and others thinking this is how development was done in our crazy little country. One wonders what is to happen to these utopian residential concentrations once the kids start turning thirteen and start looking for something to do without any facilities within any commutable distance.
I’m not going into the cause of the property bubble and the banks whoring money to us for “expensive new train tracks, ching ching” because it doesn’t matter now and the end result is when they stop making it, we do too. The past is the stinking past and we all have to clean up the mess left behind. The Government has sought to flush the toilet by shoring up the developers plaything, Anglo Irish bank. Anglo Irish Bank was founded in 1964. Its €72 billion loan book is extended mainly to builders and property developers. That €72 billion, as we all know is about as sound as the tooth fairy as in, in theory you can ask for the money but don’t be surprised if it’s not under your pillow in the morning. Anglo Irish was run by a delightful little man named Sean Fitzpatrick. Sean gave a lovely little speech in October 2008 in which he urged the government to cut spending on what he called the “sacred cows” of Irish society, namely the children, the ederly and healthcare. Sean sounds like a true socialist who undoubtedly has read Das Kapital cover to cover. In the meantime it transpires Sean had been fiddling the book at Anglo concealing hundreds of millions in personal loans to himself and his fellow directors in a devious little exercise known as “teaming and lading” which involves whipping the money around in various accounts to conceal the loans. In his case these loans were comfortably hidden away within the folds of Irish Nationwide towards the end of each fiscal year when the auditors arrived and cosily put back once they had departed. This is the bank you’ll remember that had to issue an apology as inappropriate comments by the CEO’s son, Michael Fingleton, who used the governments deposit guarantee as an advertisement urging UK investors to deposit their cash in Nationwide on foot of these guarantees. When charged about the collapse of the bank’s loan book back in October for being reckless and having the taxpayer interject Sean cited global forces and refused to apologise for extending farcical sums and failing to exercise fiscal responsibility.
The cause of our problem was global, so I can't say 'sorry' with any kind of sincerity he said
With light of recent development and his own personal finances they might have well asked the leaders of Hamas to a bar mitzvah. When the scandals were uncovered Sean stepped down and slunk away into the night oozing a train of slime, and the financial regulator, Patrick Neary, behind him who looked like he’d been trapped in an Austrian dungeon for the past ten years engaging in some S&M with some big-wigs from Formula one. In reality, the financial regulatory had uncovered the loans when it was poking around in the loan book of Irish Nationwide. It is still being investigated whether Fitzpatrick’s actions broke the law. Generally loans to directors are prohibited by the Companies Acts unless loans are given in the ordinary course of business of the banks. One wonders if the ordinary course of business of Anglo was to give millions of unsecured loans to unscrupulous individuals. A quick examination of the loan book shows it probably is.
A new chairman, Donal O’Connor has been parachuted in, a few heads rolled and then the government stepped in to pass the Anglo Irish Bank Corporation Bill 2009 which passed through the Senate without vote or debate. Minister Lenihan stated that "clear blue water" had been inserted between the old and new versions of Anglo and defended the nationalisation by saying that if the government were to let the bank fail it would be saying to Ireland and other economies that the country was "closed for business". One shudders to think just what “business” we are open for. Apart from this obvious rhetoric any sane person has to examine just what the hell was the government’s logic for hocking the taxpayer and probably all the way down to our grandchildren. Personally I’ll follow Sherlock Holmes on this one, once you have discounted the impossible, whatever’s left, no matter how illogical must be true. We know that Anglo’s loan book is, for all practical purposes worthless. It may have secured loans but it cannot call in those loans as in reality there is nothing to call in. Anglo does no dabble in the two up, two down domestic mortgage markets. Therefore if it went to the wall it’s not the ordinary working people that would stand to lose. It is impossible that the Governments logic was to save the ordinary working folk from financial ruin and the workhouse. What’s left is a conscious decision from Ireland’s elite political class to save Ireland’s elite financial class although elite is being overgenerous in both cases. What we are bailing our are land speculators and greed merchants. Builders who passed Go, collected two hundred dollars and landed on the go directly to financial Jail space but have played their get out of jail free card that was promised over €400 a plate dinners in those crisp white tents at the Galway races when the boom was on and there was enough gout to go around.
Normally this probably wouldn’t bother the rest of us. What’s new I hear you cry, politics, business and corruption is as old as Rome itself. It’s human nature, and a lot of us would probably think that we don’t want to change the system we just want to be the beneficiaries of this corruption. Think of the simple pleasure of blagging the VIP area in a top club or event and pumping down tarts and torts for free! Now multiply that feeling for an unfettered gravy train for years. Ask that other little prick at FAS, Rody Malloy, a career civil servant ( there’s a hypocrisy just who is he serving?) who went on the airways to inform us all he was “entitled” to travel first class and bring his wife along too. For whom hundreds on movies and beauty treatments were “chickenfeed” in the scheme of the trip and you get some idea of the culture at the top. What’s wrong is that our little economic island is adrift in the global economic sea and we’re all rowing in different directions. The politicians who have had nothing to do for ten years only take credit have suddenly sought to stem the tide by taking a leaden institution like Anglo and wrapping it in gold foil and pretending that it’s good currency. It’s not. What’s wrong is loading the public finances with the developer’s debts and then watch them descend like vultures on Anglo to withdraw their funds. What’s wrong is cutting teachers and increasing class sizes, scaling back on essential public services like Dublin Bus. What’s wrong is robbing the three sacred cows on the advice of a black hearted bastard like Sean Fitzpatrick. You get the idea. What we need is some independent leadership in this country but it’s quite easy to know what you are against and another to know exactly what you are for. One thing is certain though:
This flushing exercise will not take away the stench.
©Setanta Landers 2009
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