Open Letter to ALL TDs.

Fianna Fail, having turned a blind eye, for years to the crazy amount of lending by the banks during the property boom, now wants us all to 'share the pain'.

Fine Gael and Labour, our supposed opposition, lately found guts to rant at Fianna Fail/Green policies. Where were you 2 years ago? Where were you 4 years ago? Were you too scared to lose popularity by suggesting the Celtic Tiger slow down, while it was in fact running full tilt towards a cliff?

Banks have liquidity and risk management reasons for a reason, and we have heard (via the Seanad) that the Financial Regulator was long ago told that these rules were being breached, but no action was taken, as the bubble got bigger and bigger.

Where was the oversight? Lack of interest or lack of spine folks? How did you earn those high legislators salaries?

Now, of course, European banks lent recklessly to our banks as well, to get a piece of the easy action, and it seems none of the main parties has the guts to tell these European banks, that they too will have to share the pain for their own recklessness.

Instead, the Irish taxpayer, considered meek and numerically inferior on the periphery of Europe is to be the fall guy? Because our politicians don't have the nerve to stand up when it counts. The TOUGH decision would have been to tell the speculators to work within the rules, and to take their losses when they gambled wrong. The cowardly decision was to lie about it and waffle, all the while setting up the taxpayer to bear the burden of these speculators.



To hear FF, FG and Labour all talk about the pain we must all share just shows the nature of spineless punch-and-judy politics engaged in, in this country.



We've bundled the bank debt in with sovereign debt, and gone to the bond markets to en-debt the country at crazy coupon rates, and now we're cut off from the bond market we're faced with the IMF, doubling our debt-GNP ratio, and spending more on annual repayments than it costs to run the health system, and then of course we get to pay it off by having anything of value privatised and sold off at firesale prices and normally to the same small clique of financiers.



Those are the conditions we will have if we take the IMF money, rather than break away the bank debts from the sovereign debt, and fix our country Ireland/ Eire, not that mafia outfit known as 'Ireland Inc'.



Who has the guts to do it? If it's not you. Don't come looking for a vote.



Yours sincerely,

Tim Hourigan

former employee of Bank of Ireland Securities Services IFSC,

JF Fleming Fund Management S.A., Luxembourg,

Invesco Asset Management, IFSC, Dublin

Global Asset Management,IFSC Dublin

JP Morgan Chase, Sydney,

Mercantile Mutual / ING Asset Management Sydney