Open Letter from an angry father, taxpayer, citizen

I've submitted this to a few papers, but I won't hold my breath. I hope you feel likewise, and are not shy about expressing it.

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I was already angry at the government borrowing money to prop up the loan books and liquidity of reckless banks. I read with disgust that in September, on top of all the other burdens, 55 Billion Euros had to be found to pay bank bondholders in the banks for bonds that had matured. The banks didn't have it, nor did the Dept of Finance have it lying around (despite all the lying around the department).
I phoned, and e-mailed the Dept. of Finance, Central Bank and Brian Lenihan's office asking how this 55 BILLION was paid off.
I got some amount of waffle, and no answer. I can only assume we've borrowed it, and then given it to the banks to pay their bondholders.

This is equivalent to being forced to remortgage your house in order to pay people who are owed money by the local bookie. And it works out at over 12,000 per man, woman and child in the country, and that's before interest.
None of us would agree to it, no matter what type of waffle was presented. Yet as a national policy, talking heads try to defend it on the airwaves, and this nonsense is given some credence.

I also asked how much MORE of this bank debt is still outstanding, when it is due, and what rate of interest is being paid on the bonds.
You can image I was not buried with responses, despite the fact that as a taxpayer, I am expected to pay for this.

To those of us who have been side-tracked into arguing over the crumbs, (cutting of the minimum wage, or whether pensioners or the unemployed should be screwed, rather than students) I say, you are missing the big picture. The longer this government is in power, the more it drags us into debt to pay off banking speculators.

Like most people in this country who are not TDs, tax exiles or speculators, I work hard to provide for my family. I pay taxes because I like the idea of schools, hospitals, and a transport system, and a safety net for those who lose their jobs, or health. The rest is for rent, food, clothes, etc and a small bit for the kid's piggy bank on the window.
Nowhere in our family budget is there a provision to support bank and property speculators, and somehow hope our children won't be educated in prefabs, worry about being on hospital trolleys, paying for drinking water, or having to emigrate because the economy goes down the tubes.
My children are my responsibility, my duty is to them. Bank speculators can whistle at the wind for all I care.

I suspect most of your readers feel likewise, and if so, I would encourage us all to resist this scam, by strike, boycott or whatever peaceful means are at our disposal, until we are rid of gombeens and
vultures, and can get on with out lives, more vigilant than before of the dangers of trusting the 'experts', rather than common sense.

Is mise,

Tim Hourigan
Limerick

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