Ireland

Iceland: Economy Exits Recession

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Even better off is Greenland:

– Why is Greenland so rich these days? It said goodbye to the EU!

At least Iceland didn’t bailout the banksters:

– Max Keiser: The IMF Is Bankrupt – The Fed And The Banksters – Iceland Report – And More

Whereas Ireland is completely doomed:

– And Now … Ireland: Pension Reserve Funds To Be Spent On The Banksters

The Anglo Irish Bank losses are the worst in the entire world and the bailout is an unprecedented looting of the Irish taxpayer.

Decision to force bondholders to pay for banking system’s collapse appears to pay off as economy grows 1.2% in third quarter


Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman has repeatedly called on Ireland, Greece and Portugal to consider leaving the euro area and defaulting on debts. Photograph: Mike Clarke/AFP/Getty Images

Iceland’s decision two years ago to force bondholders to pay for the banking system’s collapse appeared to pay off after official figures showed the country exited recession in the third quarter.

The Icelandic economy, which contracted for seven consecutive quarters until the summer, grew by 1.2% in the three months to the end of September.

Iceland famously agreed in a referendum to reject a scheme to repay most of its debts that were once worth 11 times its total national income.

In contrast to Ireland, Iceland’s taxpayers refused to foot the bill for the debts accumulated by the banking sector. Bondholders were told to accept dramatic reductions in the value of repayments on bank debt after the sector borrowed beyond its means to fund ambitious investments abroad.

The return to growth is likely to put pressure on Irish politicians to explain why Dublin rejected a more radical restructuring of its debts and a departure from the eurozone.

Iceland’s currency has fallen by around a quarter, helping its exports.

Read moreIceland: Economy Exits Recession

Max Keiser: The IMF Is Bankrupt – The Fed And The Banksters – Iceland Report – And More

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Must-see!


Added: 7. December 2010

This time, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, challenge French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, to play football against Manchester United if she can’t keep French banks from running to the U.S. Federal Reserve for emergency cash.

– Meet The 35 Foreign Banks That Got Bailed Out By The Fed (And This Is Just The CPFF Banks) (ZeroHedge):

One may be forgiven to believe that via its FX liquidity swap lines the Fed only bailed out foreign Central Banks, which in turn took the money and funded their own banks. It turns out that is only half the story: we now know the Fed also acted in a secondary bail out capacity, providing over $350 billion in short term funding exclusively to 35 foreign banks, of which the biggest beneficiaries were UBS, Dexia and BNP. Since the funding provided was in the form of ultra-short maturity commercial paper it was essentially equivalent to cash funding. In other words, between October 27, 2008 and August 6, 2009, the Fed spent $350 billion in taxpayer funds to save 35 foreign banks. And here people are wondering if the Fed will ever allow stocks to drop: it is now more than obvious that with all banks leveraging the equity exposure to the point where a market decline would likely start a Lehman-type domino, there is no way that the Brian Sack-led team of traders will allow stocks to drop ever… Until such time nature reasserts itself, the market collapses without GETCO or the PPT being able to catch it, and the Fed is finally wiped out in one way or another.


(Click on image to enlarge.)

The 35 companies in question:

UBS
Dexia SA
BNP Paribas
Barclays PLC
Royal Bank of Scotland Group
Commerzbank AG
Danske Bank A/S
ING Groep NV
WestLB
Handelsbanken
Deutsche Post AG
Erste Group Bank AG
NordLB
Free State of Bavaria
KBC
HSH Nordbank AG
Unicredit
HSBC Holdings PLC
DZ Bank AG
Republic of Korea
Rabobank
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation
Banco Espirito Santo SA
Bank of Nova Scotia
Mizuho Corporate Bank, Ltd.
Syngenta AG
Mitsui & Co Ltd
Bank of Montreal
Caixa Geral de Depósitos
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
Shinhan Financial Group Co Ltd
Mitsubishi Corp
Aegon NV
Royal Bank of Canada
Sumitomo Corp

Ireland Bailout Fails To Calm Nervy Markets – Prof. Nouriel Roubini Tells Portugal To Seek Bailout, Spain ‘Too Big To Bail Out’

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– Roubini tells Portugal to seek bailout as markets slide (Telegraph):

Nouriel Roubini, the US economist, said Portugal should consider asking for a bailout before its financial plight worsens as the euro fell after the €85bn Ireland bailout failed to ease eurozone debt fears.

Mr Roubini, the economist who predicted the financial crisis, told daily paper Diario Economico it is “increasingly likely” Portugal will require international assistance.

He said the country is approaching “a critical point” due to it high debt load and weak growth and there were ample funds to shore up Portugal, one of the eurozone’s smaller countries which contributes less than 2pc to the 16-nation bloc’s gross domestic product.

However, he said neighboring Spain, Europe’s fourth-largest economy, is “too big to bail out.”

• FTSE 100 down 2%; Dow loses 1%
• Euro slides to two-month low against US dollar
• Cost of insuring Spanish and Portuguese debt hits record high


Irish prime minister Brian Cowen speaking to the media in Dublin yesterday after the EU approved the €85bn bailout. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images

Stocks fell on both sides of the Atlantic, the euro tumbled, and the cost of borrowing for Ireland, Spain and Portugal jumped today, as details of the republic’s €85bn (£72bn) bailout failed to quell anxiety that the crisis in the eurozone was deepening.

Amid speculation that the European authorities may be left with little option but to embark on large-scale quantitative easing to try to bolster sentiment, Ireland’s borrowing costs shot as high as 9.6% as the terms of its bailout by the International Monetary Fund and European Union were digested by investors.

“The bottom line is that the financial markets are unimpressed, and that’s the most generous description,” Neil MacKinnon, global macro strategist at VTB Capital told Associated Press. “The crisis rumbles on.”

Read moreIreland Bailout Fails To Calm Nervy Markets – Prof. Nouriel Roubini Tells Portugal To Seek Bailout, Spain ‘Too Big To Bail Out’

Ireland: 100,000 Protest on Dublin’s Streets

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Your money is now with the banksters, or better with their elite masters, that also control all governments involved in the financial crisis.

Now the people will be footed with the unpayable bill .

This is not a financial crisis. This is a controlled demolition, total intentional destruction.

Now Ireland has been bankrupted and destroyed. Your country is next.

Major rally against cutbacks by government


Protesters in Dublin

Over 100,000 took to the streets in Ireland protesting the government’s economic policies and their cutbacks on the poor and the elderly.

Organizers claimed over 100,000 but police said only that the crowd exceeded 50,000 and a major rally was held in O’Connell Street.

The protest was organised by the Irish Congress of Trades Unions, who have said the austerity measures are too harsh that are being adopted following the IMF bailout.

The ICTU leadership said: ‘If they go ahead with their plans, they will do irreparable damage and turn this country into a social and economic wasteland.’

Read moreIreland: 100,000 Protest on Dublin’s Streets

And Now … Ireland: Pension Reserve Funds To Be Spent On The Banksters

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Unbelievable!

Wake up Ireland and watch this:

– Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory: Wall Street

UP to €15 billion from the National Pensions Reserve Fund, set aside when the Celtic Tiger was still roaring, is likely to be used to recapitalise three of the country’s banks.

Amid speculation last night that the rate of interest to be charged on the EU/IMF bailout could be as much as 6.7%, Fine Gael’s finance spokesman Michael Noonan said that kind of rate was “far too high” and unaffordable on any reasonable projection of growth.

The Department of Finance said the interest rate had still not been finalised, but given that much of the loan would be repayable over nine years the rate could be higher than the 5.2% charged to Greece but would not be as high as the 6.7% being quoted by some brokers.

Meanwhile, Anglo Irish Bank, which was downgraded to junk status yesterday evening, is expected to be closed swiftly, together with the Irish Nationwide Building Society, under the EU/IMF loan plan.

Officials hope to finalise the details of the €85bn package later today and have EU finance ministers approve it tomorrow.

The emphasis in the plan is to avoid drawing down money from the bailout and rely in the first place on money from the Pension Reserve Fund for the banks, and on the €20bn the state borrowed earlier this year to part-fund next year’s national budget.

Economist at the Economic and Social Research Institute, John FitzGerald, said he believed it would be a good idea to use the money in the pensions fund to recapitalise the banks, and keep the EU/IMF funds in reserve in case they needed further money later.

Read moreAnd Now … Ireland: Pension Reserve Funds To Be Spent On The Banksters

EU rescue costs start to threaten Germany itself

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Criminal elite puppet governments all over the world are bankrupting their countries, funneling billions and trillions of  euros and dollars to their elite puppet bankster friends.

That money ends up into the hands of just a view elite criminals that planned all of this.

The perfect elitist government-bank robbery and the people are footed with an unpayable bill that completely destroys their financial future.

See also:

– EU rescue costs start to threaten Germany itself

The escalating debt crisis on the eurozone periphery is starting to contaminate the creditworthiness of Germany and the core states of monetary union.


Chancellor Angela Merkel would risk popular fury if she had to raise fresh funds for eurozone debtors at a time of welfare cuts in Germany.

Credit default swaps (CDS) measuring risk on German, French and Dutch bonds have surged over recent days, rising significantly above the levels of non-EMU states in Scandinavia.

“Germany cannot keep paying for bail-outs without going bankrupt itself,” said Professor Wilhelm Hankel, of Frankfurt University. “This is frightening people. You cannot find a bank safe deposit box in Germany because every single one has already been taken and stuffed with gold and silver. It is like an underground Switzerland within our borders. People have terrible memories of 1948 and 1923 when they lost their savings.”

The refrain was picked up this week by German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. “We’re not swimming in money, we’re drowning in debts,” he told the Bundestag.

While Germany’s public and private debt is not extreme, it is very high for a country on the cusp of an acute ageing crisis. Adjusted for demographics, Germany is already one of the most indebted nations in the world.

Reports that EU officials are hatching plans to double the size of EU’s €440bn (£373bn) rescue mechanism have inevitably caused outrage in Germany. Brussels has denied the claims, but the story has refused to die precisely because markets know the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) cannot cope with the all too possible event of a triple bail-out for Ireland, Portugal and Spain.

Read moreEU rescue costs start to threaten Germany itself

A Spanish Bailout Would Represent A Systemic Risk For The Euro

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MADRID — Europe so far has survived the bailout of Greece. The financial rescue of Ireland also is manageable. Even if Portugal becomes the third country to succumb and seek aid, as many people widely predict, it is unlikely to push Europe to the financial brink.

But any bailout of Spain — with an economy twice the size of the other three combined — could severely stress the ability of Europe’s stronger countries to help the financially weaker ones, and spell deep trouble for the euro, Europe’s common currency. Even though Spain, like Ireland, has adopted an austerity plan to help it avoid the need for a bailout, it still could need aid if its banking system proves frailer than the government thinks it is, as was the case in Ireland.

This troubling possibility has unnerved lenders, with Spain’s borrowing costs rising even though Madrid has cut its deficit and the country’s banks maintain they have sufficient strength to absorb their bad real estate loans. “Europe can afford the collapse of Ireland, even perhaps that of Portugal, but not that of Spain, so Spain’s ultimate line of defense is in fact this knowledge that it’s too big to fail and that it represents a systemic risk for the euro,” said Pablo Vázquez, an economist at the Fundación de Estudios de Economía Aplicada, a research institute here.

Reflecting the worries of investors, the yield spread between Spanish 10-year government bonds and those of Germany continued to widen on Wednesday — to as high as 2.59 percentage points, the biggest gap since the introduction of the euro. Spreads typically widen when investors perceive greater risk of not being repaid.

Read moreA Spanish Bailout Would Represent A Systemic Risk For The Euro

Ireland Seeks Bailout From EU And IMF

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Before:

– Ireland Denies €60 Billion Bailout Talk As EU Puts On Pressure

– Irish Bond Yields Shooting To Record And Another Prof. Warns That It’s Just One Month Until Endgame

– Irish ‘Groundhog Day’ & Ireland Cancels All Remaining 2010 Bond Auctions Due To Market ‘Turbulence’

The banksters got just a little more for Christmas:

– Ireland: Bank Bailout May Hit 50 Billion Euros

– Anglo Irish Bank losses are the worst in the entire world

Now that is called THE state of the art bank robbery!

Now that the banksters and the government have bankrupted Ireland, the IMF will rape what is left:

– Max Keiser on Greece: ‘The IMF is a Financial Mafia’:

The International Monetary Fund is that last thing you need. You will lose your sovereignty. It exercises terrorism. You will be raped in such a way, that it will be the worst pain you have ever felt.

The banksters got billions for Christmas and the people will get cheese:

– Ireland: Government to let them eat cheese

Merry Christmas!


Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen.

Ireland applied for a bailout to help fund itself and save its banks, becoming the second euro member to seek a rescue from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said he expects talks on the package to be completed in the “next few weeks.” Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said the loan will be less than 100 billion euros ($137 billion), though he refused to give any further details at a press conference in Dublin today.

“A small sovereign like Ireland faced with an outsized problem that we have in our banking sector, cannot on its own address all those problems,” Lenihan said. Ireland may not draw down on the entire loan, he said.

The bailout follows two years of budget cuts that failed to restore market confidence as the cost of shoring up the financial industry climbed. After Irish bond yields soared in the past month, European authorities pushed Ireland to seek aid to prevent the crisis that began in Greece this year from spreading to other euro-area countries such as Portugal.

“It was inevitable. Ireland had no choice but to get financial help,” said Nicholas Stamenkovic, a fixed-income strategist in Edinburgh at RIA Capital Markets Ltd., a broker for money managers. “The market will still be waiting for the details of the assistance and the conditionality, but there should be a relief rally tomorrow.”

Read moreIreland Seeks Bailout From EU And IMF

Ireland Denies €60 Billion Bailout Talk As EU Puts On Pressure

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The Irish Government has been forced to make a second denial in two days that it is preparing to go to the EU for a multi-billion euro bail-out.


IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn played down fears that Ireland needs a bail-out

On Saturday night reports suggested that Irish officials had already held talks with the European Financial Stability Fund about a rescue package of between €60bn (£51bn) and €80bn.

European Central Bank officials were also reported to have urged the country to take emergency aid in order to stop concerns about the Irish economy spreading to neighbouring countries.

Germany is said to be pressing Ireland to seek aid before a November 16 meeting of European finance ministers to calm market volatility and win agreement on making investors help pay for future bailouts, according to Bloomberg, citing a German government official.

However, a spokesman for the Irish government told The Sunday Telegraph: “There are no talks on an application for emergency funding from the European Union.”

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), tried to play down fears that Ireland could require rescue funding.

Read moreIreland Denies €60 Billion Bailout Talk As EU Puts On Pressure

Ireland: Government to let them eat cheese

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See also:

– Irish Bond Yields Shooting To Record And Another Prof. Warns That It’s Just One Month Until Endgame

– Irish ‘Groundhog Day’ & Ireland Cancels All Remaining 2010 Bond Auctions Due To Market ‘Turbulence’

The banksters got just a little more for Christmas:

– Ireland: Bank Bailout May Hit 50 Billion Euros

– Anglo Irish Bank losses are the worst in the entire world


The Government is to distribute some 53 tonnes of free cheese to people in need in the run up to Christmas.

Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith announced the EU-funded scheme today following talks with a number of charitable organisations.

He said the cheese will be available free of charge for distribution to those most in need. It will be available from November 15th “in time for Christmas”.

The State has been given more than €818,000 from the EU budget to purchase the cheese and the Irish Dairy Board has been awarded the tender to supply it. More than €750,000 will be spent on the Christmas scheme.

The Minister said the scheme was “an important means of contributing towards the well-being of the most deprived citizens in the community”.

“I am very conscious that many people find themselves in difficult circumstances at present and I want to commend the work of the many charitable organisations who are working on the frontline to bring what comfort and relief they can,” he said. “I am glad to be able to help their work in such a practical way.”

Read moreIreland: Government to let them eat cheese

Irish Bond Yields Shooting To Record And Another Prof. Warns That It’s Just One Month Until Endgame

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Irish 10-year yields are shooting to new records this morning.

What’s going on? Now another University College Dublin professor, Karl Whelan, is warning that things could collapse in one month when the Irish budget is due.

Yesterday it was Colm McCarthy, also a UCD professor, making similar comments that got people nervous again.

Joe Weisenthal | Nov. 2, 2010, 4:47 AM

Source:  The Business Insider

Google Cut Its Taxes By $3.1 Billion, Tax Rate At Only 2.4%, $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes

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“The system is broken and I think it needs to be scrapped,” said Avi-Yonah, also a special counsel at law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington D.C. “Companies are getting away with murder.”


The Dublin subsidiary, which employs almost 2,000 people and sells advertising across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has more than tripled its workforce since 2006 and is credited with almost 90 percent of Google’s overseas sales, which totaled $12.5 billion in 2008. Photographer: Paul McErlane/Bloomberg

Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) — Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

Google’s income shifting — involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” — helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.

“It’s remarkable that Google’s effective rate is that low,” said Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist who formerly worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. “We know this company operates throughout the world mostly in high-tax countries where the average corporate rate is well over 20 percent.”

The U.S. corporate income-tax rate is 35 percent. In the U.K., Google’s second-biggest market by revenue, it’s 28 percent.

Read moreGoogle Cut Its Taxes By $3.1 Billion, Tax Rate At Only 2.4%, $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes

Ireland: State can no longer borrow money

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See also:

– Irish ‘Groundhog Day’ & Ireland Cancels All Remaining 2010 Bond Auctions Due To Market ‘Turbulence’

– Europe: Bond Refinancings Outweigh Deficit Reduction Plans

IRELAND CAN no longer borrow on the international markets because its “sovereign creditworthiness is gone”, Fine Gael finance spokesman Michael Noonan has said. He said that “Anglo Irish Bank was supposed to be too big to fail”, but “it was too big to save. That is the real position.”

Mr Noonan warned that “we have almost reached the point of the rescue of Anglo Irish Bank bringing down this country with the Minister being forced this morning to announce the closure of the bond markets.

“The closure of the bond market means the sovereign State is in deep trouble because it cannot borrow money.”

Speaking during the Dáil debate on the total expected exchequer cost of bailing out the banking system, Mr Noonan said the Government’s banking strategy had collapsed.

Mr Noonan described the figures as an “appalling disaster” and said the Government made the “calamitous mistake of guaranteeing all Anglo Irish Bank’s liabilities”. Months after nationalistation, the Minister said the potential liability would not exceed €4.5 billion.

“I accept you were misled and misinformed and so on, but there is a huge gap between €4.5 billion and the €34 billion potential final cost of Anglo,” he told Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan.

Ireland was now “left in the situation of having to cancel next month’s bond auction” because the country does not have creditworthiness any more and could not sell the bonds at an affordable price. That is the bottom line on the banking strategy the Government has pursued for two years.”

Read moreIreland: State can no longer borrow money

Irish ‘Groundhog Day’ & Ireland Cancels All Remaining 2010 Bond Auctions Due To Market ‘Turbulence’

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See also:

– Ireland: State can no longer borrow money

– Europe: Bond Refinancings Outweigh Deficit Reduction Plans

Ireland Cancels All Remaining 2010 Bond Auctions Due To Market “Turbulence”

Apparently in Ireland, a global stock market that surges up 10% in a month to celebrate the latest obliteration of the purchasing power of the American middle class is considered “turbulence.” This is precisely the excuse given by Irish PM Brian Cowen when asked why he has cancelled all bond auctions for the rest of the year. Surely, the market is buying it. Cowen also added that he doesn’t need funds at rates of 6.8 to 6.9%. What is hilarious is that he will need the funds much more in 3 months when the rates are double that, now that the country is openly nationalizing each and every bank, and will fund these “acquisitions” with tens of billions it doesn’t have.

From Bloomberg:

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen  said that his government decided to cancel bond auctions for the rest of the year because of “turbulence” in bond markets, and the state is already funded into next year. He made the comments in an interview with national broadcaster RTE.

“We are funded until next May,” Cowen said. “There has been such turbulence in the markets, since we don’t require those funds immediately why would we be going to get funds at rates such as 6.8 or 6.9 percent.”

(I could not find this Bloomberg article anymore. ???)

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/30/2010 12:55 -0500

Source: ZeroHedge

Irish `Groundhog Day’ Leaves Lenihan Battling Biggest Deficit

Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) — It must feel like deja vu for taxpayers and investors in Ireland.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said yesterday he cleaned up the mess left by “reckless” bankers. Now he has to turn back to tackling the largest budget deficit in the history of the euro region after the premium bondholders demand to buy Irish debt climbed to a record this week.

“It’s a bit like groundhog day, like you’ve been on the wrong road and have to come back and start all over again,” said Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Bloxham Stockbrokers in Dublin. “It’s a long way home.”

Ireland was among the first countries to react to the global credit crisis, avoiding going the way of Iceland, or later Greece, by bolstering its banks and then cutting spending and raising taxes. As what was Europe’s fastest-growing economy as recently as 2006 buckles under the weight of bank debt, the nation once more is trying to stave off financial ruin.

The government is taking control of Allied Irish Banks Plc and injecting extra cash into the previously nationalized Anglo Irish Bank Corp., raising the cost of the rescue to as much as 50 billion euros ($68 billion), Lenihan said yesterday.

Read moreIrish ‘Groundhog Day’ & Ireland Cancels All Remaining 2010 Bond Auctions Due To Market ‘Turbulence’

Ireland: Bank Bailout May Hit 50 Billion Euros

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50 billion euros is an awful lot of money for the Republic of Ireland.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihans is bankrupting Ireland, looting the people and is financing the elite banksters of the world that are 50 billion euros richer.

Never was robbing a bank more easy, risk-free  and lucrative.

The media is always telling the people about the losses and never about the elite criminals who made a fortune and are on the other side of those intentionally bad investments.

See also:

– Nationalised Anglo Irish Bank Posts €8.2 Billion Losses For Half Of 2010!

– Anglo Irish Bank losses are the worst in the entire world

– Ireland: Central Bank Hid Property Crash Forecast

brian-lenihan
“The Irish banking system is at rock bottom today,” Lenihan said today.

(30 Sept.) Bloomberg — Ireland is preparing to take majority control of Allied Irish Banks Plc and pump extra cash into Anglo Irish Bank Corp., raising the cost of repairing the financial system to as much as 50 billion euros ($68 billion).

“The Irish banking system is at rock bottom today,” Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said today in a Bloomberg Television interview in Dublin. He rejected speculation Ireland will need outside help. “It can only revive from now because it’s recapitalized and reformed,” he said.

Ireland’s deteriorating finances fueled investor concerns that it would become the first government after Greece to tap the 750 billion-euro rescue fund set up by the European Union and International Monetary fund to stanch the debt crisis. Irish bonds have plunged this month, sending the yield on 10-year securities to higher than any other euro nation except Greece.

The cost of bailing out the country’s banks may ultimately rise to about 50 billion euros, under a “stress case” scenario for Anglo Irish, according to figures published by the country’s finance ministry and the central bank in Dublin today. The base case estimate is about 45 billion euros, the figures show. Allied Irish may need as much as 3 billion euros.

Read moreIreland: Bank Bailout May Hit 50 Billion Euros

Bundesbank President Weber: Financial Crisis Is Not Over

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Weber warns crisis is ongoing as fears mount over Ireland

axel-weber
Axel Weber
Europe’s financial crisis is not yet over, one of the single currency bloc’s most senior policymakers warned yesterday, as he urged further reform of banking regulation.

Axel Weber, the President of Germany’s Bundesbank and a leading member of the council of the European Central Bank, said he was frustrated more had not been done to tackle the risks posed by very large banks.

“The financial crisis is still with us – we are not in year one after the crisis, we are in year four of the crisis,” Mr Weber said. “Moral hazard is in the financial system. I want to get to a situation where the term ‘too big to fail’ does not exist.”

Mr Weber’s warning was echoed by Ewald Nowotny, one of his colleagues on the ECB council, who called for European governments to begin stepping back from the emergency support, in the form of cheap funding, they have been extending to banks for more than two years.

Read moreBundesbank President Weber: Financial Crisis Is Not Over

Nationalised Anglo Irish Bank Posts €8.2 Billion Losses For Half Of 2010!

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See also:

– Moody’s Downgrades Ireland’s Credit Rating

– Anglo Irish Bank losses are the worst in the entire world

This is totally absurd!

Nationalised Anglo Irish Bank today posted losses of 8.2 billion euro (£6.7 billion) for half of 2010, claiming it was still battling through an exceptionally difficult period.

The state-run bank, which has been funded by 23 billion euro (£18.9 billion) of taxpayers’ money, said it expects further losses as more assets are shifted off the bank’s books.

“The new management of Anglo Irish Bank is working to significantly restructure the bank’s balance sheet, risk profile and culture in order to restore viability,” the bank said.

A breakdown of the six monthly returns showed it transferred 10 billion euro (£8.2 billion) of assets to Ireland’s so-called state controlled bad-bank, the National Asset Management Agency (Nama), set up to try to clean up troubled loan books of Irish lenders.

The bank said it suffered loan impairment charges of 4.8 billion euro (£3.9 billion) and a loss of 3.5 billion euro (£2.8 billion) over the transfer.

Anglo Management said it was grateful for the continuing support of Finance Minister Brian Lenihan.

Read moreNationalised Anglo Irish Bank Posts €8.2 Billion Losses For Half Of 2010!

Vatican rejects resignations of Irish bishops over child sex abuse scandal

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Here is what the catholic church did to child abusers and rapists:

– The ‘Pedophile’s Paradise’: Alaska Natives are accusing the Catholic Church of using their remote villages as a ‘dumping ground’ for child-molesting priests (Flashback)

The Vatican has rejected the resignations of two Catholic bishops in Ireland who offered to quit in the wake of a child sex abuse scandal, the Archbishop of Dublin said.

vatican_1111111111
The Vatican rejected the offers of resignation Photo: REUTERS

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said in a letter to priests in his archdiocese that Auxiliary Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field will remain in their jobs but will be given “revised responsibilities”.

The bishops presented their resignations to Pope Benedict XVI in December following a judge’s damning report on the Dublin archdiocese that found the Catholic Church concealed the abuse of children by priests for three decades.

In the letter he said: “Following the presentation of their resignations to Pope Benedict, it has been decided that Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field will remain as auxiliary bishops.”

The archbishop said they were “to be assigned revised responsibilities within the diocese.”

“This means that they will be available to administer confirmation in any part of the diocese in the coming year,” Martin added.

Read moreVatican rejects resignations of Irish bishops over child sex abuse scandal

Moody’s Downgrades Ireland’s Credit Rating

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See also:

– Anglo Irish Bank losses are the worst in the entire world

• Moody’s cuts Ireland’s sovereign bond rating by one notch

• Move will add to fears over Europe’s debt crisis

• IMF pulled €20bn finance deal for Hungary at the weekend

irish-flag-006
Moody’s cut Ireland’s credit rating this morning, citing weaker growth prospects and the cost of rebuilding the country’s crippled banking system (The Guardian)

Credit ratings agency Moody’s has downgraded Ireland’s debt rating, adding to investor jitters about the state of Europe’s heavily indebted economies.

The agency cut Ireland’s sovereign bond rating by one notch to Aa2 this morning, citing weaker growth prospects and the high cost of rebuilding the country’s crippled banking system. It added that the outlook was stable.

But the downgrade comes after the International Monetary Fund and the European Union pulled a €20bn (£17bn) financing deal for Hungary over the weekend. Talks broke down on Saturday after the European commission voiced concerns over the newly elected Hungarian government’s budget plans.

This means Hungary will not have access to remaining funds of €5.5bn in its €20bn credit line, agreed two years ago, until a review is completed. Hungary’s currency, the forint, plunged more than 2.5% against the euro on the news and bond yields surged by up to 30 basis points.

Ireland’s downgrade came ahead of a bond auction tomorrow.

Read moreMoody’s Downgrades Ireland’s Credit Rating

Anglo Irish Bank losses are the worst in the entire world

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anglo-irish-bank
Those were the good old days!

LOSSES posted by Anglo Irish Bank are the worst by any bank in the entire world, according to new data from a prestigious financial journal.

The taxpayer-owned bank’s loss in 2009 of €15bn was far bigger than those of giant US, Japanese and German banks, according to ‘The Banker’, an industry magazine listing the 25 biggest losses.

Anglo, which is hoping to split itself into a so-called ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bank, managed to lose almost more money than the two next biggest loss-makers put together, the magazine reveals.

Anglo, nationalised since January 2009, has already set a record with its 2009 loss — the largest ever posted by an Irish company.

Many experts believe such losses may never be recorded again in Irish business. And to cope with future losses, the Government is committed to pumping over €22bn into the bank.

Destruction

The scale of destruction wrought by the bank is clear when compared with other banks that reported smaller losses. For example, Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the largest banks in the world, lost only a quarter of what Anglo lost last year, the survey reveals.

US lender Citigroup, once the world’s largest bank, only lost half of what Anglo lost in 2009, despite taking a massive hit during the subprime crisis. Most of the 25 banks surveyed lost money because of the subprime crisis, whereas Anglo’s losses came from property lending.

Read moreAnglo Irish Bank losses are the worst in the entire world

Ireland: Central Bank Hid Property Crash Forecast

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* Data showing boom over was buried in report

THE Central Bank buried sensational data forecasting a crash in the property market months before the housing market began to crumble in early 2007.

Last week’s report into the banking crisis by Central Bank boss Professor Patrick Honohan revealed that minutes from the bank’s financial stability group had shown that predictions of a crash in the market were deliberately left out of a crucial report in 2006.

“It was decided in 2006 to exclude from the main text of the report data and references to a likely 15 per cent house price overvaluation that was contained in a themed research paper,” according to Prof Honohan’s report.

Read moreIreland: Central Bank Hid Property Crash Forecast

European Debt Crisis Worsens: Now Hungary Warns of Greek-Style Crisis

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– Hungary Warns of Greek-Style Crisis (New York Times):

PRAGUE — Fears that the debt crisis could migrate to central Europe were stirred Friday after a senior Hungarian government official said the previous government had manipulated budget figures and lied about the state of the economy, but most financial experts dismissed the remarks as a ham-handed negotiating ploy.

The official, Peter Szijjarto, a spokesman for Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was quoted by Bloomberg News and other news agencies as saying that the Hungarian economy was in a “very grave situation.” He even raised the specter of a default, saying such speculation “isn’t an exaggeration.”

His comments followed similar warnings on Thursday by Lajos Kosa, a vice president of the governing center-right Fidesz party, and other officials that Hungary was in danger of suffering a Greek-style crisis, with budget deficits — officially 4 percent of gross domestic product in 2009 — possibly reaching 7.5 percent of G.D.P. this year.

After the comments, the Hungarian currency slid and the yield on benchmark 10-year Hungarian bonds surged, to close at 8.1 percent from 7.4 percent on Thursday. The Budapest Stock Exchange Index closed down 3.4 percent, having fallen as much as 7.1 percent earlier in the day.

For all the alarmism by senior government officials in recent days, however, economists said the country was nowhere near the crisis level of Greece and emphasized that the comments appeared to have been politically motivated to tarnish the previous Socialist government and to give Mr. Orban a stronger negotiating position with the I.M.F.

Sovereign Credit-Default Swaps Surge on Hungarian Debt Crisis

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St. Stephen’s Basilica stands above the rooftops in Budapest. (Bloomberg)

June 4 (Bloomberg) — Credit-default swaps on sovereign bonds surged to a record on speculation Europe’s debt crisis is worsening after Hungary said it’s in a “very grave situation” because a previous government lied about the economy.

The cost of insuring against losses on Hungarian sovereign debt rose 63 basis points to 371, according to CMA DataVision at 3:30 p.m. in London, after earlier reaching 416 basis points. Swaps on France, Austria, Belgium and Germany also rose, sending the Markit iTraxx SovX Western Europe Index of contracts on 15 governments as high as a record 174.4 basis points.

Hungary’s bonds fell after a spokesman for Prime Minister Viktor Orban said talk of a default is “not an exaggeration” because a previous administration “manipulated” figures. The country was bailed out with a 20 billion-euro ($24 billion) aid package from the European Union and International Monetary Fund in 2008.

“The comments out of Hungary have really spooked the market,” said Rajeev Shah, a credit strategist at BNP Paribas SA in London. “Investors are interpreting it as bad sign for trying to tackle Europe’s debt crisis.”

The euro dropped below $1.21 for the first time since April 2006, stocks tumbled and the cost of insuring against corporate default rose on speculation Hungary will weaken the EU’s willingness to rescue the region’s indebted nations.

Credit markets were also roiled after data showed U.S. employers hired fewer workers in May than forecast, signaling slowing economic growth.

‘Something Serious’

Read moreEuropean Debt Crisis Worsens: Now Hungary Warns of Greek-Style Crisis

ECB Buying Up Greek Bonds; German Central Bankers Suspect French Intrigue

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The bailout for Greece was never about helping the people. Instead it was a bailout for the banksters with taxpayer money, looting the people.

And the ECB buying up Greek bonds is pure quantitative easing (=printing money=inflation=tax on monetary assets), which will not stabilize, but devalue the euro.

In this case things are a little more complicated because the credit line for the ECB quantitative easing policy comes directly from the US Federal Reserve.

GERMANY/
European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet: German central bankers are skeptical about the ECB’s buying-up of Greek bonds.

The European Central Bank has been buying up Greek bonds by the bucketload, even though Athens is already getting money from an EU rescue fund. German central bankers suspect a French plot behind the massive buy-up — after all, it gives French banks the perfect opportunity to get rid of their Greek assets.

The senior members of the German central bank, the Bundesbank, regarded Axel Weber with a look of anticipation. What would Weber, the Bundesbank president, say about the serious crisis that had them all so worried, they wondered? And what did he intend to do about it?

Weber said nothing and, as some who attended the meeting report, even his facial expression was inscrutable. The Bundesbank president remained stone-faced as he acknowledged the latest figures, which indicated that by the end of last week the European Central Bank (ECB) had already spent close to €40 billion ($50 billion) on buying up government bonds from Spain, Portugal, Ireland and, in particular, Greece.

The ECB already has about €25 billion of Greece’s mountain of debt on its books, and it is adding another €2 billion a day, on average. The Bundesbank, which has a 27 percent stake in the ECB, is responsible for €7 billion of the ECB’s Greek government bonds.

Many Bundesbank members are wondering why the ECB is buying Greek bonds in the first place, particularly on this scale, now that the euro-zone countries’ €110 billion bailout package for Greece has been approved, and the first tranche of the funds has already been disbursed.

The general €750 billion rescue fund for the remaining highly indebted countries has been approved but not yet set up. For this reason, it certainly makes sense to stabilize the prices of Spanish, Portuguese and Irish bonds. Nevertheless, some of the central bankers have a sneaking suspicion that there is a French conspiracy at work.

Helping French Banks

Read moreECB Buying Up Greek Bonds; German Central Bankers Suspect French Intrigue