Nationalisation Watch / Govt. rethinking 3.5 billion bailout for the banks?

Remember this thread from p.ie ? Or this event at least? The German ambassador getting his teeth sunk into the Irish shinbone and getting savaged himself in return. Someone resurrected it saying he was vindicated.
http://www.politics.ie/chat/20716-german-ambassadors-rather-unkind-words.html

Twin Towers dug up a TimesOnline article about ten posts in with the text of the speech.
Ambassador’s jokes get lost in translation as ‘avaricious’ Irish fail to see the funny side

Quote :

But Mr Pauls ploughed on regardless, describing Irish history as “even sadder than Poland”

Not so. At least we weren't invaded by the Germans.

It would be hard to think of a European country with a worse history than Poland in the last 500 years. Somewhere like Armenia, perhaps parts of the Balkans?

http://www.ise.ie/app/popup_graph.asp?INDEX_TYPE=

The FTSE is on the up, but the ISEQ is dropping like a stone. The fact that Cowen was not able to commit to any injection of funds into the Irish banks surely underlies this. Is the "guarantee" not shown up to be a farce, EU approved or not?

Well, even if the guarantee works to stimulate liquidity, bank shares are likely to be devalued by an equity injection (dilution of share value), reduced dividends (as the preferential govt shares get first dibs), and reduced profitability (as the banks pay for debt guarantee).

I don't think the crisis of confidence is being caused by the lack of a funds injection but rather by its imminence. The lower the shares go the more of a percentage will be allocated to the government for an equity injection - it's a vicious circle until the equity is actually introduced. The government have to decide whether they care about the price falling or not. I suspect that they won't care. Somebody has to pay so it might as well be the investors as the taxpayers.

This is a clear run down on the bail out. I'm looking for the "Terms and Conditions" if anyone has a link.

http://www.mccannfitzgerald.ie/ExternalUploadedFiles/Irish_Government_Protection_Scheme%20-%20For%20Website.pdf

The Act in English http://www.oireachtas.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=/documents/bills28/acts/2008/a1808.pdf

The Act in Irish http://www.oireachtas.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=/documents/bills28/acts/2008/a1808i.pdf

European "approval" of bailout [url=http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do? reference=MEMO/08/619&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en]LINK[/url]

Report on Stress Testing of Irish Banks in 2003 LINK




Does anyone know if the Terms of the Bailout have been released

Aragon just reminded me of this very clear article by Morgan Kelly, spelling out the dangers of the Bank bail out.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/1002/1222815457103.html

Government signed off last week on the deal with the Irish banks. I'll be trying to get my head around the terms tomorrow, if I can find them.

I came across someone who owes a couple of million to an Irish Bank last week. He had been called in for review of their interest only loan, sweating, to find that it was rolled over in a friendly manner. The impression certainly was that the Banks are not so worried now about default, or slow repayment.
Does that mean that the risk has now been transferred to the tax payer?

cactus flower wrote:

Aragon just reminded me of this very clear article by Morgan Kelly, spelling out the dangers of the Bank bail out.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/1002/1222815457103.html

Government signed off last week on the deal with the Irish banks. I'll be trying to get my head around the terms tomorrow, if I can find them.

I came across someone who owes a couple of million to an Irish Bank last week. He had been called in for review of their interest only loan, sweating, to find that it was rolled over in a friendly manner. The impression certainly was that the Banks are not so worried now about default, or slow repayment.
Does that mean that the risk has now been transferred to the tax payer?

I hope your aquaintance hasn't stopped sweating. I imagine the only reason he/she's allowed to roll-over the debt is that they are meeting the interest payment portion of the loan. Every day that goes by they are losing money and the bank is staking a future claim on their wealth.

The idea of the Irish govt and the bankers is that they can put off the day of reckoning for awhile, and that the economy will return to positive growth in the not too distant future enabling your buddy to pay off her/his loan. They are taking a wait and see approach just as the Japanese banks did in the 1990's. Of course, the Japanese are a different kettle of fish. Their citizens, unlike ours, are willing to save for a rainy day and they haven't gone on a spending spree for over a decade. So the exptected upturn which would have saved the pro-longed down turn in the dometic Japanese economy never materialised; even during the global economic expansion of the last decade. Eventually Japanese banks had to write off all the bad debt which then pro-longed the stagnation of the domestic economy which in turn made the Japanese save even more.

Our government hopes to get another bounce out of the property market via their HFA FTB scheme and get the domestic economy rolling again on the back of the property bounce. The banks hope this activity will allow defaulting developers to pay off their loans and correct the inbalances of Irish financial institutions. Of course the FTB is going to acquire debt on inflation property whilst the developers who've made bad investment decisions will be bailed out from their incorrect analysis. Irish solution to Irish problem.

I'm not convinced people will buy into the schemes. There are too many stories like this around and people will become much more cautious than they were.

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=95257

It wrecks my head to think they are still trying to get a property lift. They will be axing jobs in order to keep capital construction spend in the NDP going, but at the end of the day earnings and job security will be what decides whether people can buy a house or not.

cactus flower wrote:

I'm not convinced people will buy into the schemes. There are too many stories like this around and people will become much more cautious than they were.

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=95257

It wrecks my head to think they are still trying to get a property lift. They will be axing jobs in order to keep capital construction spend in the NDP going, but at the end of the day earnings and job security will be what decides whether people can buy a house or not.

I imagine there are quite a few people in the same sorry boat. Sounds like that poster had saved a deposit for a home and planned for a future of two full time jobs that would never be in jeopardy. Didn't anyone tell them that there is no such things as a job for life anymore. But ,the amount of debt they took on is just unimagineable to me.

See, that's my problem. I can't imagine living the "lifestyle" and at this point in my life a kind of look upon this lifestyle as absurd. I suppose I'm just too old fashioned or out of date.

Also, where I live tends to cloud my outlook. There are many people around my area who never fell for the property ladder hype and who have saved money and are leading decent lives without the hassle of debt. However, this scheme might just be the hook that get them on the debt conveyer belt. Since the money is coming for local councils, many people will view the loans in a more benign light. The idea I've heard expressed already is: "sure I can rent off the council, so I might as well buy of the council. What are they doing to do, throw me out?" Well, yes, they just might, as your entering into a different legal agreement. Many people can't see beyond easy ownership options.

We had a hellavu job disuading my sister-in-law from purchasing a home from the council last year. Until we went over the legal ramifications and wrote out an existing budget versus a new mortgage based budget, nothing was stopping her. Only until her boss spoke up and told her she was committing a grave error that would impact on the quality of her live did she change her mind.

The area you describe probably described most of Ireland ten years ago.
I'm glad your sister in law has decided to stay debt free.

I found this blog on a site you linked earlier. It has some interesting things to say about the government bail outs:

"This was always a tough crisis to handle, but if we had responded to it in an appropriate and forceful manner, the worst could have been avoided. The problem is that we are making all sorts of policy mistakes now, very seriously mistakes. Unless reversed with a weeks at the latest, they will lead to a situation that truly deserves the epitaph of a global meltdown. We would no longer be talking about the worst financial crisis since 1929. It would simply be the worst financial crisis.

Everybody knows the mistakes of the banks, the regulators, or the rating agencies. Now governments on both sides of the Atlantic are committing perhaps even bigger mistakes. It seems that even in times of severe crisis, their main priorities are about short term political gain. The US administration’s TARP proposal is a case in point. It has lambasted by almost every economist, including those who normally disagree with each other on most things. Buying up toxic securities at above market prices is simultaneously the most expensive and unfairest way to recapitalise the banking system. It is very difficult to believe that the US treasury secretary can possibly be driven by a motive other than a wish to benefit the investment banks he once chaired, and which stands gain handsomely from such a package, and which would never dream of accepting any government capital infusions. The only alternative explanation for his behaviour is immense stupidity – and I know that he is not a stupid man.

Over here in Europe, the policy response is just as bad. The Germans have been bailing out institutions such as IKB Bank with no systemic relevance whatsoever. The same actually goes for Hypo Real Estate. Its policy relevance is purely to secure Germany’s leadership in the market for Pfandbriefe or covered bonds. In other words, the Germans are bailing out to secure or maintain a competitive edge against other euro area countries. That’s also behind the Irish rescue programme. Ever the good Europeans, the Irish only care about Dublin’s status as a European finance centre. We should not be surprised that Germany stubbornly rejects the idea of euro area wide, or EU wide, bailout scheme. Such a scheme would certainly have to be much better managed. It would be symmetric, perhaps even model-based, as it was the case during the Swedish financial crisis in the early 1990s. The Germans fear that they would lose out, as the EU would almost certainly not rescue the rotten Landesbanken, or other institutions through which the political establishment exercise undue influence"

http://www.eurointelligence.com/Article.620+M5382811e588.0.html

He goes on to say that if Germany had to bail out the major German banks it simply would not have the resources to do it. Basically he says that all but about 40 european banks should be let fail, and the state should operate a kind of skeleton banking service that he believes would work, based on the Swedish bail out.

The US bailout was subjected to pretty serious criticism. In contrast, I have seen very little analysis and critique of the European approach with the spin generally being that Europe had got it right, unlike the US.

http://www.thepost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=THE+MARKET-qqqs=themarket-qqqid=36979-qqqx=1.asp

The Sunday Business Post says that the ECB has required us to guarantee ECB loans/deposits in Irish banks. Can anyone explain what, if any, implications there are to this?

I see that the extent of the liability is now said to be 500 billion euro.

John Kay of the FT was just on Morning Ireland and he said Ireland got it wrong and England right. Ireland shouldn't have given a guarantee to the banks as it doesn't stop them from their irresponsible lending which Kay believes they have been doing - the 'no job, no problem' mortgage. It could probably be argued that 100% mortgages are a class of sub-prime in my view given the exorbitant interest that is paid later on a property.

Kay believes the banks have a whack of fundamental problems but the most dangerous and immediate one is liquidity. Re-capitalising the banks would have been the better route - buying shares in them to put capital in so it can flow around and allow them do their business as normal instead of giving them a carte blanche to go ahead doing what they have been doing

The money supply and banking system is just that - a system. Squire before compared money in banks to lubricant in a system like oil in your engine. That oil has one job - to keep your pistons from welding to the inside of your cylinders because of the heat. What the banks have done is tap into that system to use the oil not only as a lubricant for your pistons but also to cook your chips and do other jobs like heat your water for your coffee, all the time recycling it back into the engine. This is not really an analogy - some mechanics stretch systems in this way to wring more energy, use etc. out of them but often what you gain on the swings ...

What they're doing can't last and must be unwound and dismantled slowly and carefully. The jobs the banks do must be seperated from investment banking, sub-prime lending and normal, 'boring' ordinary-people's banking as Hugh Hendry said last night. The Government must take a stake and start putting people to the stake. Because letting the banks do what they don't do best will ultimately put the shoulders of the taxpayer (the engine, the motor) under this 500 billion euro problem. We see already what is happening with a deficit of around 10 billion and even if it were to double to 20 it still wouldn't be anywhere near the ultimate clanger of all time of 500 but already we're starting to lose decent parts of our system in education and health. The heating and radio and lights are starting to disappear from our vehicle already. What would we lose if 20 billion were to be pumped into the banks to keep it going with it's teetering pile of our version of toxicity? The roof, the windows, the bonnet ?

John Kay said there could be a chance that the whole thing could 'seize up' ('cease') and this is good old engine talk when the engine oil disappears and you weld your pistons to the walls of your cylinders. Your engine is on the scrapheap at that point.

Excellent post Auditor #9. Will you put it up on the Home Page please?

The Financial Times has another article today - The Government has backed down on making the banks pay for the bail out if a bank goes down. Their whole scheme needs to be looked at to see what they have got us in to. The EU and the ECB both demanded changes and not the banks are getting changes too. I'm going to copy it here to save people the trouble of registering with the FT site.

Dublin waters down bank scheme
By John Murray Brown in Dublin

Published: October 28 2008 02:58 | Last updated: October 28 2008 02:58

The Irish government has bowed to pressure from its two biggest banks and dropped an insistence that the industry as a whole help to pay the costs involved in settling the debts of any insolvent bank.

To minimise the cost to Irish taxpayers, the original plan envisaged that where the guarantee is called upon, and the creditors repaid, any cost not recovered from the bank in trouble would be recouped from the other covered institutions “over time in a manner consistent with their long-term viability and sustainability”.

EDITOR’S CHOICE
Full coverage: Global financial crisis - Oct-22Ireland to bust EU rules with 6.5% deficit - Oct-14EU set to approve Irish bank guarantees - Oct-13Irish bank governor defends guarantees - Oct-03Brown attacks Irish banks over guarantee - Oct-02Lenihan: Ireland had to act quickly on guarantees - Oct-02An official with one of the big banks said the way the scheme was originally drawn up could have exposed them to an “unquantifiable liability”.

The change, published among a series of amendments on the finance ministry’s website this week, makes clear that “a covered institution is not required to indemnify the minister in respect of any payments made by the minister under a guarantee given to any other covered institution”.

But bankers say this is particularly important for Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks if, as many expect, Ulster Bank, their only rival as a universal lender, now chooses to gain a competitive advantage by remaining outside the guarantee scheme.

The six Irish-owned banks were on Monday night expected to sign up to be covered by the guarantee. Five non-Irish banks have until the end of next week to decide.

A spokesman for Ulster Bank, part of Royal Bank of Scotland, said its “application is progressing”. HBOS said it was “still looking at the detail”.

Finance ministry officials say there is no formal indication they will not join. Officials say there will be some consternation as Alistair Darling, the UK chancellor, vigorously lobbied Brian Lenihan, the Irish finance minister, on behalf of RBS to be included, on the grounds that to be left out would put the non-Irish banks at a disadvantage.

However, a lot has happened in the three weeks since Ireland announced it was stepping in to guarantee the liabilities of its lenders – not least the UK’s recapitalisation plan, which covers RBS and HBOS.

Irish bankers believe the issue for Ulster Bank is not so much the levy for the guarantee, which the government estimates could come to €1bn ($1.25bn, £800m) for the 11 institutions over the two years of the scheme. The main concern is the interference in management, with “public interest” directors appointed to the board, setting lending policy and limits on wholesale funding – not to mention the remuneration of directors.

It seems to be a matter of the utmost urgency that Government should use the rapidly declining Pension Fund to provide liquidity to the "shop" end of banks that oils the wheels of our national economy, and leave the toxic end with the shareholders, who have taken big profits from the banks over the years.

cactus flower wrote:

It seems to be a matter of the utmost urgency that Government should use the rapidly declining Pension Fund to provide liquidity to the "shop" end of banks that oils the wheels of our national economy, and leave the toxic end with the shareholders, who have taken big profits from the banks over the years.

Morgan Kelly Article Link - Morgan Kelly agrees with you CF. He says that the quicker we recapitalise the more harm we will avoid. If three quarters of businesses go under there would be huge political unrest.

Vote of no confidence ?

Bank of Scotland and Halifax opt out of guarantee scheme

Bank of Scotland (Ireland) and Halifax announced this afternoon that they will not be applying to join the Government's bank deposit guarantee scheme.

The bank, which is part of the HBOS group in the UK, said it no longer needed to apply, because it is covered by the British government's own scheme.

It also said that joining the Irish scheme would restrict the bank's ability to compete "during these difficult times".

Those email addresses are good, Auditor #9. This was just forwarded to me:

"Many thanks for your words of support.

You will find the terms of the guarantee on the Department of Finance website:

http://www.finance.gov.ie/viewdoc.asp?DocID=5507

The precise terms of the guarantee were not known before the initial vote which was a vote on an enabling piece of legislation giving very broad powers to the Minister for Finance.

One amendment which was accepted by the Government was that the Minister would have to bring the details of the scheme back to the Dáil, which he has done.

Some confusion has arisen in the past week with respect to the 'market notice' which was published on the Department's website. There is a question-mark as to whether all banks under the scheme would have to indemnify the taxpayer in the case that one of them defaulted. This was the original proposal.

Best regards

Joan Burton TD.
Deputy Leader of the Labour Party."

I think that time has come for a genuine builder bailout and screw the pinsters and other moaners.

We need to get property prices down while keeping the economy and the crew of the ship afloat. The fact is that there are bad debts out there and bad assets that cannot be realised. The bank are under pressure to mark these bad debts against their capital. I think they should be encouraged to do so as part of a recapitalisation. The people who should suffer should be the shareholders and the top brass because (i) they didn't exercise any control on the boards and (ii) they are 90% down anyway with no recovery in sight.

The people who should be saved are everybody's favourite target for jealousy and resentment. The brass balled builders who borrowed the millions. Why?
becasue they will start buying and selling land if their liabilities are reduced to realistic levels, this will in turn help stabilise and reactivate the market,
because they employ people and invest for profit,
because they will pay the planners and the engineers to do the Councils bidding in re-energising the national infrastructure,
because they provide the best chance of getting some money back into governemnt coffers.

The suggestion is that in any recapitalisation of the banks, we should make the banks agree to write of portions of loans to people with devalued land assets (builders et al) subject to the land owners having to pay 70% CGT on any gain in the value of the land above the revaluation and subject to the builders agreeing to pay an additional 10% income tax on all income. If there is any undervalue then the government should get the benefit. Anyone who is judged to sell on again at an undervalue to avoid the increased CGT should face mandatory jail sentences. If they make a loss or little profit then so be it. At least the land will have moved at a reasonable price, the banks will be recapitalised and investors will know where they stand. This should ensure that land values hit the bottom but the economy keeps moving. Am I a genius or what? I would agree to doing the same to people with negative equity providing the loan is really toxic (say > 30% negative equity and > 85% LTV) and the person agrees to 70% CGT.

How long would this bailout last Zhou ? Do you know that there are hundreds of thousands of unoccupied houses already in Ireland ? I think the figure is 350,000 and do you know how the Pinsters calculated this ? by comparing the number of ESB connections to number of census-recorded home occupants. I had heard the figure was 250,000 from other sources, either way that is a serious amount of vacant houses.

I think if there is any bailout then it will have to be done with some strategy in mind because no strategy is what is responsible for the caca we're up to our necks in. Isn't there a housing shortage in Dublin ? Let the builders build there.

The market is already out of whack with other countries around us bar England which is suffering the same convulsions. Do you think a bailout wouldn't be equivalent to subsidising the building industry again ? It's a form of that which got us in this hole in the first place....

Really, if it has to happen then let it create something of value that will endure in our society or infrastructure. A smattering of high-rise buildings around Dublin where public transport could be co-ordinated between them perhaps ? There are plenty of people in the city with good jobs who love their city and their circle and earn handsome amounts of money but still cannot afford to buy. The country owes it to these people because they are the ones who will be supporting a top-heavy civil service, greedy unionised public workplaces and (next year) 350,000 people on the dole. And they will have to do this for 5 to 10 years.

Too much of a genius for me Zhou: I'm finding that hard to follow, so I'll tell you how I see it.

There are four problems I can see that are developer related

1. Developers have borrowed money to buy land and sites in Ireland and they paid prices in the last three years that were 5-10 times over a realistic value. They are holding this land which can't be developed in the present non-existent market. Banks made interest only loans, and in some cases have rolled these over. Developers will run out of money and will not be able to pay them back. If this takes its course a few cash rich people will be able to buy up urban land very cheaply, but the banks will take an enormous hit (10s of billions)

2. Irish people and developers have borrowed and paid (some over the odds) for property outside Ireland, again paying more than the rental value would justify. The value of most of this property is now declining.

3. People have bought houses for very large sums that, if they lose their jobs, they will not be able to pay back. Unemployment is going up very rapidly. Government needs to cut wages and/or raise taxes: for the group who have overborrowed, this could mean mortgage default.

For the first group, I think the people who sold the land and took enormous profits should be pursued to pay a claw back levy. This should be used to reduce the developer debt. The pressure on the banks will be reduced, the amount the tax payers would have to pay to recapitalise them would be reduced, and in some cases developers would be able to resume building to meet any demand, at much lower prices.

Others who have bought very foolishly would go bust.

The second group is much harder to deal with. But if we had levied the capital gains of people in Ireland who sold sites and buildings to foreign buyers, it might even out, or else the scheme you have suggested would be right for this.

The third group, the householders, is also difficult. Banks at the moment are taking back houses and renting them to householders.
Perhaps the shared ownership approach should be taken, with householders without enough income to pay the whole mortgage making over a share in the property to the local authority. When, hopefully, their household earnings improve, they start to pay rent to the local authority for that share, or to buy it back from the local authority.

Not fully thought out, but perhaps something could be done with it.

The banks were way too Bullish about the future so banks just gave it away hand over fist. Regulation was treated as tut tut prudish not prudent and now they're going to get together in Bretton Woods to try to put it back together.

Good article in the Indo about the cak the banks are in (and I saw elsewhere that there are 140,000 in negative equity in this country but HOWEVER I saw in the Examiner that house-buying is stable among single women and has surpassed that of single males. This is due to stable employment and falling house and apartment prices)

Quote :

Banks now in a scary state

AIB boss Eugene Sheehy certainly has a taste for drama. This is the man who thought that AIB was such good value 18 months ago that he blew his year's salary on shares. Those shares traded at over €18. Last week AIB shares touched €3.20.

This is the man who increased AIB's interim dividend by 10 per cent despite clear signs that banks' desperately needed to hang onto cash as the financial system went brown.

AIB would "rather die" than raise equity, according to Sheehy. Booyah! It's fighting talk but he'll look like a bit of a berk if he's wrong.

Ireland is one of the few major developed countries not to have seen the State plough money into recapitalising the banks. The UK, US, Germany, France, Belgium and Holland have all done it. Merrion figures that AIB needs €2bn, with Anglo €2.1bn and BoI €2.6bn. Either Sheehy has been hiding his brilliant escape plan very effectively or he's going to be very, very wrong.

Last week, National Irish Bank spooked the market. It did something that must have made the other Irish bankers collectively wet themselves. NIB fessed up. It said that its bad loans were pretty bad. The rate of loans going bad was miles higher than the other banks had let on.

NIB isn't flash. It's not run by geezers in sheepskin jackets. They never call you squire. They are Danish after all. NIB's loan book is fairly conservative. Almost Lutheran. Martin rather than Lex. It doesn't bode well for the other banks.

The Regulator has unleashed PwC to comb through the bank's books and find out about all the bad property loans. These are the guys who missed John Rusnak's US$691m trading whoopsie and the recent €21m Greencore fraud. They'll be eager to avoid the hat-trick.

Auditor #9 wrote:

The banks were way too Bullish about the future so banks just gave it away hand over fist. Regulation was treated as tut tut prudish not prudent and now they're going to get together in Bretton Woods to try to put it back together.

Good article in the Indo about the cak the banks are in (and I saw elsewhere that there are 140,000 in negative equity in this country but HOWEVER I saw in the Examiner that house-buying is stable among single women and has surpassed that of single males. This is due to stable employment and falling house and apartment prices)

Quote :

Banks now in a scary state

AIB boss Eugene Sheehy certainly has a taste for drama. This is the man who thought that AIB was such good value 18 months ago that he blew his year's salary on shares. Those shares traded at over €18. Last week AIB shares touched €3.20.

This is the man who increased AIB's interim dividend by 10 per cent despite clear signs that banks' desperately needed to hang onto cash as the financial system went brown.

AIB would "rather die" than raise equity, according to Sheehy. Booyah! It's fighting talk but he'll look like a bit of a berk if he's wrong.

Ireland is one of the few major developed countries not to have seen the State plough money into recapitalising the banks. The UK, US, Germany, France, Belgium and Holland have all done it. Merrion figures that AIB needs €2bn, with Anglo €2.1bn and BoI €2.6bn. Either Sheehy has been hiding his brilliant escape plan very effectively or he's going to be very, very wrong.

Last week, National Irish Bank spooked the market. It did something that must have made the other Irish bankers collectively wet themselves. NIB fessed up. It said that its bad loans were pretty bad. The rate of loans going bad was miles higher than the other banks had let on.

NIB isn't flash. It's not run by geezers in sheepskin jackets. They never call you squire. They are Danish after all. NIB's loan book is fairly conservative. Almost Lutheran. Martin rather than Lex. It doesn't bode well for the other banks.

The Regulator has unleashed PwC to comb through the bank's books and find out about all the bad property loans. These are the guys who missed John Rusnak's US$691m trading whoopsie and the recent €21m Greencore fraud. They'll be eager to avoid the hat-trick.

Very interesting Audi - this is the first thing I've seen that comes anywhere close to explaining how badly exposed the banks really are. I wonder how long they can collective hold the line before internicine warfare breaks out. Is NIB making a bid for recapitalisation? And if so, how long can it be before the others follow suit. I think it was Dermot O' Brian (The Economist) who said that the Irish banks may have left it too late for that now in any case.

Internecine warfare ? I think there's been more of a killing fields show upto now - watch more budget cuts to keep the wind from falling out of the banks ...

And the pressure is on ...
RTE

Levies on uncompleted properties may be what brings some big developers down, even if the banks can keep rolling their repayments over. That, and tax.

Do you have links to the Indo and Economist articles, Auditor #9 and Aragon?