The bondholders, a few pertinent numbers

BLOG:              http://thechatteringmagpie14.blogspot.com/

ONLINE PETITION: http://www.petitiononline.com/isntbb11

TWITTER:           @ballyhea14

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June 7th 2011

BALLYHEA BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST – THE NUMBERS

Over the last several months of the Ballyhea protest, I’ve been asked many times about numbers – well, here, as best I can manage it, a few pertinent figures:

HOW MUCH IS STILL DUE IN BONDS, AND WHO HOLDS THEM?

According to the Namawinelake blog, the Central Bank of Ireland published in March 2011 on a “once-off” basis the bondholdings in the six state-guaranteed financial institutions. This is its (corrected) summary.

Add up the totals across the bottom, comes to €64.326bn.

WHEN ARE THEY DUE?

Again according to Namawinelake, Here is the precise bondholder position in each of the six state-guaranteed (or as the Central Bank of Irelandwould call them ‘covered institutions’).  The information is firstly sorted by bank, then by maturity date.  It should be said that this list remains a work in progress and there seems to be some discrepancy in some instances between the totals here and the totals published by the Central Bank (this warning by Namawinelake).  Here’s the summary, the Central Bank of Ireland figures on the left and the NAMAwinelake analysis on the right. 


There’s some €9bn of difference between the figures produced by the CBI in March 2011 and this present Namawinelake analysis - work is continuing to identify the discrepancy.  In terms of the analysis, some €7bn of the €73bn falls due in 2011, €20bn in 2012, €17bn in 2013 and €29bn in 2014 onwards.  It should be said that a small number of bonds don’t have identifiable maturity dates and these have been grouped in the 2014- category.  

WHO ARE THE BONDHOLDERS?

We don’t know, but one man, David Norris, made an effort to tell us a few months ago in the sanctuary of the Senate and was shut down -http://www.independent.ie/national-news/norris-silenced-after-revealing-names-of-bondholders-2448840.html).  Using parliamentary privilege Mr Norris managed to name five of the international financial institutions he says the Irish taxpayer will be forced to repay as a consequence of the Government's highly-controversial EU/IMF bailout deal.  Addressing the Seanad, the independent senator read the names of Aberdeen Asset Management (London) Ltd, AGICAM, Aktia Asset Management, Aletti Gestielle SGR and Alliance Bernstein (UK) Ltd, on to the record before being ruled out of order by Cathaoirleach Pat Moylan.

The five institutions are included on a list 80 international firms drawn from countries including Germany, France, Italy and the UK, which, Mr Norris says, are the bondholders of the State-owned Anglo Irish Bank.

GUIDO’S GUIDE TO THE BONDHOLDERS

‘Guido’ is another blog, and blogs have become the best places these days in which to get truly independent information.  He wrote:

Anglo-Irish Bondholders Should Take the Losses - Is the ECB Forcing Ireland to Protect German Investments?

Anglo-Irish Bank did not represent a systemic risk to the Irish economy, it wasn’t a high street bank like AIB or the Bank of Ireland.  If it had been allowed to go the way of Lehmans the only losers would have been shareholders and bondholders.  The Irish state stepped in and nationalised a bank that was basically run by crooks lending to property speculators.  The Irish people are taking losses that should rightly have been shouldered by bondholders.

Every child in Ireland is being bequeathed a huge debt at birth to protect the interests of foreign, mainly German, bondholders – why?  Guido was once a bond trader, it was always understood that sometimes the bond issuer defaults.  That is the risk investors take.

For the full article, go to http://order-order.com/2010/10/15/anglo-ECB-bondholders-should-take-the-lossesis-the-ECB-forcing-ECB-to-protect-german-investments/

HOW MUCH EXPOSURE DOES THE ECB HAVE TO BONDS EUROPE-WIDE?

Yet another blog - (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/ecb-has-%E2%82%AC444-billion-piigs-exposure-425-drop-asset-values-would-bankrupt-european-central-ba) – says: We estimate that the ECB has exposure to struggling eurozone economies (the so-called PIIGS) of around €444bn – an amount roughly equivalent to the GDP of Finland and Austria combined.

Regards,

Diarmuid O'Flynn.

Real heroes

BLOG:                                      http://thechatteringmagpie14.blogspot.com/

ONLINE PETITION: http://www.petitiononline.com/isntbb11

TWITTER:         @ballyhea14

FACEBOOK PAGE:   Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest

June 6th 2011

BALLYHEA BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST – REAL SACRIFICE, REAL HEROES

In Dublin on Saturday last for the Christy Ring final in Croke Park (great win for Kerry, magnificent achievement by John Meyler and his management team but most of all by the players themselves – hurling on the ‘up’ from the Kingdom to the capital!), spent a few hours with my in-laws, Niall and Phil Henderson, in Willow Park Avenue in Ballymun.

Niall and Phil are in their 80s, have lived in Ballymun all of their 50+ married years.  You'll know their house immediately, the one with the immaculate front lawn that looks like it’s been cut with a scissors, edged year-round in a colour-fest of flower-beds.  Niall’s gardening efforts extend far beyond his own lawns, however, and for many years now he has been tending the community green in front of his house, flowers planted around every tree in the area, the beds kept weed-free.  On this day and as I was leaving, he was on his knees in front of one those trees, doing the needful.

Niall and Phil Henderson are the real heroes of this society, of any society.  Working all the hours God gave, in his job as a printer foreman with Fodhla Niall supported a family of four; Phil too would have worked outside the home but, through the rules of the day (seems incredible now, doesn’t it?), was forced to give up her Civil Service job when she got married.  She kept a good home, however, is still the rock of that family, and all four kids got a damned near perfect upbringing.

A generation behind them, in 1916 Niall’s father Frank, head of the Dublin Brigade of the IRA, was one of the men in the GPO with Pearse and the rest, was also a leading light in the War of Independence; Phil’s father, Denis Begley from Charleville, was a member of Michael Collins’ inner circle during that period, also played an active part in the fight; again, real heroes, who took very real risks with their lives.

We owe those people.  We owe those like Frank Henderson and Denis Begley who risked their lives – lost their lives in many instances – to establish this republic; we owe those like Phil and Niall who  worked so hard for so long for so little, to get this republic on its feet, and who are now wholly reliant on their pensions; we owe ourselves, our own generation, to ensure that at the very least we hold that which those previous generations fought and worked for; we owe our children, the next generation and the one after that again, to hand on this republic in at least as fine an order as that which was handed to us.

We must stand up NOW to the bully-boys of the ECB, we must tell them - no, no more of your decrees, no more of your crippling diktats, no longer will we honour bonds that we were never party to, that were agreements between private institutions.  We must reclaim our sovereignty.

March with us, every Sunday; demand that the deal of last November be rescinded; demand at the very least a referendum before another cent is paid out.  Two weeks ago Anglo Irish Bank – a decaying putrid corpse – paid out €200m to unsecured unguaranteed senior bondholders; according to a Central Bank table of March 2011, there is still €64.326bn to be paid, €7bn due this year, €20bn in 2012; to subsidise this kind of madness we have families with special-needs kids who are no longer eating properly, we have an education system being shorn week by week of those who teach the weakest, we have pensioners like Niall and Phil Henderson who are being hit with levies/charges/stealth taxes. 

For how much longer can you sit back and tolerate this?  We don’t have to risk bomb or bullet to protest, we just have to take to the streets.  It’s late in the game and much has already been lost, but it’s not too late.  Act now.  This Sunday and every Sunday in Ballyhea, 10.30am, a 10-minute march – join us, either in Ballyhea or better yet, in your own community.

Regards,

Diarmuid O'Flynn.

Run/walk/cycle to the Dáil day four

BLOG:                                      http://thechatteringmagpie14.blogspot.com/

ONLINE PETITION: http://www.petitiononline.com/isntbb11

TWITTER:         @ballyhea14

FACEBOOK PAGE:   Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest

June 3rd 2011

BALLYHEA BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST – RUN TO THE DÁIL day four

Well, we did it, marched down the main street of the final ‘town’ on our trip from Ballyhea to the Dáil, handed in our petition.  A small group of us, about ten from Ballyhea, another dozen or more from Dublin and surrounds; a small march and a small petition (perhaps 800 hand-written signatures that we collected at all the various villages and towns en-route, another 500+ from the online petition) but that isn't the point – it was done.

We met at noon at the Garden of Remembrance, brilliant sunshine all over the country on this Bank Holiday weekend.  The funeral of a very popular parishioner, Pakie Mortell (great Ballyhea-man all his days and I should have been there - may he laugh long with the gods), meant we lost several who would otherwise have been with us, and the fact that Ballyhea were playing in the first round of the Cork Premier Intermediate championship in the evening (lost to Newcestown, and I missed that too, laid up), further depleted the numbers from the home parish.  Still, we had a few - young and old, male and female - and we were joined by a stout group who had been following online our journey up through the country.

Set off down Parnell Square following the same format as for our regular weekly marches in Ballyhea (which, by the way, will continue this Sunday, 10.30am), our ‘BALLYHEA SAYS NO! TO BONDHOLDER BAILOUT’ signs front and back, the REPUDIATE THE DEBT group banner in the middle (we hooked up with them in Limerick, their protest very much along the same lines as ours), headed then down O'Connell Street to the bemusement of the throngs on the footpaths, across O'Connell Bridge, heading for College Green.  There we were joined by a double Garda presence, two motorbike cops.

‘Who’s in charge here?’, asked the lead cop;

‘Sure no-one,’ sez I, ‘we’re all together in it.’

‘Where’s Ballyhea?’, reading the sign;

‘A little parish in North Cork.’

‘Ye never notified us of this.’

‘Yerra we know nothing about stuff like that, we’ve never done anything like this before – we set off on foot four days ago in Ballyhea, we’ve marched down the main street of every town we met along the way, and we’re finishing off here now.’

‘Four days!  Sure we’ll have to let ye carry on so!’

And from there to the Dáil they guided us along, protected our rear, held up traffic up front to allow us proceed without hindrance.  At the entrance to Government Buildings met a smiling young Garda who politely informed us that only one of the group would be allowed inside to hand in the petition, and Frances O’Brien, an outstanding ever-present, did the honours on our behalf.

Odd, isn't it, that where we can march here with the protection of our police while those in places like Tunisia and Libya and Egypt risk being killed by theirs, we don’t bother.  I won’t pretend that it wasn’t all, ultimately, a huge disappointment.  Of course it was badly planned, badly organised, badly managed, and as chief planner, organiser and manager I take full responsibility for that, but the overall reaction was what really disappointed – a lot of anger out there, but not enough that people are ready to act.  Not yet anyway.

The temptation now is to wash my hands completely of this, but no, the original reason for starting this campaign is still there; it’s not whether or not we can afford to pay this massive private debt, it’s the fact that it’s there at all.  The thought that the ECB might get away with this obscenity, that parents of special-needs kids suffer cuts so that some of the biggest banks in the world can be paid billions they had lost in a bad investment, that really grates.  There is no deduction in your wage slip or your bank statement that states ‘Bondholder subsidy’, but believe me, you're paying it, and you'll pay more.  Under the terms of the ECB decree of last November (let’s net even pretend it was any kind of ‘deal’, and the only people bailed out were the bondholders), profitable state assets will HAVE to be sold, more cuts will HAVE to be made, more taxes/levies/stealth taxes will HAVE to be imposed, to meet our mounting debt, a huge chunk of which goes to the bondholders.

We’ve already paid out about €70bn; according to a March 2011 Central Bank report as quoted by respected blogger namawinelake, (given great credit recently by Professor Morgan Kelly in his scathing article in The Irish Times), there is a lot more still outstanding -‘some €7bn of the €73bn (remaining bondholder debt) falls due in 2011, €20bn in 2012, €17bn in 2013 and €29bn in 2014 onwards.’ Are those sums not worth fighting for?  (For the full article, hit this link: http://namawinelake.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/when-are-bondholders-in-irish-banks-due-to-be-paid/)

When did it become acceptable for banks – even a bank as powerful as the ECB - to dictate to sovereign governments?  I'm not into stocks and bonds, have neither the money for it nor the inclination, but I do know that in that cut-throat market one of the immutable laws was that when you made a bad investment (and it’s inevitable that you will), you cut your losses and moved on.  That was until the ECB decided that in the case of the Irish banks and their bondholders, the Irish people should instead cover all losing bets, paying not just the original bonds with the original interest that was supposed to accrue, paying not just in addition the interest at which the ECB was borrowing the money to loan to us to pay those bonds (stay with me!), but paying also an additional three percent.  I ask anyone – please justify this for me. 

The very weakest in our society, those most vulnerable, have been hit hard in the last couple of years to subsidise these billionaire banks – someone please justify that.  Even the IMF, dammit, would like to see those bondholders take a short-back-and-sides; and still the ECB dictate.

All over the world the same thing is happening, banks and major financial institutions being bailed out to the tune of billions by the people; it has to stop, someone, somewhere, has to take a stand.  Well, that’s us, that’s the Ballyhea Bondholder Bailout Protest.  We gave it a run this week and we met the wall – oh, so many walls, not least the wall of silence from our national media.  But we will persist.  As noted above, this Sunday again - our 14^th protest - we march in Ballyhea, 10.30am.  We are peaceful, non-party, non-professional when it comes to this sort of stuff, but we will keep going.  This is not about making people take notice of Ballyhea, it’s about making people wake up to what’s been done to them and to their own potential to stop it.

‘Whatever you do, do nothing,’ that was a common theme we met on our journey of the last week, as in ‘sure why would you bother protesting, there’s nothing we can do about it’.  ‘Whatever you do, do SOMETHING!’, that’s our approach.

Charleville, Banogue, Croom, Patrickswell, Limerick, Birdhill, Nenagh, Toomevara, Moneygall, Roscrea, Borris-in-Ossory, Mountrath, Portlaoise, Monasterevin, Kildare, Newbridge, Naas, Dublin, whether you know it or not this week you've all had your first protest march; to ye, to every other town in the country, we say – get up, get marching, every Sunday at the same time down your main drag, 15 minutes or thereabouts.  Get these blood-suckers out of our system and with the quality of the next generation, their confidence, their education, their native intelligence, this country will soar.

Regards,

Diarmuid O'Flynn.