The first two columns are the columns most pertinent - date of maturity, bond amount in euro. The other columns contain details of the individual bonds. The bonds shaded in yellow are paid, in red are imminent, in blue are coming down the track, fast.
Please let me know what can be done to make this clearer - thanks.
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
19th protest in Ballyhea - now we go to town
TWITTER: @ballyhea14
FACEBOOK PAGE: Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest
July 11th 2011
‘Doing more with less’ has become the glib catch-cry of our new government; ‘Doing less with less’ would be a far more accurate and a far more honest slogan. Services cuts across the country, individual schools everywhere losing Special Needs Assistants, vacancies not being filled – this is more?
Already this week we’ve seen the closure of the A&E department in Roscommon Hospital, safety concerns the front but saving money the real reason; in November Mallow will follow, and there will be more, almost every hospital in the country over budget and being ordered to cut back, not another cent available. Those cuts are all the result of Budget 2011; the next Budget will look for another €4m in ‘savings’ - where do you think those ‘savings’ will come from?
Meanwhile, month on month, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, are being paid to bondholding banks in France and Germany, to financial institutions in Britain and the USA, a total of €7bn this year alone – that’s €7,000,000,000, a lot of noughts after that seven, but next year even that is dwarfed, €20,000,000,000 falling due. Those billions are being borrowed, at penal interest rates, from the ECB, that interest taken from our national coffers every year.
It’s not just cuts either; the government has stated that there will be no increase in income tax, no cuts in welfare payments – in light of the number of broken promises already, does anyone now believe that? Regardless, we’ll have water charges, property charges, any other charge they can think of, and the extra money thus raised will not go towards services, it will go towards paying off the penal interest on the ECB loans.
Our General Government Debt (GGD) at the end of 2010 was €148.6bn, the interest on which will cost us about €7bn this year; about half of that is due to the bondholder bailout borrowings. Before we’re done we’re due to pay another €64bn in bonds over the next few years to various German/French/British/American banks and financial institutions, all of which will have to be borrowed from that same ECB, all at those penal interest rates. How many more hospital closures? How much more contraction can our already hard-pressed education system endure? How many more reduced services across the board?
There are protests now on-going against the hospital closures, worthy protests, but wasted protests – as long as we’re paying those billions to bail out the bondholders the money is simply not there for our hospitals, our schools, our other essential services. Our protest, everyone’s protest, should be against that bailout – protest the cause, not the symptoms.
In Ballyhea we’re entering our 20th week of protest, in neighbouring Charleville, their fifth; this Friday, 5pm, we join forces and march down Main Street, Charleville. Please, see the bigger picture – join us, start your own regular weekly ‘No! to Bondholder Bailout’ protest march in your own community. For details on the how and the why, Google ‘thechatteringmagpie14 blog’.
Ellen (Ryan) Copps and Eileen Mackessy on the front line - Ballyhea 19th
Yours sincerely,
Diarmuid O'Flynn.
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
Out of the morass - 18th protest march
TWITTER: @ballyhea14
FACEBOOK PAGE: Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest
July 6th 2011
If we’re to regain our national financial sovereignty, says our Tánaiste and Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore, we should all stop complaining and accept the cuts already implemented, the cuts still to come. But, Mr. Gilmore, what about cutting ourselves loose from the bank/bondholder debt? What about asking them to accept their own pain, rather than further burdening us with it? How much of our money is leaving this country every week to pay off the failed investments of those bondholders, money that could go to our hospitals, our schools?
To those who are protesting over the threatened closure of various hospitals, the threatened reduction in services; to those schools who protest at the loss of Special Needs Assistants, realise this – until such time as the bondholders are made to suffer their own pain, ALL other protests are in vain, quite simply because the money isn’t there. As a nation we were already haemorrhaging money with a serious budget deficit, and closing that deficit was always going to be painful, but in their demand, under threat, that we also assume the bank/bondholder debt, we are being bled dry by the ECB.
Kevin O’Keeffe and Tilly English lead out the 18th Ballyhea Protest March
Resist, because we must. In Ballyhea this Sunday, at 10.30am, our 19th protest march, in Charleville at 11.30am, their 3rd. Join us please – freeing ourselves of that yoke is our only way out of this morass.
Yours sincerely,
Diarmuid O'Flynn.
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
Creeping cuts - letter to papers
TWITTER: @ballyhea14
FACEBOOK PAGE: Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest
June 28th 2011
Dear Sir/Madam:
IT HAPPENED THIS WEEK:
Crumlin Children’s Hospital announces a €4m budget shortfall (and growing), umpteen other hospitals also in the same predicament; all are told in no uncertain terms by Health Minister Reilly that they must balance the books by the end of the year, nothing in the coffers to pay them even another euro. Almost inevitably this will result in a reduction in services, and additional suffering for the ill, the young, the elderly.
At the same time, and with no public announcement, schools across the country are informed of the cuts in the Special Needs Teachers, the result of the Education budget cuts – another reduction in services for those most needy.
Wednesday, June 29th 2011 (courtesy of Namawinelake blog): ‘Anglo repays a €12m senior unsecured unguaranteed bond at par – i.e without any haircut or discount. The bonds (ISIN ref: XS0306086157, SEDOL ref: B1ZBPV0) were issued in June 2007 – Sinn Fein finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty yesterday described the bonds as “unguaranteed unsecured” and there is no reason to doubt him.’ A few weeks ago another €200m was paid in bonds; in November this year, another € €700m falls due in Anglo (bond ISIN ref: XS0273602622). What would that money do for our hospitals, our schools?
IT HAPPENED IN 1846/47/48
Even as the Irish died from starvation in their hundreds of thousands, emigrated in their millions, vast quantities of Irish food left Irish harbours in ships bound for England.
At what stage are we going to wake up to what’s happening around us? ‘No increase in income tax, no cuts in social welfare payments’; no, and that’s all designed to keep people subdued. It’s working, working beautifully, and even as these insidious cuts are introduced, affecting in the main only the weakest in our society, the majority still sit back and stay quiet. What will it take for us to stand up to the massive injustice visited on us by the ECB?
BALLYHEA BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST – 18th march this Sunday, 10.30pm
Yours sincerely,
Diarmuid O'Flynn.
Monday, 27 June 2011
Ballyhea 17th protest, Charleville 2nd
BLOG: http://thechatteringmagpie14.blogspot.com/
BALLYHEA BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST – 18th march this Sunday, 10.30pm
TWITTER: @ballyhea14
FACEBOOK PAGE: Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest
June 26th 2011
BALLYHEA BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST – 18th march this Sunday, 10.30pm
We’re not rocking the world, our protest is getting barely an inch of recognition, but on Sunday June 26th and for the 17th week in succession, we marched in Ballyhea in protest against the continuing bondholder bailout. This week also, and for the second successive week, Charleville took up the baton.
The Ballyhea march, two young Mackessey brothers in front, flanked by their grandmother Eileen and Michael O'Sullivan
The Charleville Brigade
As should be obvious from the photos we’re not a radical group, we are - quite literally - your average man/woman/child on the street. Don’t underestimate our protest on that account, however; we feel strongly about this massive and unjust burden that’s been placed on our shoulders, very strongly. It’s not a case of whether or not we can afford to pay this odious debt, it’s not a case of trying to get a reduction in the penal interest rate charged by our new masters in the ECB, nor is it a case of getting a time extension; this is a simple question of right and wrong. Is what’s being done to us right, forcing under threat (and we now know for certain that threat is there – ‘A nod is as good as a wink…’) billions of private bank/bondholder debt on to the balance sheet of a sovereign people? Compounding that injustice, is it right to do so without even giving those same people a choice?
We say NO!, emphatically no, and so every Sunday in Ballyhea and now in Charleville we march; eventually – hopefully, as the cuts bite ever deeper so the bondholder billions can be paid – we will be joined by our friends and neighbours in every adjoining parish/village/town. We would like to see this government refuse point-blank to pay another cent of the bondholder debt; failing that, and at a minimum, we demand a referendum.
Yours sincerely,
Diarmuid O'Flynn.
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
Letter to Mr. Trichet
ONLINE PETITION: http://www.petitiononline.com/isntbb11
TWITTER: @ballyhea14
FACEBOOK PAGE: Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest
June 20th 2011
BALLYHEA BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST – 17th march this Sunday, 10.30pm
LETTER TO Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank
Dear Mr. Trichet:
You are the President of the European Central Bank, our ECB, one of the most powerful men in the banking world, but I'm baffled – would you please tell me, exactly what part of ‘failed investment’ do you not understand?
I'm not a gambler of any description but I have been known to have the very odd punt in something like the Grand National; I put my money down in the full and certain knowledge that if my horse doesn’t come home I lose my investment. I don’t play the stock-market but once, a long time ago, when Ireland’s then national phone company was being privatised, I bought my full allowable number of shares; didn’t know what to do with them once I’d bought them, held on to them through pure ignorance until such time as the company changed hands, lost a chunk of money I absolutely could not afford to lose. But I accepted it - my own gamble, my own ignorance, my own loss.
In the last decade, various banks and finance houses in Europe and the US invested in Ireland, loaned billions to the Irish banks in return for bonds that were to yield them various margins of profit. Those billions fed a bubble here which, when it burst, took down that Irish banking system, took down the government in passing, but which also decimated the Irish economy.
For our own excesses as a nation during that period, the deficit and national debt built up, we are paying a price. Encouraged by our own government, by our own banks, many of our people invested in property, investments that failed – they are all now paying a price, we are all paying that price together.
In the normal course of events in the no-mercy cut-throat finance world, the bondholders would also have paid their price, would have taken their ‘haircut’ on their failed investment and moved on to the next target. Would have, Mr. Trichet, but for your intervention, you and your battalions in the new all-conquering ECB Financial Empire. You decreed that far from having to take the haircut that was then their due, those bondholders would have to be paid - in full and with all their built-in margins - by us, the Irish people. We were already in debt, of course, so we’d have to borrow again to pay these multiple billions; to rub salt into our open sores, you also decreed that not alone would we pay the interest rate at which the ECB was getting those funds, we’d have to pay an additional penal 3%, so the ECB itself would also profit from this massive injustice.
I ask you again, Mr. Trichet – what part of ‘failed investment’ do you not understand? Would you please justify what you did to me, what you have done to every man, woman and child in this nation? I have heard people from within your bank tell us that this was our fault, that we have to take this medicine; I'm sorry, my friend, but I don’t think so. I was going about my business, doing my own job as best I could – were you doing yours?
We’re told that Ireland’s regulator wasn’t doing his job properly, allowing the banks’ lending to become reckless in the extreme – who was regulating the lending to those same Irish banks? Did you and your ECB not have a remit here? Did those lenders, those bondholders, not themselves have a responsibility to ensure that those in whom they were investing their billions were worthy of the risk? Even as this economy was starting to overheat, crying out for deflationary measures, for an increase in interest rates to make money more expensive, were you not actually decreasing those same interest rates? Do you, your ECB, and your bondholders, not have any culpability here?
We put our hands up; we accept that successive governments - governments we elected - made a complete mess of our economy over the last decade; we accept that we can’t pay ourselves more than we earn as a nation so now we have to take the pain as we try to close the deficit in our finances and pay off our accumulated sovereign debt. What we can’t accept is that, by your decree, we have to bail out those bondholders whose billions fuelled the flames that now engulf us, but who themselves aren't even singed by those same flames. So, I ask for the final time – exactly what part of ‘failed investment’ do you, the top banker in Europe, not understand?
Yours sincerely,
Diarmuid O'Flynn.
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