The Billion-Dollar-Heist protest in Ballyhea

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November 1st 2011

THE BILLION-DOLLAR HEIST – BALLYHEA PROTEST

Today in Ballyhea a group of us blocked the main Cork/Limerick road for 15 minutes, sat ourselves down across the two lanes and held up our fellow-citizens as they were going about their daily business. Not a one of us wanted to do this, not a one of us ever thought we’d see the day when we’d be involved in something even remotely like this.

We’re ordinary people, from across the broad spectrum of Irish life – the genders, the age-groups, the various political parties, the employees, the employers, the growing number of unemployed. We don’t want to disrupt anyone’s life, we don’t want to confront our Gardaí, who come from among us – our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, our neighbours and friends, all of whom are suffering with almost everyone else in this country.

What has moved us to protest is the on-going bank bondholder payouts, and on that single issue we in Ballyhea and Charleville have been marching since the first Sunday of last March, 35 weeks now and counting. What moved us to take this drastic (for us) action yesterday was the payment of the billion-dollar Anglo bond today (November 2^nd).

If anything crystallises what this protest is about, it’s that bond; if anything crystallises the values of the New Order as now being dispensed by our government, where the poor must pay the rich, it’s that bond; if anything crystallises the injustice of what’s happening, the immorality, the wrong, it’s the payment of that unsecured, unguaranteed bond, a bond now entirely in the hands of the financial bottom-feeders, the sharks, the vultures, the vampires, those who gamble on what are seen as junk bonds – this particular bond was trading in the secondary market within the last 12 months at 52%, a profit of $480,000,000 within a year.

Later this week we’re going to have the announcement of the budgetary targets for the next three years, more billions in cuts, billions dwarfed by these regular bank bond payouts (€20bn in 2012, €17bn in 2013, €25bn in 2014). For three years we’ve worn the hairshirt, for three more years at least we’ll still be wearing the hairshirt; when, oh when, will this government see fit to apply the haircut to the bondholders? Michael D for decency, please, intercede for us.

Yours sincerely,

Diarmuid O'Flynn.

The Billion-Dollar Heist

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

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FACEBOOK PAGES:   Bondwatch; Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest

October 24th 2011

THE BILLION-DOLLAR HEIST – FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

On November 2^nd 2011, next Wednesday, a $1,000,000,000 bond comes due at Anglo Irish Bank. This bond is unsecured, unguaranteed, a bond we have absolutely no obligation to pay, from a bank described by Minister Michael Noonan in an RTE interview only last June in the following terms: “Look, it's no longer a bank. Anglo is now merged with Irish Nationwide. It's a warehouse for impaired assets. Its deposit base has been moved out into the pillar banks. And it doesn't work as a bank anymore. You can't put your money on deposit in Anglo Irish. You can't get a loan from Anglo Irish. So the only thing that gives it the name of a bank is because it has a banking license. It needs the banking license to access the monies from the Central Bank. So I said that as far as I am concerned, this is not a real bank. This is a warehouse, and we need your assistance in dealing with the senior bond holders because we don't think the Irish taxpayer should have to redeem what has become speculative investment.”  (Thanks to the Namawinelake blog - the most reliable source of otherwise hidden information - for this quote).

On November 1^st, 2011, next Tuesday, at 12 noon, I am asking for a nationwide protest against the payment of this bond. 34 weeks we’ve been marching in Ballyhea and now in Charleville against the payment of these bonds, bonds that come due on an almost weekly basis, 34 weeks in which we’ve been almost on our own in protest against this massive injustice being visited on the Irish people. This one time, at noon on this one day and for just half an hour of your time, can you join us? Wherever you are, at work or at play, can you just stop, down tools, get together with your workmates, your family, your friends, your fellow parishioners, and protest this new order, where bondholders are bailed out while people are burned?

It used to be that at noon the bells tolled throughout this land and called people to prayer, to reflection; those days are gone, long gone. This once, however, can we again come together at that hour, and reflect; reflect on what’s being done in our name, reflect on whether or not it’s right that the institutions whose billions fuelled the fire that engulfed our economy should themselves escape even being scorched; reflect on whether or not it was right that we should have been saddled with this debt without even a hint of consultation, a debt that will be passed on to our children, and perhaps to their children; reflect on whether we belong in a community where, far from everyone looking out for each other, the strongest – the Germans and the French – are forcing billions from us, among the smallest and the weakest, to bail out the German and French banks who recklessly lent those billions to our banks.

Most of all, we should reflect on this: already we’ve poured billions into the various Irish banks, but next year (2012) another €20bn falls due in bank bonds, in 2013 it’s €17bn, in 2014 it’s €25bn – where do you think that money will come from? From the banks themselves? No, my friends; over the next three years our six banks will be back to us again cap-in-hand, the ECB at their shoulder guns-to-our-heads, and this government will pour yet more billions in to those banks, billions our ‘friends’ in the ECB will willingly lend to us, so all those major financial institutions get their money – ‘Every last cent’, according to our own government.

Next Tuesday, stand with us, a nation united, a united nation, and let Europe know, let Leinster House know – we’ve had enough of this outrage, we’ve had enough of this national humiliation, we’ve had enough of being told first, what bad people we were to squander all that money when the reality was that it was our banks and the banks from which they borrowed who were the reckless ones, and now, what good people we are to ‘honour’ all those bank bonds.

November 1^st, Tuesday, noon, let the bells again toll and let us again commune, but this time let them toll time on those bank bondholders. Gather, protest, take a stand. All this is happening to us ONLY because we’re allowing it to happen. Enough.

Yours sincerely,

Diarmuid O'Flynn.

A night on the tiles - Occupy Dame Street

BLOG:             http://bondwatchireland.blogspot.com

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

TWITTER:          @ballyhea14

FACEBOOK PAGES:   Bondwatch; Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest

October 13th 2011

A NIGHT ON THE TILES, SORT OF – OCCUPY DAME STREET

On Wednesday November 2^nd, an Anglo Irish Bank bond of €700,000,000 falls due for payment, in full; at a time when there is heavy debate on whether Budget 2012 will look for cuts/taxes of somewhere between €3.6bn and €4.5bn, a time when hospital wards are being closed/reduced, a time when operations are being cancelled due to lack of money, every cent of that €700,000,000 will come from the public purse. A failed bond in a failed bank, a failed private financial deal between two private financial institutions, an unguaranteed bond we have no obligation to pay, yet we dish out almost a billion euro, to go with the €4.3bn already paid out in bank bonds last month alone.

At what stage does all this become so outrageous that even this government, which has shown itself so willing to bow to the unwritten, unspoken threats by the ECB, finally begins to stand up for the people it supposedly represents? Is there no end to our forbearance? Do we HAVE any outrage left in us?

Last Wednesday I spent a night on the tiles near Temple Bar in Dublin, a night on the tiles with a difference – these were the cold stone tiles outside the Central Bank. Having been there for its inception on the previous Saturday, there again on the Sunday morning, I joined the ‘Occupy Dame Street’ protest for the night, threw myself down for a few hours in a tent, trying to get some sleep. For the most part the protesters are young, idealistic, a few old fogies like myself in the mix. There are people from the left, from the right, from the centre, but all politics are left at the door, everyone united in this one aim – end the bank bondholder bailout. There are other grievances, all outlined in their own mission statement, but this is number one – time for the Irish people to stand up for themselves.

In this crisis the banks themselves have suffered, the builders have suffered, the developers have suffered, the Irish people as a whole have suffered, those most vulnerable especially so. The one group in all this who have taken no pain? The bank bondholders, those whose billions fuelled the fire that still engulfs us. Theirs is a game supposedly built on risk/reward, on profit-and-loss; in this instance, flying in the face of the most basic rules of investment, the ECB has removed the risk, has made this exercise for these bondholders a profit-only enterprise.

It’s wrong, pure and simple, and we are the ones wronged. Sign the petition above, check out the two blogs – educate yourself and make your protest. You can join the Occupy Cork group at their temporary camp at the junction of South Mall and the Grand Parade, you can join the Occupy Dame Street group, you can join us in Ballyhea this Sunday in our 34^th weekly protest march, 11.30am at the church. But stand up. This wrong continues only because we allow it to continue, we don’t protest. Do it now – with over €60bn in bonds due in the next three years, it’s not yet too late.

Yours sincerely,

Diarmuid O'Flynn.

What we're told, what we're not told

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

TWITTER:          @ballyhea14

FACEBOOK PAGES:   Bondwatch; Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest

October 13th 2011

WHAT WE’RE TOLD, WHAT WE’RE NOT TOLD

We know, because we’ve seen/heard/read it on TV/radio/newspapers, that because they’ve overrun their diminishing budgets to the tune of about a collective €50m our hospitals are having to cut back on beds and operations; do ye know that on Tuesday of this week our money was used to pay out on failed private unguaranteed bank bonds (BOI €35m; IL&P €17.5m; EBS €17.3m) to the tune of over €70m?

We know, because we’ve seen/heard/read it on TV/radio/newspapers, that Budget 2012 – which is now being put together – will involve cuts/taxes to the tune of something between €3.6bn and €4.5bn; do ye know that last month, September 2011, our money was used to pay out on failed private bank bonds to the tune of €4.3bn? And understand, this IS our money, in July we ‘injected’ €20bn into the banks from our now almost spent Pension Reserve Fund.

Do ye know that on November 2^nd, less than three weeks away, we will pay a €700m unguaranteed bond from the zombie bank, Anglo Irish? Do ye know that over the next three years (2012 €20; 2013 €17bn; 2014 €25bn), if we continue the current official ECB-dictated government policy, we will pay over €62bn in those failed private bank bonds, most of which will have to be borrowed from that same ECB? Do ye know that we’re already paying, on an annual basis, the original interest on those bonds, but we’ll be paying interest again on the loans we need to pay off those bonds?

We know, because we’ve seen/heard/read it on TV/radio/newspapers, that with the massive interest rates they were charging the markets made it well-nigh impossible for us to borrow what we need to run the country while we close the budget deficit; do ye know that the main reason the markets ran scared from us was that they looked at that budget deficit, then looked at the bank debt we were also now going to assume, did the very simple arithmetic involved, and concluded – absolutely correctly – that this was a formula for economic failure, and made their decisions accordingly?

You've not heard any of the above – why? You've heard ad nauseum, to the point where it’s now almost the first thing people bring up when the bank bondholder bailout is discussed, a debate that is centred only around the cataclysmic possibilities if we didn’t submit to the ECB blackmail and pay the bank bonds; you've heard very little around the very positive possibilities if we did what we should have done from the outset, and refused to have anything to do with those failed private bonds.

Those bank bonds are anchoring the Irish economy in these dead waters, they are a drain on us and on what’s left of our banks, they are a drag on any possible growth. As long as the banks have to continue paying the interest on the bonds (which they do, every year), as long as they have to keep funds in reserve to ‘honour’ the principal on the bonds on the due date, they will have very little left to lend to business, to lend to mortgage applicants.

The debate we are having, all the doomsday scenarios if we don’t pay, is the debate the ECB wants us to have, is the debate their puppets here (our own government, our own Central Bank) want us to have. They DON’T want us to know the details of the bonds as they’re being paid, they DON’T want us to have a debate centred around the real question here – should we be paying those bonds at all? Should we be submitting to the unspoken blackmail (the ECB was far too clever to put any of that in writing, wouldn't look at all good when the history of this era is being written, a little member state being thus threatened), or should we now be telling Europe – look, we’ve suffered as much as we’re going to suffer to save the euro, to save the Franco-German banking systems?

Isn’t it time our own government began to put the interests of its own people first, before the interests of the world’s financial institutions, before the interests of Europe?

On Saturday last, on Sunday, again on Wednesday, I was in Dame Street for the occupation of the area in front of our central bank. For the most part those are youngsters, idealists, and so easy to dismiss. But they understand ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’, they understand ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’, they understand ‘the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible’. They understand the real meaning of a republic.

Back them, support them. To our national media, a plea – be guided by the instincts that persuaded you into journalism; be guided by your own search for truth, by your own search for justice. Report what’s happening here not as the ECB would have you report it, but as you yourselves witness it.

Apologies for the long-windedness,

Yours sincerely,

Diarmuid O'Flynn.

Keeping it going

BLOG:             http://bondwatchireland.blogspot.com

                                               http://thechatteringmagpie14.blogspot.com/

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

TWITTER:          @ballyhea14

FACEBOOK PAGES:   Bondwatch; Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest

October 5th 2011

KEEPING IT GOING

Our 32^nd weekly protest march in Ballyhea coming up this Sunday (11.30am, meeting at the church) and we’re being asked – ‘How long more are ye going to keep up these protests?’ I don’t speak for anyone else among our regular group, nor for anyone in the Charleville group with whom we have joined forces for the past 17 weeks, but my own answer is this – for as long as this injustice perseveres, for as long as our banks with our money continue to pay in full these failed bonds, we’ll march in protest.

The origin of our protest is clear and simple. Over a period of several years, six privately owned Irish banks entered into financial agreements with a host of other banks, most of those European. Both parties entered into all those agreements with their eyes open, the lenders fully aware of the risks involved even if they were somewhat blinded by the potential profits. The banks ran into major difficulties, which put all those bonds in jeopardy. What should have happened next was a write-down on all those failed bank bonds, a haircut; what should NOT have happened was the transference of those debts to our shoulders, but with the ECB bully-boys getting their way in the in the misnamed ‘Bailout for Ireland’ of November 2010 (it was a bailout alright, a bank bondholder bailout, paid for by us), that was exactly what happened.

Today the ECB is still dictating terms to us, our banks are still ‘honouring’ those bonds, but with our money. €17bn was the latest ‘injection’ from our Pension Reserve funds to the banks, last July; in September, the banks paid €4.3bn in bonds, in 2012 another €20bn to be paid, €60bn to be paid over the next few years, before it all ends.

The scandal is on-going, so is our protest. Sure, we’d love if we had more support, we’d love if some national media organ took up our fight, we’d love if every other parish/village/town/city in the country took up the cudgel and focused in on this single issue, an issue that should unite us all across every political party and none, and pushing for that support does drive us on. But it’s not the source of the protest. That original wrong, that’s what started this, and until we right that wrong we’ll keep marching.

Yours sincerely,

Diarmuid O'Flynn.

7-day fast final day

BLOG:             http://bondwatchireland.blogspot.com

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

TWITTER:          @ballyhea14

FACEBOOK PAGES:   Bondwatch; Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest

August 7th 2011

BREAD N’ WATER 7-DAY FAST – FINAL DAY

Today is the last day of the 7-day bread n’ water fast, a symbolic protest against the penal on-going ECB-dictated bank bondholder bailout.  In a few minutes I’ll be heading for Croke Park to cover the All-Ireland semi-final, and thank God for the diversion, it will make this final day pass easily enough.

As anticipated, as feared, the fast has been in vain, and as with everything else attempted in an effort to highlight the massive injustice being visited on the Irish people on a weekly basis with the relentless payment of these bank bonds, it has registered not even a ripple in the national media.

It’s been a depressing six months of protest, a soul-destroying six months.  Over the next few months, as the budget 2012 proposals are firmed up, we’ll have broadcast to us all the proposed cuts, the closures, the new taxes, reports of the protests being organised against same here, there, everywhere.  What we won’t read about, the bond being paid by Bank of Ireland this Monday, €200,000,000; the bonds being paid this month, €444,260,916; the bonds being paid next month, €4,299,705,436; the bonds being paid next year, €20bn; the bonds being paid to the end of 2015, €60bn. 

The media are meant to be the eyes and ears of the people – where are they?  Reams of coverage of the Cloyne Diocese report, but what of this scandal, this bank robbery with a twist, the ECB robbing – under threat – billions from an already-suffering people?  And robbery is what it is, nothing less.  This is not our debt, was never our debt; neither this government nor the last WANTED to pay it, but were forced to do so by the bullying bungling ECB – ‘A nod is as good as a wink’, in the colourful words of Minister Michael Noonan.

When this day is over, for my own sake and for the sake of my family I have no option but to step back.  It has reduced me physically (10lbs of mostly excess fat), but even more so, it has cost me emotionally.  Depressing, soul-destroying?  I've had the black dog for company for many months now.  Cuts to the fuel/phone/electricity subsidies for the elderly and the poor, Autism programmes closed down, Special Needs Education hammered, hospital beds closed, operations deferred – the poorest, the neediest, the sick, all hit for the sake of millions, while billions are borrowed to pay bank bonds, and we don’t bat an eyelid in protest.  As a civilised and supposedly caring society, how do we justify this?  Watching this, knowing it’s happening, knowing also we’re letting it happen – it’s destroying me.

I'm taking a break from it for a while, so this will be the last annoying mail from me for the foreseeable future.  Wasted my time, and if you even bothered to read any of these missives, wasted yours.  Hopefully someone with a bit more stamina will now take up this fight.

Yours sincerely,

Diarmuid O'Flynn.