The Past, The Present & The Future

The Past (The Good)

• Low national debt
• Full employment
• Export lead growth
• Meaningful Social partnership
• Great EU Presidency

The Past (The Bad)

• Rezoning irregularities
• Excuse banks for "off-shore bank" account scandal 
• Illegal payments / gifts to politicians
• Tax breaks for small minorities
• Tax breaks for developers
• Ignore property bubble warning in 2001
• An €8bn tax surplus to a €20bn tax shortfall in a couple of years
• Collapse of Banking System
• Rocketing National Debt (again)
• Light / Non-existent financial regulation (let the markets decide)
• Millions frittered away in a bloated health service
• Millions wasted on e-voting machines
• Millions blown in consultancy fees for inoperable computer systems

The Present (The Ugly)

• Guarantee all bank deposits
• Guarantee all bond holders
• Banks can't (won't) lend to businesses
• Nationalise Anglo Irish Bank
• Set up NAMA 

The Future (Scenario 1 - The Bad)

1. Pay the banks between 40-50% more for their toxic loans than they're currently worth
2. Pay a fee to the banks to administer these bad loans that the tax payer now owns
3. Don't tell the tax payer how much you are going to pay the bankers due to "commercial sensitivities".
4. Don't charge interest to property developers until they can afford to pay.
5. Cleaned up Irish banks get flogged off to foreign investors, shareholders get a nice carpet bagging payoff and the Irish Tax Payer gets left holding worthless junk.
6. No time-scale for NAMA... 
7. Generations of Irish Tax Payers will get to pay for this arrangement
8. This arrangement is unfair because the risk is loaded onto the tax payer and removed entirely from the banks, and shareholders.

The Future (Scenario 2 - The Better)

1. Nationalise the banks
2. No need to hire administrators to look after the bad debts because the nationalised banks will do this for us at no extra cost.
3. No need to hire Arthur Cox & PriceWaterhouseCoopers and no need for them to construct "chinese walls" in order for them to manage any conflicts of interest.
4. Tax payer pays the actual value of the loans...let the markets decide (remember that one?)
5. What the tax payer pays he gets in back in return when the property markets return to sane levels...let the markets decide 
6. Property developers who go bust go bust, those that survive - great...let the markets decide.
7. Tax payer will receive a return on their investment when the banks are refloated. 
8. This arrangement is fair to all stakeholders - banks, developers, shareholders, and tax payers.

NAMA as currently proposed benefits:

• The Bankers
• Their shareholders & bondholders
• The property developers (because NAMA will probably keep them afloat on interest free holidays rather than call in the loans)
• Foreign investors who get to snap up clean banks

NAMA as currently proposed shafts:

• The tax payer
• The tax payer's children
• The tax payer's grandchildren

Information Overload

A recent blog entry by Stephen Fry fretting over the amount of emails and other media he had to sift and respond to before he could get on with his day reminded me of the time when email was first introduced to the office.

It was late 1995 or early 1996 that email was introduced into the office for internal communication. In fact we all received an internal paper memo on our desks confirming that all future internal communication would be done via email. About 6 months later we got our smtp email addresses and all of a sudden we were able to email clients rather than posting them a letter. This was brilliant, or so I thought.

In fact what happened was in the times before email, everyone thought and chose carefully what would be communicated via regular mail. Email lead to virtual brain dumps, and even worse task "pass the electronic parcel" where rather than dealing with issue simply move it along to someone else. The amount of superflous communication grew exponentially. And that even before the advent of Spam.

Now there are a multitude of communication channels - Instant Messaging, Twitter, Feeds. However, the information overload is the same - with Google Reader the new social networking features have turned a steady stream of information into a torrent. Another new application - Lazyfeed - updates feeds based on tags in realtime - the torrent is becoming stronger. I think I need help to the river bank. Any suggestions?

NAMA

I was trying (not very hard) to come up with a clever acronym for NAMA, but I can't. Maybe it's just as well because I'm deeply suspicious of this Agency.

For those of you outside the Banana Republic of Ireland the National Asset Management Agency is being set up by the government to buy the dead wood assets off our banks, so that it will vastly improve their balance sheets and the risk from the banks' bad loans will pass from the shareholders to the Irish Taxpayer. The amount that will be paid by NAMA for these bad loans will be "somewhere" between 70-75% of the original high market value. However the actual price paid will not be disclosed "due to market sensitivities". An ongoing court case involving one of these bad debts has revealed that the approximate current market value of these bad assets is closer to 25% of the original high market value.

So, what we know is:

1. The total potential level of bad debts in Irish banks is €90bn (Irish annual expenditure is approximately €60bn!).
2. The Irish taxpayer will pay between 45-50% more than the asset is worth.
3. But we won't actually be told how much we are paying for the assets even though it's our tax money

Conclusion: NAMA = Sweet heart deal between politicians, bankers, shareholders and developers (who are currently on an interest free holiday on their outstanding debt).

PS. I have another question. Who is NAMA going to employ to manage the administration of the debt purchased?