“A terrible noise exactly like thunder was heard in the outer room of his apartments : it was the crowd of courtiers deserting the antechamber of the dead sovereign to come and greet the new power of Louis XVI”
This was the account given by Marie Antoinette’s chambermaid of the immediate aftermath of the death of Louis XV – all the courtiers and hangers-on were making a mad dash from one end of the palace where the king had just expired to the other end to ingratiate themselves with the successor. And whilst I wouldn’t want to pre-judge the outcome of the voting count today, I would be shocked if anyone other than Enda Kenny was to be our next Taoiseach and Michael Noonan the next Minister for Finance. And I would say the ingratiating started many months back.
Of interest here is the fact that the FG director of elections for Limerick (Michael Noonan’s constituency) is none other than insolvency expert Brian McEnery of Horwath Bastow Charleton . Brian also happens to be one of NAMA’s nine board members and I would imagine that Michael Noonan is very well briefed indeed on the challenges facing the agency. And it will be the Department of Finance that has most political say in how NAMA operates in future, though other ministries like the Department of the Environment Housing and Local Government and Justice and Law Reform will also have a role to play.
So what changes can we expect at NAMA:
(1) Personnel. NAMA is probably most associated with its chairman Frank Daly and CEO Brendan McDonagh. Sections 22 and 40 of the NAMA Act provides the Minister for Finance with wide discretion as to the bases for removing the incumbent NAMA CEO and other board members including the chairman. Will FG want a change of personnel. Have some already ingratiated themselves to the new administration and convinced the putative Minister for Finance that a different set of hands would do a better job? There are certainly rumours in this area.
(2) Stopping NAMA 2: “We do not believe that transferring the land and development loans of Irish banks of less than €20 million to NAMA is in the best interests of the Irish economy” FG has said that it will stop the transfer of the sub-€20m exposures from AIB and Bank of Ireland to the agency. What that immediately means is that the stress tests presently ongoing will need examine the values of some €12bn of sub-€20m loans.
(3) Outsourcing: “We will force NAMA to outsource management of at least 70% of its assets to 3-4 competing private asset management companies” FG is keen to get third party asset management companies to take on NAMA’s loans. Indeed a long-held concern on here is that NAMA with 100 staff is ill-equipped to directly handle 175 developers (which might represent 5,000 development companies and 20,000 projects) and their €50bn of loans at par value. On top of this NAMA must manage the banks and Capita with their dealings for smaller value loans. Capita has a long and coloured history of ingratiating itself with parties in power.
(4) NAMA strategy: remember it boils down to the six actions (sell, lease, manage, develop, demolish, mothball). It seems there is a clamour for NAMA to generate more sales. These are likely to be in the UK and elsewhere abroad though NAMA needs to be careful about opportunists who expect a “NAMA knock-down”. But I expect there will be more sales here and given the condition of the market, I expect sales at levels not seen before, bargains some might say but that would be to ignore the distressed condition of the existing market which is being artificially distorted without true price discovery.
(5) Transparency: “The details of all non-performing loans acquired by NAMA will be available for scrutiny on a Public Register”
(6) Paddy McKillen’s loans: NAMA was supposed to have made a decision whether or not to proceed to acquire Paddy’s loans last Wednesday. And we are still waiting for the Supreme Court to issue its determination on the three outstanding strands to Paddy’s appeal (to do with the fairness and constitutionality of NAMA and its procedures). Will Michael Noonan decide that Paddy’s loans will destroy value at the banks if transferred? Will he persuade NAMA to release its grip on Paddy’s and other objectors’ loans?
(7) NAMA report and accounts for quarter three, 2010 which were delivered to outgoing Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan on 31st December, 2010. Will Michael Noonan now ensure they are promptly published?
(8) Dismantling upward-only rent reviews in commercial leases. This manifesto commitment is really rattling the property industry that sees 20% declines in commercial property values and a repulsion of investors fearful of those declines. At the extreme on the other hand, certain retailers and other commercial tenants are literally praying it happens quickly because with existing rent levels their businesses will die. Whatever FG does, it needs to do it decisively and clearly. Otherwise this uncertainty of this Sword of Damocles will hurt the property industry and do nothing for commercial tenants.
Of course the bigger challenge facing the new Minister for Finance will be dealing with the national debt burden including a renegotiation of the IMF/EU bailout deal, the restructure of the banking sector and dealing with the results of the stress tests ongoing at the banks. But I would expect the Minister’s fingerprints to become transparent on the operation of NAMA within days.
NAMA Wine Lake 
Hi NWL
I wanted to leave a comment to say thanks for your updates and wish Ireland and whatever her new government turns out to be well for the future. Many difficult decisions remain and frankly in my view some need to be changed. This is encapsulated by one sentence in my blog yesterday.
“It means that the “rescue” is not far off an utter failure.” As an someone who has followed bond/futures/options markets for 25 years it is this bit which is the giveaway.
“If we look again we see that to April 2013 investors want a yield of 8.03% when repayment is in effect guaranteed by the rescue plan.” Some rescue.
Anyway I have posted some alternatives which in my view at least offer some hope. Will the nettle be grasped?
If you read the signs with a cynical mind, it would appear that change is coming.
Is it just a coincidence that NO agreements whatsoever have been signed off with developers? No pressure has been placed on those who are close to signing (one developer, reputed to be closest, hasn’t heard from NAMA since last year). Other business plans are not being progressed other than merely gathering information, yet the accounts are being managed on a “high level” credit committee basis. Are we all waiting for new directions?
It is evident that the civil servants are in charge when a deposit lodged to clear a loan account is refused without (at least) a week long process of obtaining a pre-approved form!
Although they say that they are in sales mode, it is evident to any observer that they are not.. most energy is being put into taking charges over bank accounts that receive rents and collecting those rents. The economics are simple. Take an original performing loan of €20 million. It receives an interest income of c. €800,000 annually. NAMA buys the loan at €8 million. It pays 1% (€80,000) annually to the ECB. NAMA annual rental profit = €720,000.
Would you be in a rush to sell?
Now that Peter Matthews has been elected I hope he is given a role that puts NAMA under his remit.
Even if Noonan becomes finance minister he will have enough on his plate with the EU/IMF deal and banks to want to share out elements of his portfolio and Matthews is the man for the job.
From the start, he was never in supporter of NAMA and warnings from him about NAMA were ignored. Matthews even held a public meeting about NAMA in the RDS and subsequently delivered financial projections on the likely workings of NAMA to every TD in the Dail. In fact, when he was before the PAC he was delivering dire warnings about NAMA only to be met with such serious prognostications as “we have to vacate this room in 5 minutes”. Peter has done well to get elected and I have a feeling that he will put some order on the NAMA monster if allowed.
People think that NAMA is a neutral entity just doing a job, it is no such thing it has been, and is, one of the bluntest tools in the box and has contributed in no small measure, to the accelerated, up front losses taken by our banking system and contributed to driving them into immediate insolvency. It’s also partly responsible for the state being driven into the hands of the IMF/EU rescue. Every NAMA discount that blasted holes in bank balance sheets had to me made up with borrowings on the other side of the bank balance sheets which Lenihan agreed we were all responsible for. Of course, if you force valuations on properties in a market where there is no market you are going create bedlam and that is what was done because it suited certain interests.
“Of course, if you force valuations on properties in a market where there is no market you are going create bedlam and that is what was done because it suited certain interests.”
Hi Robert,
I agree with all your sentiments above and your comments are well made. O
Just one question – What interests are you referring to above?
@ who_shot_the_tiger
Take these guys in the link below as an example, not surprisingly the originator of the NAMA idea Mr. Peter Bacon worked for Ballymore and knew full well the difficulties the company was in even as he suggested and got well paid for his ‘work”.
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/mulryans-ballymore-paid-directors-average-of-euro729000-each-last-year-2558148.html
Harry Crosbie in an Late Late interview with Pat Kenny replied that he would be “one of the lesser namaese” whatever he meant by that. Certain developers, the chosen ones, are going to come out very well out of this with their empires intact. On the same Late Late show (given by Kenny) he also informed Pat that he had an earlier “private meeting” with Brian Lehihan telling him that he Lenihan would have to hold his nerve on NAMA. Strange that developers such as Crosbie and Treasuary Holdings were actually looking forward to NAMA. They obviously knew more about it than the person who is going to pick up the interest bill, the losses bill, the professional fees bill not to mention the consequences of not having a functioning property market other than what NAMA dictates for the next 10 to 15 years. The other people that cheered for the gravy train were the legal, accountancy, and auctioneering firms.
I should have said that the developers in trouble were not looking at current valuations or valuation models as their businesses had already come well and truly off the rails. They knew, pre NAMA that what they needed was a vehicle to guarantee their futures, income streams for wives and protection from bankruptcy. They were already looking past the arguments about valuations because they knew there was no customers for what was built, no finance to complete what was started and the green field sites, with or without planning permission… well, lets just say they knew they had lost the run of themselves. When your a developer looking at ghost estates or green fields it was useful that banks, pension funds, shareholders and politicians were being saturated with figures and valuations because it all helped to force the issue in the direction of a US TARP (toxic asset relief program, it did not work and had to be abandoned) but in our case, a NAMA as us Irish have a better way with words. Why call something toxic when you can call it an asset?
I have a question to put to Nama observers of which I am just a newbie. What responsibility to the banks/Nama/owner who borrowed too much – have to mantain an asset? It’s not just figures and columns – not just fiscal.
There are the ghost estates with copper pipes being stripped – and my pet Campaign – The former Hume Street hospital – bought for 30 million with three AIB loans, rumours of being with Nama and the owner Michael Kelly of Glandore Properties hiding from everyone and carrying on his office rental business while his Hume Street neighbours have to deal with escalating crime: robberies, syringes in lanes and most recently the wholesale stripping of copper fittings and roof lead (=leaks) from the former Hospital – a terrace of 6 listed Georgian buildings.
And the Gardai are checking CCTV from the Dept of Justice and Law reform.
Should Nama just hope that the building falls down to maximize the value of the site and build a tower ?
Hi Maeve,
I believe Michael Kelly and the Hume Street property are in NAMA based on the report below in the Irish Times
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2010/0809/1224276417275.html
Further the property seems to be subject to a loan from a NAMA Participating Institution (Anglo, AIB, BoI,EBS and INBS) and is over €20m and appears to be for land and development. With respect to your concerns here is an exchange from the NAMA appearance before the Committee of Public Accounts last November 2010 (link below)
Deputy Michael D’Arcy: I will touch upon the question of developers and banks being negligent. When I say negligent, I am referring to certain premises and sites being left in neglected states. NAMA’s role differs from ours, yet we are receiving reports from the general public concerning dangerous sites. Mr. Daly mentioned how it is an offence to lobby. To whom should a public representative go if he or she is receiving complaints about neglected estates that are in the possession of banks, developers or NAMA?
Mr. Frank Daly: When I referred to lobbying, I did not mean the normal type of information that a public representative might want to pass on to NAMA. There would be no difficulty in that respect.
Deputy Michael D’Arcy: Information on Michael D’Arcy Zoom on Michael D’Arcy If the information is of that nature.
Mr. Frank Daly: Yes.
Mr. Brendan McDonagh: We would welcome it. If people can give us information, we can take matters up with the borrower directly to determine the situation. We have noticed that everyone assumes every estate in a neglected condition is NAMA’s, but many of them are not or they are funded by other banks.
Deputy Michael D’Arcy: Many of them are NAMA’s.
Mr. Brendan McDonagh: I accept that.
Deputy Michael D’Arcy: Clarification is good. People seem to be terrified to ask NAMA a question for fear of prosecution.
Mr. Frank Daly: No. That is not lobbying. Lobbying is when someone tries to influence a decision of NAMA for personal benefit. Passing on information is not remotely like that.
https://namawinelake.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/nama-to-be-grilled-this-morning-by-pac/
So from the above, it would seem that you should contact NAMA directly if you are concerned about the property in the way you describe.
NAMA appears to have plenty of cash to develop or maintain or mothball properties though the agency has a commercial remit. Not referring specifically to Hume Street but I can forsee situations where it makes more commercial sense to allow a property to deteriorate than to spend money maintaining it. I wish you luck.
Thanks both of you for the above comments, links and info. Interesting that Nama are meeting the Moore street group.. I will post that link on our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SaveHumeStreetfromDestruction
Yes I contacted NAMA directly last week – talked in person (won’t name here) raising my concerns and was directed to email info to them… which I did..along with..
Irish Times article 18/02/2011
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0218/1224290140231.html
photostream from one of our facebook friends
Subsequently I was contacted by someone in AIB saying that they are following up. I did get a bit heavy saying I hoped that it was real action and not just meetings….when a roof like this is damaged water can just course through the building – a 250 year old limited edition heirloom just shot.
So cooling off now and continuing to gather names , numbers, send emails and follow up phone calls.
A gathering of the evidence – yes sending to Frank McDonald a good idea.. thanks namawinelake
Hi Maeve,
You might be interested in the report today that the folks who have been trying to preserve part of Moore Street that has significance to the 1916 rising are to meet with NAMA.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0228/breaking46.html
Hi Robert,
You credit the developers with foresight (a perception of the significance and nature of events before they have occurred). An intelligence that I believe most of them do not possess.
Stupidity, “cute hoorishness” and an ability tho bend the ear of certain FF politicians – maybe, but foresight – I think not.
No sector that blithely built 95,000 residential units for a population of 4.5 million people for 3 years running could be credited with either intelligence or foresight.
Were they bailed out by NAMA? I have seen no evidence of it yet. Witness Pierse, Liam Carroll, Bernard McNamara etc. I have seen the government make the most monstrous mistakes that include the creation of NAMA and the destruction of the finances of the Irish people.
The biggest mistake made was the guarantee given on the night of 28th September 2008 that screwed us all. Did the developers ask for it? Again, not that I am aware of. Neither do I know of any developer that wants his debts assumed by the citizens of this country. Most feel that their debts should be a matter between themselves and their bank and it should have stopped at that. And it should have been dealt with at that level…. wherever the chips may have fallen.
Not to mix metaphors, but developers expect that if they (or the banks) live by the sword – that’s how they should die. No quarter asked.
P.S. I can’t answer for Ballymore and their director’s fees. That is a matter for NAMA.
I do believe that if you live in a capitalist system and play by its rules, you should not expect to escape the consequences of failure under those rules. I think that most developers accept that and are embarrassed and ashamed by the fact that the government have chosen to spread their losses, and those of the banks, on to the shoulders of the Irish people. It is not the choice of most of the developers that I have spoken with.
Developers live in a capitalist system but are aware rules can be changed if needs be, legislation can even be drafted. The nexus between developers, bankers and politicians in Ireland made this possible. These rules, as you say, were changed utterly in Sept ’08. Just imagine these developers whom I sat with every day in Croke Park when Mr. Dunne was trying to get his 37 storey tower into the Dublin skyline being declared bankrupt, not being able to take up directorships or start new development vehicles? Not being able to cut and run? By the way, for what it is worth, a lot of the developers I know show hardly any ability whatsoever to empathise with ordinary people it is all in the chase for most of them. I have been in court cases where high court judges had to have things reiterated because they thought they were misunderstanding the use of language.
The department of Foreign Affairs has the right to withdraw passports as well as issue them and that department, working in concert with the department of Justice should have done so. Anybody involved in business dealings which were under investigation should not have been allowed to leave (flee) the jurisdiction. Draconian you might say, but the alternative is 300,000 forced to leave, 450,000 unemployed and our country in receivership.
The 95’000 units in three consecutive years that you refer to were given planning permission, were fully financed and supported by a myriad of government tax incentive schemes. Were the ESRI saying this was madness? Was the regulator, CB, department of Finance doing their jobs for which they were being extraordinary well paid? Remember there are literally hundreds of people in these offices. The country going bust, later Watson/Regling and Honohan testified to the dysfunctionality of the system. The systemic failure was systemic precisely because it was cheer led by the very functionaries the public were depending on. “This product is regulated by the Financial Regulator” what exactly did that mean? It must be the most abused sentence in the english language. Even post property collapse DCC and it’s managers push for reform of planning laws that allow for a high rise agenda because it is all they know. They do not want internal reform so they figure the money must come from development and rates that are off the richter scale to pay for unions. They still have not been disabused of this notion. Soon, they will be metering our water and counting our bedrooms.
Banks should have been made to stand over and manage the loans they made, Anglo which did not even have one ATM machine would have fallen along with their developers, that would have been playing by the rules of the free market. AIB and BoI should have been amalgamated 2 years ago as Mr. Soden proposed and we should have incentivised foreign surrogate banks to come into Ireland. Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for TARP is on the record as saying “perhaps TARP’s most significant legacy is, the moral hazard and potentially disastrous consequences associated with the continued existence of financial institutions that were too big to fail”. Ireland, I’m afraid has to learn the hard way and we are.
Hi Robert,
I agree fully with your last paragraph, but I don’t see how keeping the developers stuck on the Island without passports is an alternative solution as you have suggested.
“Anybody involved in business dealings which were under investigation should not have been allowed to leave (flee) the jurisdiction. Draconian you might say, but the alternative is 300,000 forced to leave, 450,000 unemployed and our country in receivership.”
If it was truly an alternative, I believe that most would have accepted that fate readily for the greater good.
Hi Maeve,
Just to follow on NWL’s response. I would do the following:
Check with DCC to see if the buildings are listed.
Report the matter to the dangerous buildings section of the DCC.
Report the theft of copper, lead and drug abuse etc. to the police.
Report the matter to NAMA (and the PI) as suggested by NWL.
Report it to An Taisce if the buildings are listed.
Sent a file with all the responses you receive to the likes of Frank McDonald so that he can publicise the issue.
Thanks –
– yes the building is definitely listed –
– have contacted DCC planning and will follow to other depts inc dangerous buildings – (DCC were in photographing roof today.)
– Have reported the theft to police and an email to their press dept.
-Yes to Nama – and they passed to AIB
-Yes to An Taisce and to Heritage council and Georgian Society
They all know me now
I phoned the owner today too and he said I was condescending to him telling him how to look after his property.. that I need to call the Gardai as that’s their job !!
I don’t think it is a matter of keeping “developers stuck on the island”. It’s more a matter of the people on the island being stuck with and having forfeited sovereignty, (we could have avoided that) due in no small measure, to the activities which they engaged in with such reckless abandon.
It goes back to the whole issue of white collar crime which is one of the most blatant and appalling failures of the justice system in the country. Our system is designed to protect white collar criminality and it achieves this objective entirely. We most certainly are all not equal before a system of law and order that is one of the last bastions of naked and unabashed monopoly power in the state. We need much more that the odd report from within by the Law Reform Commission. Dare I say it, our system of jurisprudence needs a complete overhaul by experts from outside the state whose findings should then be implemented by the Dail. A referendum will be required because that is what it will take for the people on this little island to wrestle back some semblance of justice but I would not guess that we will get that anytime soon.
Robert,
We forfeited sovereignty for two simple reasons, neither of which were initiated by the developers:
1. Our political leaders and the DoF guaranteed the bondholders of private banks and transferred their debts to the citizens of Ireland.
2. Our political masters and the DoF, for the past decade, ran an unsustainable fiscal policy that depended almost entirely on inflating the property market.
Please let us not ignore the fact that it was the developers and their banking buddies who initiated the crisis by lending/borrowing unsustainable amounts with regulators, ministers etc. all ignoring the inflating bubble. I think you are in denial to be blaming “our political leaders” and DoF. They failed to manage the crisis but they certainly did not start or fuel the process which led to our loss of sovereignty. It could be argued that the bubble had become so large that all remedial measures would have resulted in a loss of sovereignty. The guarantee etc. may have only speeded up the process.
Now that we have taken some steps to addressing the governmental failures and exercising “moral hazard” at a political level, maybe we could switch attention to the pursuit of those who engaged in the reckless business activities which caused the bubble and who still appear to be playing ducks and drakes.
IANAL but have advocated before that one solution to assist the prosecution of white collar crime would be to alter the guilty requirements for certain types of WCC to a civil rather than the virtually unprovable criminal standard of proof. This would speed up the collection and presentation of evidence and reduce the duration and complexity of trials.
Hi Brian, for the untechy amongst us IANAL is “I am not a lawyer” and not some Freudian admission.
Actually there is a third reason that relates to Bertie Ahern’s property market cheerleading and public sector and “soft” union pay deals that lead to inflation.
These were the utterances of our great leader.
The first on rising inflation in the Irish economy:
“The reason it’s on the rise is because probably the boom times are getting even more boomer.”
Then on the property market:
RTE April 7th 2006:
“The Taoiseach has said he does not see a great problem with the levels of borrowing to buy property. Mr Ahern said there had been predictions of a huge downturn in 2005. He added the bad advice given by so many resulted in some people making mistakes when they should have bought property last year. ”
Irish Times, 28 April 2007:
“On the other side of the election we’ll get back to normality. And I think that normality will be the soft landing. The construction projections were that we will move from something like 93,000 houses to 80-something. Now that’s not going to create any kind of a difficulty.”
RTE, July 2007:
“Sitting on the sidelines, cribbing and moaning is a lost opportunity. I don’t know how people who engage in that don’t commit suicide because frankly the only thing that motivates me is being able to actively change something.”
I think it was Groucho Marks that said:
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies”
A fitting epitaph for Bertie, the two Brians and 14 years of Fianna Fail rule.
@who_shot_the_tiger
I totally agree with you that our response to the situation was craven and wrong at every level and Lehihan and his advisors are as much to blame as Bertie. It’s funny, I am being told that I should be feeling hopeful after this election but somehow I am left with a gut wrenching feeling that we are in for a very long, hard struggle, that our leaders have not even begun to understand.
Both parties are committed to paying off debt we cannot possibly repay. Their policy is renegotiating the interest rate and then crossing their fingers and praying the debt problem goes away or is diluted by growth. Inflation is out of the question as that would lead immediately to an increase in ECB base rates with a sharp rise in our default rates across what remains of our banking system.
We cannot square the wheel but by hoping for growth as a bye product of deflation that is what we are doing. Personally, I think we need a flattening of the bell curve with those on high incomes “forced” to take reductions in salaries and pensions to at least pretend sustainable levels if you get my drift. Our economy is going to continue to deflate as the burden of interest payments rises steadily and as the stealth taxes and government cuts continue to be implemented. Essentially, we are attacking weaker sections of society so that a caste system of grades, permanent jobs and ponzi pensions that were negotiated by public sector unions can be maintained. What is going to happen when the immovable object (debt) meets the irresistible force (interest)? I predict that the unions will crumble but before that happens they will preside over the biggest sell off of state assets this country has ever seen. When you asset strip a company it usually spells the end. In Ireland, the wily old foxes of the unions will be the last ones left standing but with so many of our educated and energetic youth forced to go it will be impossible to service debt and maintain the status quo or near enough the status quo. Sooner rather than later the pensions problem is going to rear its ugly head only to find that the NPRF has been mono invested in assets whose values are shrunk to the bone. Not pretty is it?
Personally, I do not believe in the power of prayer.
Enda and his administration will be judged initially on the results of his re-negotiations on the bail-out package and the level of debt write-down that he obtains.
The ECB, the IMF, and the rest of the EU is asking Ireland to willingly fall into a lengthy depression. Could walking away from the debt, or restructuring it, be any worse?
What if the opening negotiating line started was, “We will repay the principle, but no interest, and the timeline has to be stretched out over 25 years? And no payments for five years. Oh, and we have about 300,000 houses you can have as our first payment.”
Would it would result in an even more serious recession? Would we be be further frozen out of the bond markets? We could actually grow our way out of it over time. A lot faster than if we were trying to pay off the debt at even a reduced 5% interest. If Ireland got back on a sound footing, we could once again find acceptance in the bond market.
Without restructuring, we will default, not because we don’t want to not pay our debts, but because we are under such a burden we can’t. It may not be next month, or even next year, but it will come. You can only ask so much of a people. Defaulting on sovereign debt is only unthinkable in elite European Union circles.
If we default, it has the potential to really cause havoc in the debt markets, not to mention the interbank markets. The consequences of a European debt crisis would spread worldwide – and would be especially felt in the US..
The leadership of the EU is living in denial if they think that more debt is the answer to too much debt. It is all well and good for the Germans to tell everyone to cut back (and maybe they should) but to do so means that countries go into recession and have even less money to pay their debt burdens. They get into a debt spiral and the only way out is restructuring, which is default by a nice name.
Somewhere, sometime, this is all going to end in tears. The EU will be better off accepting the need to restructure and letting insolvent banks go. (Finance them and the euro drops like a stone.) Alternatively, they can break the Euro up.
Recognising that Ireland can’t assume its banking debts is just being realistic. We, the Irish people are hurting. But there are no easy answers. No easy button. The only button we have is the reset button. That means pulling the plug, starting over with realistic debt levels and getting access to the bond markets.
WSTT
Very simple and clear. Completely agree. The choice is restructure Irish debt or restructure the EU/euro. Here was my take:
http://www.planware.org/briansblog/2011/02/prevent-a-national-default.html
For the past few months I have been interesting myself in medical advances at various centres in the USA. And a thought crossed my mind that recent research relating to cardiovascular rejuvenation is not that far from what we need in Irish politics.
Scientists can give you a new heart and vascular system non-surgically. They can now reset the telomere clock of aging in stem cells created from normal adult cells.
The next bit is for the technically minded: A clinician draws and sends some of your blood to introduce four transcription factors into some of your blood cells. Those four transcription factors (OCT4, SOX2, LIN28, and NANOG) activate the programming machinery of your DNA that determines what cells are and do
The result is the creation of your own induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. These cells have full telomere lengths restored, having effectively turned back the clock of cellular aging to age zero.
These new “pluripotent” stem cells, made from your own cells, are identical to embryonic stem cells in that they do not age and can be potentiated to become any cell type in your body.
They can also be multiplied and stored indefinitely. Only when these cells have started down the path to their final cell state does the biological clock begin ticking.
Once in your body, your new rejuvenated stem cells will produce the various cells needed to replace old and damaged heart and vascular cells.
These new cells are vigorous, fully functioning, and youthful. In time, you will have, essentially, a new heart and vascular system – without surgery.
Any chance that our new government might produce a similar miracle – without the surgery, of course?