Bollitics - Ireland, the Euro and the future of the EU

[CVByrne]

Went round to the in-laws last night talked about the state of the country and the government etc ....so I said I dont know who I will vote for yet but it wont be Fianna fail so I said who would you vote for they said Fianna fail ...I was like what ? is this some sort of sick joke...they said no we always have and will vote for them but they need a new leader .......I couldnt belive it but thats the way most old people will vote and you wont see that much of a swing to the opposition in the election

Yep, they will still get 30% of the vote. There are those core voters who will always vote for them no matter what. I've always voted Fine Gael while my Father votes Labour. But the problem now is Fine Gael are run by a clueless buffoon and Labour as more and more like communists and very dangerous in they get a majority.

I think Fine Gael Labour is what we'll get. I just hope they are any better than Fianna Fail have been in the past 2 years.

[CVByrne]

It is not an astonishing number of people, you are talking utter rubbish, you don;t know shit about my country yet try to pretend you have some wonderful insight. You put your own spin on the bits you read in your media.

If only someone could invent something that allowed people outside of the country the ability to access the media inside the country.

There is a huge huge difference between the amount of reading and exposure to the situation abroad as there is to people living here, is there not? Yes you can access it, but you have your own news to absorb too. I'm sure you are not devoting all your time to the irish economic mess. Nor do you know the feeling in the country from the mainly silent majority.

[CVByrne]

I mean a non event as it it will not achieve what the protesters wished. The majority of Irish people accept we need 6lbn in cuts. The protesters are not the majority

So it only becomes an event when 50.01% of the population turn out?

Or it only becomes an event when/if policy changes? That's completely arse about face, really.

Still, move on, eh? Line in the sand, eh? There is no problem. The system is fine. You're all great. No one is struggling. You're all right and you appear to be the self-appointed spokesperson for the silent majority (the same majority about whom you were less than complimentary before - especially about their (economic) decisions and opinions).

We all know we need to make cuts...

No, you are 'all' (who is this 'all'?) of the opinion that this needs to happen. No one knows even your 'Captain Hindsight' fellow.

Ok, the people speaking at the event were, Sinn Fein councillors and Joe Higgins of the socialist party. Plus the Trade Union heads. Combined they represent a minority of people in this country.

Next the 6bln cuts are what all three majory parties agree needs to be made in the budget. They represent well over 80% of the countries voters.

So when I say all, I mean the government and the next government agree we need 6bln in cuts and taxes.

[CVByrne]

All the people who ran the banks into he ground have been removed

Didn't you tell us, before all this blew up, that you work in a bank on derivatives, trying to make them sufficiently obscure that the regulators wouldn't be able to understand them and therefore would be unable to control them?

Are you still doing that, or has that stuff been stopped?

Do you think this activity was any part of the problem?

No that is a lie you have made up. That I work to try and fool regulator. I said the level of Auditors knowledge of our modles was poor and it was frustrating trying to teach an accountant about mathematical models they didn't have the knowledge to understand. So refrain from lying next time.

I work in Global Treasury Risk a division that has never lost money during the crisis, so I'd like to think in our respect we did an excellent job. Not one irregularity, and excellent level of risk management. Unlike banks in England where their losses came from the Capital Markets division and sub prime debt. The losses incurred by Irish banks are down to levels of domestic property lending, levels of lending that were decided at Boardroom level.

An employee in a bank is no more to blame for this crisis than a teacher or builder is.

Government, Bank Boards, Property Developers and incompetent and neglegent regulators are to blame.

[snowychap]

So when I say all, I mean the government and the next government agree we need 6bln in cuts and taxes.

And you are confident that your current government and your next government (and those whom they purport to represent) are correct?

It strikes me that when you have lambasted what the majority have thought and done before (and then talked about the decisions which the majority may have supported earlier which your man Captain Hindsight now say were wrong), it is rather perverse to use (apparent) majority support for intended measures as one of the reasons why they might be correct.

[CVByrne]

That makes no sense snowy. ^

[snowychap]

That makes no sense snowy. ^

[frustration]Well I'm sorry you don't understand it.[/frustration]

[CVByrne]

Anyway, discussion about my countries woes with Socialists from England isn't going to do much good, nor be in anyway insightful. I'd rather discuss it with the people effected, the people from my own country but it seems we are all in agreement on here. The thread seems driven by non Irish.

[snowychap]

...discussion about my countries woes with Socialists from England...

Who are these socialists from England?

[Meath_Villan]

Alright...alright ...calm down calm down

[CVByrne]

...discussion about my countries woes with Socialists from England...

Who are these socialists from England?

You have very extreme views about everything. Pointless really discussing stuff with you. Can't see what good it will do, especially when it has to deal with my country and not yours. You seem to think that your views are easily transferable to here, but they're not.

We have a totally different mentality, the majority grew up poor and then the boom years came and now we have a huge middle class. So pretty much 80% of the electorate vote for centre parties, with pretty much very similar views on how the country should be run.

I don't care much for the Socialists, or Sinn Fein. They are the two groups where your opinions would be closely tied. They represent the minority of opinion.

[peterms]

The losses incurred by Irish banks are down to levels of domestic property lending, levels of lending that were decided at Boardroom level.

An employee in a bank is no more to blame for this crisis than a teacher or builder is.

Government, Bank Boards, Property Developers and incompetent and neglegent regulators are to blame.

So it's the level of lending on property determined by bank boards that's the problem? Not the risk management undertaken by bank staff in making the loans?

It's clearly the case that bank boards have a very large share of responsibility for the problems, but looking at some of the problems associated with, say, Allied Irish, from the £400m bailout in 1985, to the €90m payout for tax evasion in 2000, to the $700m fraud in 2002, to the €34m overcharging of customers revealed in 2004 (which had been going on for several years, illegally), to the illegal deal practices of 1991-93, to the improperly favourable treatment of Charlie Haughey's €1m overdraft, to the recent mess, it's also clearly the case that many employees have been closely involved in a range of things from poor judgement to downright illegality.

I would say this catalogue suggests there's something of a culture problem, and bank employees are not all innocent bystanders in this; some of them, perhaps many of them, are also part of the problem.

[CVByrne]

The losses incurred by Irish banks are down to levels of domestic property lending, levels of lending that were decided at Boardroom level.

An employee in a bank is no more to blame for this crisis than a teacher or builder is.

Government, Bank Boards, Property Developers and incompetent and neglegent regulators are to blame.

So it's the level of lending on property determined by bank boards that's the problem? Not the risk management undertaken by bank staff in making the loans?

Again implying I'm in someway at fault. Do you know what Capital Markets is? Nothing to do with loans.

The former head of my Division has been on record voicing his concerns about the level of domestic property lending but was over ruled. The people in charge were told time and again that this was too risky, yet they continued to insist on more lending. The fact that they get away with this neglegance is a disgrace.

On the culture I'd agree, I don't like the culture at management level and above. There is this horrible arrogance, indifference and in many cases laziness.

I, like many people who work for the bank am young I'm 28, I joined in 2007 when the credit crunch started. The culture of us young college graduates is one of hard work. I am saying we and ordinary branch staff are as much to blame for this as a teacher or builder.

Also the 2002 loss due to Rusnack was in American Subsidary.

[peterms]

Again implying I'm in someway at fault. Do you know what Capital Markets is? Nothing to do with loans.

The former head of my Division has been on record voicing his concerns about the level of domestic property lending but was over ruled. The people in charge were told time and again that this was too risky, yet they continued to insist on more lending. The fact that they get away with this neglegance is a disgrace.

I'm not familiar with the staffing structure of banks, but I would have thought the issues I listed cover a range of parts of the business, involving different groups of staff. That's why it sounds like a problem with culture, not just a localised problem (nor a problem to do with one bank).

[peterms]

Some interesting insights into regulation of banks, here.

Here are two stories I was told today. They illustrate why those among our politicians who tell us that all we need is "better regulation" are either inbred or think we are. I have had to leave out all the identifying names at the request of the two people who told me.

The first story concerns a British near shore, off-shore Tax haven and a very large European bank, well known in Britain.

According to the person who spoke to me this bank does a massive amount of its work in this tax haven, BUT everything they do is accessed from servers that are physically in Switzerland. The bank staff in the tax haven do their work and go home as anyone else would. But then some of them return in the evening and their job is to close all the work out completely and leave no trace of the deals in the tax haven. At the end of each day there is nothing that any UK regulator could access. All the work has been 'done' under the jurisdiction where the servers are located. This seems to me to correspond closely to the testimony of the German bankers who were flown to Ireland for the day for the purpose of doing deals they could not do in Germany. This is the online version of the same idea.

The work is done in one place, but falls in the jurisdiction of another. This on line version not only cuts out the local regulator but further completely cloaks the transactions in Swiss secrecy but without the banks being seen as a 'secretive' swiss bank. It maintains its identity as a UK bank but avoids any pesky 'regulators' who might come snooping.

Not that the bank would have any trouble from UK regulators. This same person told me that this bank had once been told by the SFO that SFO officers would 'raid' it, but in a year's time. A year later they were duly 'raided'. Nothing was found, the SFO had done its duty but at the same time they had made sure that there had been no risk of potentially embarrassing material being found.

Although the person told me in good faith and professed to be telling me the truth I felt uneasy about it. So I checked this with another banker who works in Europe at a quite different bank.

This second banker laughed and told me this rang perfectly true. She went on to tell me this. She had been working as a market risk manager at a large lender in a country at the eastern end of the Med. Her job had involved watching two parallel sets of accounts which the bank kept, one in the country in which they were based and one in The Cayman Islands. The banker was told that if ever she saw or heard that the bank regulator, auditor or any outside official was coming, she was to transfer anything she was told to, to the Cayman account and log out from it. Thus hiding from the national regulatory 'embarrasing transactions or activities'.

The parallel accounts allowed the bank to keep tight records of its transactions and accounts for the purposes of internal accounting and risk management but to do so in a way that allowed them to hide anything and everything from the national regulator.

I am sorry I can't give you names but if I did I would cause havoc. I realize it does mean these accounts lack in the details that could be used to verify them. I know the people who told me. I trust them both.

They show me that regulation is window dressing. That what is 'regulated' is largely whatever the banks are content with and nothing more.

The second banker also told me that the story about the SFO rang true. When I asked why, she laughed at me and said I really was being naive. She said that to her personal knowledge one of the banks she had worked for held accounts for some of that country's most prominent national politicians the purpose of which were to massively avoid taxes and therefore would embarrass both the financial and political class were they to be 'investigated'. Thus, she said, it was common for banks to be given lots of notice of any 'raid' so as to make sure nothing incendiary could be found. That way the raid could be seen to be rigorous and thorough and yet have no chance of turning anything up.

Regulation is a joke. It is window dressing for the proles to comfort themselves with. It works much like the Christmas time displays. Simple mechanisms behind thick glass to give children a warm feeling.

[CVByrne]

Again implying I'm in someway at fault. Do you know what Capital Markets is? Nothing to do with loans.

The former head of my Division has been on record voicing his concerns about the level of domestic property lending but was over ruled. The people in charge were told time and again that this was too risky, yet they continued to insist on more lending. The fact that they get away with this neglegance is a disgrace.

I'm not familiar with the staffing structure of banks, but I would have thought the issues I listed cover a range of parts of the business, involving different groups of staff. That's why it sounds like a problem with culture, not just a localised problem (nor a problem to do with one bank).

Well Capital Markets is a separate division, different building and completely separate from the rest of the bank. We have a different culture, for example we work 7:15hours a day and have an hour for lunch. The rest of the bank get two 20min breaks and an hour lunch and work 7 hour days. They also get paid over time we get unpaid over time.

Our division has never made a loss. So in essence our side of the bank has had nothing to do with any of the banks woes. But since we are all under the AIB name we are tarred with the same brush. It's hard to explain to people how we are different. That it's a credit to our divisions Risk management that we never made a loss, we don't have loans that can have creative incorrect pricing. Pricing is done on the current trading prices available on the stock exchange.

But as you'll see none of those problems you have pointed out in the banks history bar the American rogue trader have anything to do with Capital Markets Division.

And even so I have worked for the bank less than 4 years, so I've only ever known the economic turmoil stricken bank, not any of the time before that.

[Awol]

Anyway, discussion about my countries woes with Socialists from England isn't going to do much good, nor be in anyway insightful. I'd rather discuss it with the people effected, the people from my own country but it seems we are all in agreement on here. The thread seems driven by non Irish.

It was started by a Englishman who is definitely not a socialist and it is intended to address a far wider issue than your country alone. Besides we are affected, to the tune of 7 billion pounds that we'll never see again. That's the same as all welfare cuts over here combined. I'd say that at least entitles us non-Irish folk to an opinion.

[CVByrne]

I also agree with the comments on Regulation. The head of our department Global Treasury Risk too over in mid 2008 and had said in a Department update that the previous head had never ever met anyone from the Regulators office in his 4 years in charge. Never once, the head of the Risk Department never once met anyone from the Regulator. What a disgrace.

[CVByrne]

Anyway, discussion about my countries woes with Socialists from England isn't going to do much good, nor be in anyway insightful. I'd rather discuss it with the people effected, the people from my own country but it seems we are all in agreement on here. The thread seems driven by non Irish.

It was started by a Englishman who is definitely not a socialist and it is intended to address a far wider issue than your country alone. Besides we are affected, to the tune of 7 billion pounds that we'll never see again. That's the same as all welfare cuts over here combined. I'd say that at least entitles us non-Irish folk to an opinion.

You will see the 7bln again. Also I meant the comment as the thread is more driven by English about the 7bln loan and the state of the Irish economey than it is by Irish people about the upcoming budget and how it will effect us and our future. Get what I mean, it moved to people's political views.

[snowychap]

...discussion about my countries woes with Socialists from England...

Who are these socialists from England?

You have very extreme views about everything...You seem to think that your views are easily transferable to here, but they're not.

Have I and do I?

No (and therefore the second leap you make doesn't hold either).

I believe, actually, that I have just asked you to justify some of the assertions you have made (like why you implicitly claim to speak for everyone, why you are so certain that the majority opinion is right this time, &c.).

Can't see what good it will do.

Perhaps discussing the subject might be a much better idea than posting your foolish assumptions about someone else's political or economic views.

They are the two groups where your opinions would be closely tied.

In order for you to make that kind of judgement you'd have to both know and understand my views. Unfortunately for this thread that is quite obviously not the case.