NAMA ‘Dead on Arrival’, say Ministers
One tires of wading through so much bullshit from the various ‘leaders’ of what passes for ‘society’ in this damp corner of the planet. There is very little perspective on offer from these people and, as the 24-hour news cycle intensifies with all the blogging, tweeting and wiki-ing, all we ever seem to get are reactions to reactions to eruptions of events.
Last year, we, the people, were sold a pup called ‘NAMA’. There were several reasons advanced for so doing. Among them were “the EU approves”, “there is no alternative” and also “our reputation will be mud”.
The principal reason advanced however was that
“our banks are broke and this is the only way to get them lending again so that we can restart the economy”.
I am too pissed off to bother searching out links to instances of these but you all know that that was what was said.
Now, Minister Ryan and Minister Lenihan are announcing a program to ‘force’ the AIB & BoI to lend €12bln over the next 3 years. So before all of the loans are transferred to NAMA, they are admitting what the majority of independent observers said at the time would be the case; that NAMA would NOT regenerate lending in this economy.
Further, this new program of lending has no incentive and no enforcement and no punitive measures attached, so that there is no way to make this lending happen. There is just a new ‘nodding dog’ of a quango to repackage the lies of Ministers. The pronunciations of the ‘Credit Review Office’, which is as underresourced as it possible for ‘one man and his dog’ to be, flies in the face of the quotidian experience of every accountant, credit officer and small business operator in the land.
It’s not so bad to have a politician lie to us. We are well used to it, by now. But that they are setting up quangos using our taxes to pay civil servants to lie to us is a new twist to our ‘Wonderland’.
Addendum – What has a new lending program, however fictitious, got to do with Minister Ryan’s portfolio of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources?
