Lenihan: 'I fought the good fight'..was betrayed..'with hell at the gates'

[PaddyJoe]

Lenihan trying to justify himself. If he was any way inclined to be sensible he would keep very quiet and hope to avoid appearing in court in years to come..

BRIAN LENIHAN has claimed the European Central Bank forced Ireland into taking a bailout and rejected claims by a senior ECB figure that the bank warned Ireland in mid-2010 of the dangers it faced.
He has also accused members of the ECB executives of briefing against Ireland and of “betrayal”.
In a wide-ranging interview on the events surrounding last November’s bailout, Mr Lenihan criticised some of the 17 governing board members of the bank for the “damaging” manner in which they had briefed some media about Ireland.
“On the betrayal issue, I did feel that some bank governors should not be speaking out of turn and that only the president should speak for the bank.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...295312306.html

[PaddyJoe]

Emm, isn't Honohan one of those 17 board members of the ECB? Didn't he ring up Morning Ireland one day and make a statement when nobody had a clue what the hell was going on?

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Lenihan is doing the traditional Fianna Fail thing of identifying a hidden enemy and saying he was fighting against that enemy.

For the likes of John O'Donoghue, Jackie Healy-Rae, Lowry, Fahey, Ned O'Keeffe et al its a traditional route to blame them up in Dublin for all ills and claim they were victimised by them sharp Dublin lads. It just taps into whatever localism is available to them.

Brian Lenihan would do well to tell the truth about what happened on the night of the guarantee in September 2008 and what advice he was given and from whom. This thing of Lenihan suddenly saying 'them sharp lads in Brussels is what done us' just won't float.

He's not said one word about who was whispering in his ear that night in 2008 and what they were whispering. If he's not prepared to explain that he should shut up with his 'the big boys did it and ran away' rubbish.

[C. Flower]

Second article here -

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...1.html?via=rel

These articles are extracts from a BBC4 documentary on the Irish bailout to go out at 1.30 p.m. tomorrow.

I see that the HRE DEPFA bank bailout costs are mentioned by the Germans, at the end of the article.

From my memory of this site, it was becoming evident that the Government would not be able to prevent default or bailout from the end of September on.

I certainly did feel that Ireland was being bullied into the hands of the IMF/EU and that the bailout should be resisted. Also, that the totally incompetent and corrupted Lenihan/Cowen/Green government could not and would not do the job.

[antiestablishmentarian]

Surely it was quite clear after the explosion in bond rates following Black Thursday that the state would have to either seek a bailout or unilaterally default? The only reason it wasn't done earlier is because Lenihan et al took a three month hiatus while the press focused on Larry Murphy and Garglegate and there was no mention of the banks from any government minister- just more rubbish about 'the public finances' and 'seasonally adjusted figures' when asked about the deficit and rising unemployment.

[C. Flower]

Surely it was quite clear after the explosion in bond rates following Black Thursday that the state would have to either seek a bailout or unilaterally default? The only reason it wasn't done earlier is because Lenihan et al took a three month hiatus while the press focused on Larry Murphy and Garglegate and there was no mention of the banks from any government minister- just more rubbish about 'the public finances' and 'seasonally adjusted figures' when asked about the deficit and rising unemployment.

The inertia and inactivity of the Government from the General Election to the IMF EU intervention was almost pathological.

From 6th November we had this thread discussing possible means of avoiding the clutches of the IMF/EU (which was being widely discussed in the international financial press). But Lenihan was still in his dream world.

http://www.politicalworld.org/showth...ullied+Ireland

[Baron von Biffo]

“I’ve a very vivid memory of going to Brussels on the final Monday to sign the agreement and being on my own at the airport and looking at the snow gradually thawing and thinking to myself, this is terrible. No Irish minister has ever had to do this before.”

His capacity for self pity and self delusion is truly astonishing. No Irish minister ever had to do it before because no other Irish minister had failed so comprehensively before.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Quite deliberately so in my opinion. He was appointed Minister for Finance for the Republic of Ireland and acted as a Treasurer for Anglo-Irish bondholders. The ECB didn't make him do that- in fact the IMF and ECB told him to close down Anglo-Irish and INBS specifically and he was still shovelling money at them at every opportunity right up to his carpetbagger party being sacked.

[antiestablishmentarian]

In some ways, it begs the question of whether Lenihan himself (or the rest of the government for that matter) actually took any decisions or if they were made for him by the DoF. Certainly I never had the impression that he knew what he was talking about when asked about possible solutions to the banking crisis, so I don't think it'd be too wide of the mark to say that he was presented with policy decisions by DoF tops who would have been in liaison with the ECB, EU Commission and Central Bank. The economic programme set forth in the series of emergency budgets certainly bears the hallmarks of DoF staffers on it (they're notoriously orthodox and have been since the foundation of the state), and it is surprising that an FF minister, pork-barrel populist to his fingertips, wouldn't even attempt to introduce on a limited scale some sort of programme to keep some of the unemployed in work. No, I think Lenny was given the policies, presented with a best-case scenario wildly more optimistic than was warranted, and told to justify them as best he can- that would certainly explain some of his bizarre statements such as 'cheapest bailout in the world' (when every dog on the streets knew Anglo and the others were up to their necks in debt and that we hadn't learned even a fraction of what was going on in the bank) and of course the 'we have turned a corner' speech.

[Fing Fers]

Yes for banking tribunals. Yes for jobs in the legal profession.

[Apjp]

Emm, isn't Honohan one of those 17 board members of the ECB? Didn't he ring up Morning Ireland one day and make a statement when nobody had a clue what the hell was going on?

Im pretty sure he felt betrayed by Honohan for becoming institutionalised and also for being honest(lets face it, although hes very much a part of the system he was always honest about what was coming, albeit in the world where his and the troikas/govts plans make sense). The funniest thing I ever saw was a lenihan-noonan debate on RTE. Miriam was all serious as though either contestant knew anything about economics or finance. Both are a pair of unqualified uneducated ********* in those two key areas. They have no real world experience, which people of the left and right, centre, ind or whatever should have before getting into politics. Many emigrants will return with expertise and twenty or so years of study and work experience in their fields. How embarassing is it for these fools that every economics student in the country could wipe the floor with them in a debate? Oh THE ATMS..THE MARKETS THE MARKETS...THERELL BE NO MONEY FOR THE ATMS...WHAT ARE YOU SUGGESTING APJP, THAT WE PUT PEOPLE BEFORE BANKS..IM SORRY WE CANT ACCEPT THAT GOING FORWARD..ETC. You get the point

I am told by French, German, Greek, Moroccan and Spanish people, tis the same everywhere. Centralised democracy exists for careerism and the real knowedgeable people are locked out through red tape. we even saw this when RBB wasnt let talk bout a govt order paper in the dail. 'Sure ye know ye cant be talking to a minister directly...' Which also begs the question why the CC'S aren't directly elected by the public? T'would stop govt controlling even how opposition TDs speak.

[Apjp]

Quite deliberately so in my opinion. He was appointed Minister for Finance for the Republic of Ireland and acted as a Treasurer for Anglo-Irish bondholders. The ECB didn't make him do that- in fact the IMF and ECB told him to close down Anglo-Irish and INBS specifically and he was still shovelling money at them at every opportunity right up to his carpetbagger party being sacked.

sorry man but we aint a republic yet. never were. can we just call ourselves Ireland? O'Toole is right in his interesting new book-how to build a new republic. even the constitution doesn't name Ireland as a sovereign republic, but merely a sovereign state called Ireland or Eire. I know its off topic but can we please not call ourselves a republic? Anyone who believes in the sentiment knows that its a delusional title without society running its own affairs.

[PaddyJoe]

Here's the link to Dan O'Brien's documentary on BBC radio this afternoon.
'Bailout Boys Go To Dublin"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b010mryv

[culmore]

If he told the truth now for once, would anyone believe him ?.

[Sidewinder]

Let's get real here - the property bubble burst in late 2006/early 2007 depending on what measure you use, and the public finances were already in freefall by the time of the 2007 election - FF only won that one because underneath all the bombast and bluster people were worried that the bubble had burst and saw FF as the best ones to reinflate it. And that's just the plain blunt truth.

Then FF spent four years from the point the bubble burst living in a fantasy world, trying to reinflate the bubble and protect their cronies, and point-blank refusing to tackle the huge structural budget deficit in any way, or to take any steps to rebalance the economy away from construction and get jobs created in other areas.

Even without the Guarantee and bank bad debts being foisted on the taxpayer, this would have led inevitably to default. The fact that FF policies also made a complete hames of the banking sector merely hastened the end.

Of course the EU had to step in because the country was being run by a mad, bad, dangerous crew of drunks, crooks and lunatics! Of course they didn't do it out of any altruistic motives but rather they saw a convenient scapegoat on which to hang all the ills of their own dodgy insolvent banks. But it was Lenihan and Fianna Fáil, through four years of post-bubble insanity corruption and inaction (or rather, the wrong action) that made us that scapegoat.