Brian O'Doherty's Blog  

The following is a slightly expanded version of a letter I sent to the Editor of the Irish Independent today: 17 December 2020 Re: Taoiseach’s remarks about the Bank Bailout The Taoiseach could be more correct than many think in saying, or letting it slip (?), that  the State did not bail out the banks. […]

The Irish Government has a new currency ready to print, if Ireland has to leave the euro…and it won’t be the old punt. The man gave me a preview…It’s the Geallt (pronounced gee-alt), like the Gaelic word for promise. ” The beautiful thing about it”, he says, “is that we can print as many as […]

Maybe I am doing him an injustice…He seems a good person and generally reliable..Maybe it is my own fault…I did not notice an official, timely and proper withdrawal of the State’s offer in relation to AIB’s capitalisation, perhaps. If so, I am happy to apologise to Mr. Noonan. But, otherwise it seems to me that […]

We have referred before to the essential immorality of the NAMA scheme, under which bank shareholders must accept a valuation of their equity made by state officials and, if that valuation is sufficiently low, hand over their equity to the same state accordingly, even if, ultimately, the state sells off bank assets at an enormous […]

The results of the stress tests are being presented as an urgent and unexpected need for more capital to cover losses by the Irish banks. The reality is that the extra capital required is to protect the banks in the event that something highly unlikely might happen to our economy and society in the medium […]

I haven’t heard one word of sympathy for bank shareholders (AIB and BOI) during the election campaign, in spite of the injustice done, and still being done, to them. And in spite of their very large numbers. There must be even more votes to be collected from bank bashers and general begrudgers. As we have […]

This is a post I sent to the IrishEconomy.ie blog today. The discussion followed a recent speech by CB Governor Paddy Honohan ” When the Governor raised the matter of accounting practices, I thought he was going to tell us some good news. He said: “ I have already railed elsewhere against the backward-looking loan-loss […]

Why don’t they let us see the report published last week by Goldman Sachs, which says, in essence, that we have been far to negative in estimating our financial losses, at bank and national level. As a result, we are forcing the banks to raise unnecessary capital (and the shareholders to consequently take unnecessary losses). […]

This is a post I sent to IrishEconomy.ie blog today: ” To all, and especially those who recently insisted that we could keep on issuing NAMA bonds….The situation is very clear: It’s the ECB that wants a bail out!! THEY, themselves, want to be “bailed out”, of the alleged obligation on them to keep on […]

It seems that Chancellor Merkel has clarified her previous suggestions that bond holders must not rely on an EU bailout for Irish and other sovereign debt by saying her proposal only commences from 2013. All existing debt will therefore be free of all but EU sovereign risk to debt holders That’s what it seems to […]