Brian O'Doherty's Blog  

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). […]

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 […]

Prof. Morgan Kelly writes an hysterical piece in the Irish Times today saying we are all doomed. And, he offers no solution…he sees none. His main shocking prediction is that AIB will cost us as much as Anglo, mainly because it will lose a fortune on its residential mortgages, over the next few years. So, […]

OK, Part 1 of the Four Year National Revival plan (FYNRP) is to stop doing the things that are getting us into a deeper and deeper hole and start earning some respect from our creditors. Take NAMA. A good idea in principle when first launched, it has become a monster !. Instead of “saving” the […]

It seems to me to be improper for the State to guarantee the bonds being issued by NAMA-SCAMA, when the said organisation does not have the readies to redeem them at maturity and the State also is blatantly obviously unable to pony up tens of billions of euros for the same purpose if its guarantee […]