A chara, – Your assertion that the Government’s choice of an asset management agency approach to the banking crisis has been vindicated is not only premature but entirely without merit (Editorial, July 8th). First, no other approaches were debated or considered by the Government. Second, as you point out yourself, the real cost of Nama will not be known for years.
The Swedish approach in the early 1990s of nationalising, splitting up good and bad banks and doing deals with creditors would not only have solved the problem of keeping the country’s payments system running, it would have spared the taxpayer from the Government guarantee and the black hole that is Anglo. Iceland’s payment system and ATMs continue to function despite their banks’ collapse, Greece continues to borrow at acceptable rates and without surrendering sovereignty thanks to its membership of the EU.
Nationalising the property sector to avoid further price falls and guaranteeing private debt with public funds to avoid losses to private European banks makes no sense economically or commercially and surely does not deserve the editorial backing of the paper of record in this country. – Is mise,
Madam, – You hit the nail on the head with your observation that we will not know for some years what Nama will cost (Editorial July 8th). You might have added that how Nama and the main Irish banks will perform in future is totally dependent on what happens to the Irish economy. If we are to make a profit from Nama or from our shareholding in AIB and Bank of Ireland it will be because we have reverted to an enterprise- driven competitive economy with a controlled national budgetary environment.
We have taken the first steps with the budgetary imbalance. It is the enterprise side I really worry about. If our politicians spent as much time debating how to protect and grow jobs in this country as they do on their current agendas we would be in a much better place.
Next time you see a political representative ask them their number one priority. I doubt it will be promoting enterprise. We have a whole range of businesses both domestic and foreign that compete internationally.
Supporting them must be our number one priority if we are to pull ourselves out of our current mess. – Yours, etc,