Monday 28 December 2015

AND NOW THE GOOD NEWS – IRELAND JUST DESTROYED ANOTHER €500M

On December 21st, for the fourth time this year, the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) announced the ‘cancellation’ of a €500m bond which had been ‘issued in connection with the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IRBC) Act 2013’.

As with three previous such €500m bond sales earlier this year, as with two other such last year, the Irish Times carried a report of the ‘cancellation’ and it sang with positivity, nothing but good news for Ireland. Why, we even gained from the transaction – ‘It is known,’ sang the Times, ‘That the Central Bank realised a €180.3 million gain on the sale of €500 million of 2038 notes this day last year.’

Think about that for a moment – ‘realised a €180.3m gain’ on a €500m transaction. How? Well you see that's a secret, the Irish Times doesn't elaborate.

Incredible? Yes, but for those of us who closely track these events, even that isn’t the major howler.

Bear in mind that the Irish Times claims to be ‘The Paper of Record’. Now, know this.

The most important element in all these NTMA IBRC bond ‘cancellations’, in fact the whole raison d'être for those bonds in the first place, is what happens to the money the NTMA gives to the Central Bank of Ireland to buy out those bonds.

That money is destroyed.

That’s right, my friends – destroyed.

FOLLOW THE MONEY
In a nutshell:
NTMA borrows billions on the finance markets through the issuance of sovereign bonds; in tranches of €500m the NTMA then uses that borrowed money to buy the IBRC bonds from the Central Bank of Ireland and thus ‘cancels’ those bonds – that much IS reported by the Irish Times; what’s NOT reported, the Central Bank of Ireland then destroys those borrowed billions. Every cent.

Even as we headed into a festive season that sees record numbers of people evicted, on the streets, below the poverty line, record numbers fed by charity organisations, record numbers on waiting lists in a health service that has all but fallen apart, this broke and heavily indebted money is destroying borrowed money by the hundreds of millions.

And even in its own reports of those incidents, the Irish Times omits to mention this, the most critical element of all.

Last year, the NTMA gave the Central Bank of Ireland €1,000m of borrowed money, €1,000m on which we are now paying interest, €1,000m which will have to repaid by a future generation of Irish people when those bonds mature; this year, 2015, the NTMA gave the Central Bank of Ireland €2,000m of borrowed money, €2,000m on which we are now paying interest, €2,000m which will have to repaid by a future generation of Irish people when those bonds mature.

And the Central Bank of Ireland immediately destroyed those hundreds of millions of euro, all three billion.

Those three billion are just the start – the Central Bank of Ireland still holds €25bn of IBRC bonds for sale, that €25bn then also to be destroyed.

A NOD AND A WINK, A €31bn DEBT
The reason for all this destruction of money? In 2009/10, to prevent the collapse of two insolvent banks (Anglo Irish and INBS), the Central Bank of Ireland, the Irish Government and the ECB colluded to bypass the ECB’s own regulations and allowed the creation of €31bn to bail out the creditors of the two banks; a couple of years ago those banks were finally wound up and as was known even at the time, didn’t have the wherewithal to cover that €31bn; the ECB now insists that our Central Bank has to take that entire €31bn back out of circulation. We don’t have it of course, so we borrow it and, tranche by €500m tranche, destroy it.

The irony, as we head into 2016 – if this were to happen now, under the new ECB banking ‘Single Resolution Mechanism’, those two banks would be bailed out using funds raised from the banks themselves. All too late for Ireland of course; those structures SHOULD have been in place from the launch of the euro, but weren’t.

That the government would much prefer you didn’t know any of this is understandable, for obvious reasons; that the Irish Times, that ALL our major national media, would so misrepresent it, is an utter disgrace.

They would also have you all believe that the bank-debt ship has sailed, all water under the bridge.

BALLYHEA SAYS ‘KNOW’
In the Ballyhea Says No campaign, we know otherwise. For 252 weeks, every week since March 6th 2011, we’ve been trying to get our message across, the real story as outlined above. We don’t have the audience of The Irish Times; you can help us. Copy this, share it, tweet it; let people know.

This coming Sunday, January 3rd 2016, 10.30am in Charleville, we march again; the first Sunday of another year, another milestone on a journey that will end only with bank debt write-down. Join us.
Manipulation by the media - happening world-wide