The horse has bolted, the stable is virtually empty.

Most bondholders have been repaid already. That’s who all those troika billions went to, transforming private debt into sovereign debt. That is, loading it onto our shoulders rather than letting the gamblers bear their voluntary risk.

This story is a joke. Noonan is like someone who has paid down their credit card balance from €25k to €500 by extorting the money from someone else, and then asks to be let off the last instalment.

@KarlMarcks last I heard we are only a third of the way through paying bondholders, just because it is no longer a top headline because people got sick of the discussion doesn’t mean we are finished paying for a massive government feck up!!!

It was more of a case that the IMF told us we could, but Germanys personal savings bank aka the ECB, said no way. Fianna fail just accepted this and put the burden on our people, a policy continued obediently by fine gael.

Like I’ve said many times, when the IMF (an organisation famed for bleeding societys dry so that the wealth can get their money back on bad investments) are the good guys in the room, you know you’re being royally screwed by everyone else.

If you were to look at actual the reportage I think you will see that it was the head of the ECB advocated this approach but that the Finance Ministers explicitly shot it down so I can ‘t see how its the governments are doing it. Instead my take is that its the ECB looking at whats coming down the track seeing that they may well not be in a position to cover it all and are signaling this.

And it all began with the Spanish and Italians refusing to put the cost of their bank bailouts on the sovereign Sean, and rightly so. That is what has brought us to this place, not indas obedience or noonans loyalty to his bunds.

Once more, we have our Morons hanging on the coat tails of spain….Please Sir can we have the same as Spain….Spineless Self Serving Meanderthals we have running this septic Isle…!!!

Too True, I don’t think the Spaniards have escaped with one mighty bound just yet! True there may be all sorts of accounting tricks to keep it off the “statisical” counting of the debt on the sovereign but ultimately the sovereign is underwriting whats going in there a bit like our whole promissory notes thing really! Italy has not yet looked for a bail out and I suspect if they do it will be because they need it to run the state rather than for their banks so their bailout will definitely get onto the sovereign if that happens. I agree with your comment under Made’s post below in regard to the IMF so we don’t always disagree!

“And it all began with the Spanish and Italians refusing to put the cost of their bank bailouts on the sovereign Sean, and rightly so.”

Italy hasn’t had a bank bailout.

As for Noonan’s bunds, it was reported that he sold them shortly after he became Minister.

Keep up Too Trueleft.

Also I’d argue that diplomacy has brought Ireland to this point – not banging our first on the table and demanding we get everything our own way. The former pays far more dividends.

You could argue that diplomacy has brought us to this point but you would be completely and utterly wrong.

Our game has been to play for time, hoping that eventually something will change and some crumbs will fall in our direction. If we were people of integrity we would have behaved more like Iceland.

Ryan, I know Italy did not have a bailout. It was spain and italy standing up to germany and the ECB with regards to any nationalisation of their banking debts that started the first utterances of bankers and bondholders having to actually accept losses on their bad gambles.

Oh, and ryan, don’t make us laugh. fine gael have won us nothing. Greeces situation got us the interest rate reduction, the prommisary note was deferred and collecting interest for the next 13 years, and spain and italys display of leadership may well help us out already.

Incidentally, notice how burning the bondholders was a terrible, disasterous, populoust idea according to your party…..until they were told it wasn’t by a european banker??

Yep, real leadership there.

Agreed that it is a bit late about talking about bond holder burning as far as we are concerned as that moment has werll and truly past. The battle now is two fold. Trying to get the best possible return on what has been injected into the banks to date. some suggestions that this may be acheived by “selling” the states stake to the EFSF/ESM with a suggestion that it might yeild €9Billion for an original investment of somewhere around €30billion. The other issue is the famous prommissory notes. Mr Draghi’s statement while indicating bondholders might be burned i.e. someone other than the ECB takes the pain did not give any real comfort on the Prom Notes as any write down here would involve the ECB taking the pain which I don’t think is the plan at this point and I think it would require a big step to do so. The conventional wisdom at this point seems to be to renogiate the term out and interest rate down on the prom notes thus easing the need to find €3.1billion per annum but instead a smaller and theoretically more manageable amount over a longer period. Whether some such measure is acheivable remains to be seen. The commentary seems to be that because we have “sacrificed” our selves as it were that we are due a good turn, if only life was that easy.