But because we’re poor they wouldn’t take the money after they sorted everything out, we’d need to but a few welders though

Well said dave

Feel better now Dave :)

As the Beatles once sang ‘they best things in life are free’

I think dave is feeling unwell

@Pierre I may have my good days and my bad days as I was poisoned by Lariam and now have depression, anxiety, and a bucket full of other side effects but that does not mean my judgement on how tragically our beautiful little Island is being driven to the depths of despair.. it begs belief that still , today, there are TD’s receiving unvouched allowances monthly that equates to the annual fuel and ESB and phone bill of a normal family. It begs belief that with all the perks that goes with being a leech on society that you get a whopping 3,500 allowance on bloody dry cleaning and shure wallace and Gromit only wear frigging t shirts , so Pierre The ailment I may have today and tomorrow is the epidemic we are all going to get if ya haven’t got it already…… Au Revour

Each of you, for yourself, by yourself and on your own responsibility, must speak on behalf of your children. It is a solemn and weighty responsibility to stand up when it is necessary to stand, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of press, government, or the empty lies and mockery of politicians. Each man woman daughter and son of Ireland must alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. How much longer can a nation lay down and be walked on by those who have betrayed you? If as a nation you stand up together, you shall decide and shape your new futures together, and by your stand your future generations will not ask “why did you do this to me” they will instead thank you for taking their future back. Do not be afraid of the false fear they propagate, do not follow those who are blinded by media. Come together peacefully, organize, mobilize and stand up in thousands, hundreds of thousands at the steps of the traitors. They will not mock you, they will not ignore you, they will not lie then. These traitors are scabs, leeches, snakes, they could not care less about the people of Ireland. Hold up your head Ireland! You have nothing to be ashamed of, find within you the spirit of your forefathers. Ask yourself the simple question “What is right” Stand up!!!

And mediums size black and tans, with a brindle

And eh… 250,000,000 for me to take math classes…

200,000,000 sweet jebus! I need coffee.
If it’s wrong again I don’t care, give the remainder to the VDeP

For the people out there that think there is an investigation into what went on in our banking system ,no way this is window dressing ,are they going to start locking up accountants who monitored all this moving money around and said nothing ,then one of them starts to talk he gets frightened and he brings down more of his buddies then the panic sets in another one of them goes to the fraud squad and hangs more so he will get a good deal ,now its a free for all tds bankers barristers judges regulators all heads of all major institutions in this country heading for the slammer bertie biffo and seanie all in the one cell ,i just woke up what an awsome deam

there are so many people i could think of could use him for…. :-) deffo have to reload.

Bertie, is that you?

That’s it Catherine don’t you worry your touché about patients on trollies, Waiting lists, larger classes, SMA shortages, 8yrs take of household tax @ €100….etc…

Get off your high horse Peter. It’s not as if we’ll get our hands on the money anyway and not every question that’s asked needs to be met with a ‘save the world’ response. We’re all sick of hearing about bond holders, banks and politicians so instead let the rest of us day dream about what we’d do with a billion euro.

That horse you talk of me on Aaron bolted a long time ago.The comment sounded like a cross between the rose of Tralee & a kick back to the days of the Celtic tiger. Please do not let me stop you from dreaming as I could not stomach the guilt.

why??

ho boy one born evey day!!. seems you don’t understand the wider situation.

The interest we are going to be forced to pay is not borrowed it will come from cuts in services,cuts in payments to the needy.Where is the falacy in what i have said?

If we are only getting loans to pay off debts then we would at least save on the interest repayments, no?

The fallacy is in the question re alternatives things we could spend on this money, the €1.5Bn when the alternative does not exist.

The question this thread is about does not relate to the interest we will pay for borrowing the money. Nor do you mention it in your opening post.

I am also in favour of minimizing the cuts in services and payments to the needy. If we didn’t pay this money, we would have half the money we currently have to spend on those things. I find it very frustrating that people ignore this fact.

Donal,
It is easier to pretend it would have no effect. You and I operate in a rational world. Others simply do not accept the dire consequenes of not being able to borrow when you piss off your lenders.
Tom

True Donal – but do you not think it is a bit wrong when the bonderholders we are paying are mainly the banks from the same countries that “lent” or sold us this money. In a nutshell Franco & Gerry gives money which we must 1/ use to pay of the UNSECURED debts of a bank we the taxpayer have no share in (and pay it back to Franco & Gerry no less). and they 2/ we must pay back the loan plus sickly interest rates to wait for Franco & Gerry.

The reason we do this according to Paddy Dail, is to pull on the “Green Jersey” and show that Ireland pays her debts ….. fair enough, but that is easy for Paddy Dail when he can afford the latest strip on his TD pay.

Jim of course I think it is wrong. In an ideal world we should not have to shoulder these debts that the Guarantee landed us with. The Guarantee made this day inevitable.

(Hindsight is a marvellous thing – when the Guarantee came out, I thought it was a great idea)

Donal the bonds we are paying today are not to Senior bondholders but for bonds traded on the secondary market with a haircut price.The ECB refused to allow us purchase those bonds back at the reduced price they were trading for.

Tom just because people don’t share your views does not in any way make them less connected with reality.

Donal, what do u make of this article by David Mcwilliams?

http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2012/01/23/doing-a-deal-with-the-devil

It’s a good article Joseph and basically true but it doesn’t address the reality of what would happen if we were to default – that we would be cut off from all sources of external funding.

McWillliams would not be the one whose salary or dole would suddenly be cut in half.

Norman – the bonds being repaid today are senior bonds. The whole point of bonds is that you can sell them. Just because you do this does not stop them being senior bonds. In any case, the question of the rightness or wrongness of paying them back is sadly not actually relevant here as our lenders are not interested.

Wrong…

Sorry Donal but your original post is nonsense. Yes we are being lent the money to repay bondholders, but the Irish tax payer will ultimately have to repay these loans plus interest with money that could have been spent elsewhere within the economy.

Sorry Gareth, but it’s not nonsense. If we weren’t using the loan to repay the bonds, we wouldn’t be borrowing the money in the first place and the money would not have been spent elsewhere in the economy.

The point re interest is correct but it’s not what this thread asks: “Open thread: What would you do with the €1.25bn Anglo payment?”.

at what point donal do people say enough is enuf?
I suppose im arguing the morality of it.
are u saying that we are just caught by this unbelievable ‘bailout programme’
that is really nothing more than saving european banks, and that from
here till god knows
Is democracy really a thing of the past, and we are all slaves now to security, at any cost?
to quote mcwilliams, are we now living in a “banktatership”?

Yes, we need money to fund the state, but again, at what cost, morally speaking?

i dont know…..

Joseph, we are basically caught between a rock and hard place.

Donal,

Will we or will we not have to repay the €1.25 Billion? Where will we get the money to repay this €1.25 Billion? I think I am right to assume that we will use tax revenue to repay this loan. Thus reducing available funds to the tune of €1.25 Billion + Interest.

Gareth, we’re also getting a shed load of loans from the Troika…and the ECB insisted we pay it back. Even without the bailout, we’re 20 bn over budget.

Gareth, our income (tax revenue) is about half of our outgoings, which although includes paying back bonds, the lion’s share of the gap is in our day to day spending on services and welfare.

We are borrowing the rest from the Troika (which we are being lent on the condition that we pay these debts) so you are wrong to say the money is coming from tax revenue.

Donal I agree Hindsight is a marvelous thing but only if you use to inform your current decisions…. what is scary is ignoring the lessons learnt for hindsight and blinding following a plan when it is clear that the driving factors that build the plan (that is to say the driving factors as published) are now invalid.

I personally HATE the phrase that current governments are using of “pulling on the green jersey” to try and make people who disagree with them sound unpatriotic ….. and has anybody notice that whenever FG are about to do something unpopular/wrong that RTE break either an anti-FF story or a story about them fighting for Ireland……. (i.e. the e-voting machines around the budget , Micky Noonan heading over to talk to Mario yesterday ahead of the payment today)
Basically they have the power make the guarantee … they also have the power to break the guarantee!

Jim, we don’t have the power to not pay back the debts of Anglo unless the ECB agree (the IMF don’t think we should).

Donal, IMO I think we do, it involves scraping the current bailout which is not such a bad thing….. for this payment we adjust the budget this so that we “saved” (not the inverted commas) ~ €3.5B. Adding this payment to next one due on Anglo debts on the 31st March comes to ~€3.5B (i’m opening to correction here) …….. so in the space of 3 months the “savings” have been blow on paying for a dead bank. I know that you may retort by saying that the 3.5b was borrowed money anyway, but I go a step further……. none of this money realy exists…… it is numbers in a book….. false loan assists cooked up by the same bank now dead…… basically we are looking at the result of unregulated greed and captilism at it’s worst. …. this happened before in the ‘great depression in the US’ the way out was forge by the Seal-Glass bill which was a complete overhaul of the rules of banking and business which the last remains of which were signed away by Bill Clinton which opened the door for the mass inflation that makes the burst so bad…. interesting timing no?

Jim, the adjustment we will have to make if we default will be in the order of €20Bn.

This will have a massive negative effect on the marginalised and anyone else who relies on the State for their income or essential service – the austerity being experience today would be a walk in the park in comparison.

Donal, i don’t believe that funding would be cut off.
But worst case scenario, they cut off funding.
Yes, the pain would be extreme.
Or we can continue what i see as a criminal bailout,
continue a lesser pain policy that will last for years.
The cumulative pain of years of pain IMO would far exceed
a short term, albeit extremely painful, adjustment.
as mcwilliams points out, markets have no memory.
without all the debt on our books, we would quickly become
attractive to the markets again.
we would also regain some sense of being a sovereign nation again,
back in control of decision making etc etc
I don’t believe that funding would automatically cut off however.
are these people our european colleagues or not?

I agree Donal, but in theory on the basis of 3.5b per year we would be out of it 3-4 years (i accept it is more complex than that but not unachievably so). The pain you speak of would also in IMO force the change that is needed across all sectors that we are not making because frankly we do not have too……. we are still paying 5 times more per head of cappa that the Germans on social services so I think we could be more efficent in our spending.

I need to sign-off now but thanks Donal, a good debate :)