The seemingly innocuous decision of Anglo Irish Bank to change its year-end from September to December, presumably with the approval of the Minister for Finance and "public interest" board members, is a striking example of the Government's opaqueness and Machiavellian approach to the banking crisis and Nama. This date change means that the State-owned bank can hide the full extent of its problems until 2011.
Meantime, the Government has gifted almost €4 billion of taxpayers' money to the bank for absolutely no return and will probably need to flush a further €4-6 billion down its plug hole. This is additional to the estimated €28.4 billion of loans to be transferred to Nama. The State is knowingly paying over the odds for the privilege of handling these loans to the extent of, maybe, €3-6 billion.
On this basis, Anglo is going to cost the Irish taxpayer anything between €8 and €16 billion. This means that up to 15 months of all income tax collected in the State could be used to pay for the reckless behaviour of Anglo's management and some of its clients.
Leave a comment