NAMA: Rebadging Failure as Success

Photo Credit: Google Images

Fintan O'Toole calls out the economic failure in Ireland in today's Irish Times (and, incidentally, in The New York Times also) and in particular those politicians who hold the country up as an example to others. The debt has soared, public services have been slashed, and quality of life has deteriorated for all but those who have emigrated in the last five years. Things are admittedly pretty awful, and made worse by rich men in expensive suits praising the country for its prudence and fortitude.

NAMA was actually designed to do this.  Its model works thus: you have a property worth $50m, for which a developer has a loan of $100m, you pay the bank $20 for the loan, re-capitalise the bank for the $80m shortfall (i.e. repay the German inter-bank lender) through off-books sovereign debt, then sell the property for $30m, making (ahem) a $10m 'profit'. So NAMA then is a success, because it drove a profit from its loan book. The State, meanwhile, is crippled.

Anyone can be successful if they are allowed to define the rules for success themselves.  Small minds are destroying this place.

The SIPTU Moment: Are We On The Brink of Industrial Armageddon?

Croke Park: Fine Stadium, No Deal.

The rejection of the Croke Park agreement, coming as it does the week of Margaret Thatcher's death, presents the government with a tremendous opportunity.  Combined with Labour's shattered confidence, here's what could happen now*.

Enda Kenny announces in the Dáil that he has formed an agreement with Micheal Martin (resurgent, forgiven, and hungry to get back into power) to form a Randian Correction Coalition that will over the next two years restore the fortunes of the country.  The alternative would be at least ten more years of pain. Ireland announces a unilateral re-designation of the national debt in its various layers, and enters negotiations with its debtors to formalise those arrangements.