There’s a scandal ratcheting around Ireland, and it’s all around the revelation that Anglo-Irish Bank pretty much scammed the country into bailing it out, which pretty much caused the country to fall arse over teakettle into a depression that they have yet to austerity themselves out of. (Not for want of trying.) The Irish Independent has a recording from 2008 that shows that Anglo-Irish’s management lied about the condition of the Bank and:
…decided to game the Central Bank and their regulators knowing that once the State began the flow of money, it would be unable to stop: "If they (Central Bank) saw the enormity of it up front, they might decide they have a choice. You know what I mean? They might say the cost to the taxpayer is too high . . . if it doesn't look too big at the outset... if it looks big, big enough to be important, but not too big that it kind of spoils everything, then, then I think you have a chance. So I think it can creep up... [once] they have skin in the game." (Source: Zero Hedge.)
For Anglo-Irish, that overall “enormity” ended up being €30bn. But in very canny fashion, the Anglo-Irish bankers decided to start small, with a wee drop of the creature. A mere pittance of €7bn.
And where did that ante-up figure come from?
It was pretty much picked out of nowhere.
Well, not exactly nowhere.
Mr. [John] Bowe is asked [on the tapes] by Mr. [Peter] Fitzgerald how they had come up with the figure of €7bn. He laughs as he is taped saying: "Just, as Drummer (then-CEO David Drumm) would say, 'picked it out of my arse'."…The recording also shows Mr. Bowe and Mr. Fitzgerald laughing as they say how there is no realistic chance of ever repaying the loans. (Original source: Irish Independent.)
Needless to say, all this isn’t going down to well in Ireland. This is a country that is well known for its gallows humor, and its often-times wink-wink affection for the “cute hoors” among them. But every country has its limits, and this might be Ireland’s.
Listening to the tapes, it is hard to remember that David Drumm, John Bowe and Peter Fitzgerald are not crazy or delusional. They are not in denial. They know very well that they have destroyed their bank and threatened the jobs of those who work for them. They know, too, that they are about to cost the Irish people many, many billions of euro. They know that they have screwed up monumentally.
In this light, the only thing that is really shocking about the tapes is what we do not hear. There is not a single moment of embarrassment or regret, not the slightest undertone of shame.
Nor is there even a sense of fear. These men are not worried about what is going to happen to them. A line of Peter Fitzgerald’s, referring in his boy’s-club manner to his boss, David Drumm, says it all: “As Drummer says to me, ‘Don’t worry: we’re going to be around a long time.’ ” (Source: Irish Times.)
There is, of course, some element of whistling past the graveyard here.
I remember plenty of closed-door meetings in some of the (doomed) places where I worked when, walking by, you’d hear all this fake, macho laughter. Even when we all knew that we were circling one drain or another.
I also remember the CEO of what was perhaps the most absurd place I ever worked – definitely Top Two – who, when our investors threatened to send a turn-around guy in, told one of my friends that they – the investors – “were trying to screw us.” This is after those investors had dropped $40M into our coffers (back when $40M was considered a fairly large amount). So, one can imagine that those investors may have had a different feeling about who was the screwer and who was the screwee.
Apparently the Central Bank of Ireland did recognize that the Anglo-Irish crew weren’t your kindly local bankers, and had a good idea who the respective screwers and screwees were going to be. Their terms for them were “slick and buccaneering.”
After the release of recordings of internal phone calls between some of those executives, Irish citizens might have added a few more terms: arrogant, cynical, greedy, contemptuous, myopic, feckless, amoral – and a string of unprintable ones besides.
There were/are other Irish banks which had a hand in all this, and the Independent is hoping to out them, as well:
Undoubtedly similar tapes exist in Ireland’s other banks but to date we have been denied access to them. (Irish Independent.)
Oh, for the days, when the raging headlines were about the Irish rod-anglers going on strike. Okay, there’s still a bit of that. In Galway and Roscommon, the peat cutters are involved in turf wars. Literally.
Turf battles aside, Ireland remains a most distressful country. Tremendous youth unemployment, and a recent fallback into recession, based on Q1 2013 economic results.
I suspect that the average citizen is not amused by the current theater surrounding the “out of my arse” tapes.
Not that it will do them any good, but they shouldn’t be.
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And a tip of the scally cap to my brother-in-law, Rick T. for sending me that original, Zero Hedge link to this story.
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