Greens Against NAMA Youtube Videos

Gregory,

Yes, if less than 2/3 of the Green Party members fail to support the new programme for the government at the convention on Saturday, the party will pull out and the government will fall.

On a pedantic note: the party needs 2/3 support to remain in government; however on a policy proposal the burden is 2/3 rejection. So if 65% of the Greens vote No to NAMA, John Gormley may still plough on with it.

You’d think they’d stop supporting the government. Then you get to the next step in the chain: a General Election. Were there an election tomorrow, there would be no more Greens. Sticking around for another two years and hoping they ride out the storm is probably their best electoral bet.

(Karl: your headline reads like the Green Party are objecting to YouTube videos about NAMA…)

@ Enda

This a key moment in time for the Greens to put it mildly. A lot of the Greens felt they should never have gone into government with their nemesis FF. If the Greens vote for NAMA there will be no hiding out for them in one months time or two years time.

One thing is certain, and that is, in two years time NAMA will already have begun to unravel. This is not about the Greens in or out of government. This is about the future of this country. Last night, on Vincent Browne a Green councillor told us that he could tear up the previous Green Program for government as it was a useless document. When the Greens went into government they split their party, now with minister Gormley and his love of power he wants to preside over a further even more divisive split. Fractional politics?

I totally question Mr. Lenihans judgment and not just on NAMA. Yesterday, he told the Irish people that forcing John O’Donoghue from office (he is not gone yet) was” a black day for the Irish people”. A black day for the Irish people? How many would agree with that? What will be a black day for the Irish people and a very black day, will be, if Mr. Lenihan and Mr. Bacon can get the Irish people to pay inflated prices for property loans using an ECB “tracker mortgage” which has to be serviced for a minimum of 10 to 15 years. A mortgage which brings the Irish people little or no benefit for the enormous risk that the government would like to expose them to. A 10% gain over 10 years! What about the increase in the national debt, the servicing of the debt, the costs of administration, litigation, the fact that NAMA is not a stimulus not to mention the potential for catastrophic downside losses to the tax payer?

The NAMA vote is really a vote on whether this party wants to exist in the future. I want to know why there is a need for a vote on NAMA at all? NAMA was let fester by Gormley and Ryan. The Green Party does not need the excuse of voting for or against a “program for government”, which will, in any event be, as illusionary as the last one they signed up to. It set out 13 Objectives and not one was achieved, so why vote on another one of these so called programs.

They already have the reason to get out of government and that reason is NAMA. The fact that Ryan and Gormley have bought into NAMA shows, how the old adage, power corrupts etc. has been borne out in this case. If there is to be an election at least the Greens can come knocking on doors saying we could not support a charter or bailout for bankrupt banks financed at the tax payers expense.

On the other hand, we cannot have it every way, we cannot tell the Greens if you vote for NAMA we will never vote for you again, while at the same time, telling them if you vote against NAMA we will never vote for you again!

My own personal opinion is, that, if the Greens show integrity and principal by voting NAMA down, they will increase their support substantially in a general election. After all the opposition has hardly covered itself in glory and FF are gone!

@ Robert

This is hilarious. We ran the PD’s out of town despite them being the most honest party in politics in a couple of generations, and boy how we toasted their rapid demise. People were still spitting vile on their graves over a year later in the letters pages of the Irish Times. Now it looks like we’re going to try and run the Greens out of town too, despite them being the most transperent and honest of the political parties now around. I’m pro-NAMA, but ill still respect the Greens if they feel in good conscience that they cant vote for it. At least they had the honesty and open mindedness to go against the public trends and take a long hard look at what was on the table.

This country really does get the government and representitives it deserves.

Lenihan’s quote on John O’Donoghue beggars belief – what was he smoking?

@ Robert

ill respect the Greens cos they went about coming to a decision based on the policy matters they care about rather than the politics of the matter that others care about.

jl Says:
October 8th, 2009 at 9:41 pm

jl, Maybe we need an “adopt a mink” levy. Can’t release them into the environment. Can’t kill them.

@ Eoin,

Morning news RTE. Seems fairly certain that it’s on the table.

It had been a sticking point with some Greens.

Will try to get link.

@ Eoin,

Link posted.

Hasn’t come up yet.

So lets think this one through. NAMA overpays to keep the shareholder above water and leave the govt with a monority stake in the banks. Then NAMA claws back that overpayment in 10-15 years time and some more when it transpires that there is a big hole in NAMA.

Moreover, as some poster points out, will the loss on Anglo and Nationwide be clawed back from AIB & BOI.

Why not just pay the market price in the first place. NAMA in theory has many good aspects to it. If implemented correctly it might work. However, we are seeing it is now being bent out of shape on the anvil of political expediancy. At this stage,really, nothing would probably be better than NAMA.

This statutory clawback sounds pretty reasonable to me, if it works from a technical perspective.

Can’t imagine that AIB or BOI will be on the hook for Anglo-related losses.

Does this clawback not address many of the concerns voiced on this site?

PS – the fact that mink-farming could play in the decisive role in the financial wellbeing of the Irish state is worthy of Monty Python…

Concubhar O’Caolai Says:
October 9th, 2009 at 9:26 am

@ Concubhar

“Can’t imagine that AIB or BOI will be on the hook for Anglo-related losses.”

Not being smart here, but I can imagine.

It is of course possible that it is all a ball of smoke.

Get NAMA over the line on a promise.

Then don’t deliver. It is after all years in the future.

@ CoC

whats that religous beatitude, “the mink shall inherit the earth”? Or something like that…

The subordinated bonds in NAMA will work on the totality of the scheme, regardless of where the riskiest loans lie, so in that sense AIB/BoI are already getting a worse deal than they maybe should as a result of subsidising Anglo’s loans (we assume Anglo’s are worse obviously), so the NAMA levy working the same way wouldn’t necessarily be out of step with that.

Most people seem to think im some massive bank cheerleader on this site (i aint), but i wholeheartedly agree with a heavy levy to fall back on further down the line if NAMA turns out worse than expected.

I think the Greens have been more than unlucky. The decision to enter government was right – it was the only real chance the Greens would have to try to implement some of their policy. Had we not had a banking and fiscal collapse (if we only had had a recession like everyone else) the Greens might have chipped away at their areas such as planning, transport, energy, climate, or whatever. They might have had a reasonable list of achievements to show after a 5 year period – given they only had a handful of TDs. But when economic catastrophe struck, their fortune was tied to that of FF. They are in a terrible bind now. If they pull out tomorrow, even on some matter of principle, such as NAMA, or education, then they still face obliteration in the election. If they stay, even if they bag serious concessions, they will not have time to implement them since the government is too badly wounded anyway. We all know this government cannot run another two years. The best the Greens can hope for is to stay in government tomorrow and if they have got a reversal of say education cuts to more vulnernable groups, or other meaningful concessions on say, transparency and accountability, they can try to use these as a marker in the public mind to show their priorities. Then soldier on and make an exit over some other major point of principle. Even still, they will be hammered. I cannot see the Greens in government here for another generation (which is unlike the career of the PDs which saw them remain in power for over 20 years after they first got into government)

I think strategically the Green habit of putting motions to the members on issues of policy is self defeating. It may be democratic for the Greens to give members a say, but it does nothing for their attractiveness as future coalition partners (when and if they rebuild). Imagine a major party who needs five or six seats. If the Greens are one among several options they may be less attractive because they effectively repeatedly hold a gun to the head of the major party at the whim of the membership. Not an attractive prospect. Perhaps I over-estimate this as a negative feature but it surely will come into play.

@Zhou,

The mink farm is not a slur, it was said on the radio. It is a further example of the total incoherance of this goverment respones to the crisis.
First come up with NAMA -a reasonable & pragmatic solution to the crisis
Secondly bring in policies that undermine the value of the collatoral -reducing mortgage interest relief, tax 2nd homes, windfall taxes, increased marginal tax rates on the buying cohort
thirdly-settle on a valuation of the assets, with no disclosure on the how you got there and why you paid a premium
fourthly why include a broken bank in the scheme, if half the capacity of NAMA goes to Anglo how does this encourage lending.
then bring in half assed risk sharing in terms of sub debt and a levy which are impossible to price
then leave out a recap scheme entirely.
We have not even discussed the isse of whether NAMA can fulfill its mandate, what staff does it have do do its job.

Hearing the Greens are gonna look for a good bit of real changes to NAMA in addition to the levy. Not sure what it will entail, but will be the same basic concept albeit with a lot of amended features. NAMA 3.0 i suppose. Imagine increased subordinated element, increased independent oversight, maybe increased caveats on bank lending to SME, FTB’s etc.

NAMA 2.0 = Honohan

NAMA 2.1 = ?

Just curious, thanks

@ Irish Pancake

what was put on the table by the govt last month, NAMA 1.0, or NAMA 1.1 (risk sharing), or did it become NAMA 2.1 given that it took in risk sharing, albeit by a different methodology? I suppose 2.2 makes sense if it just increase the risk sharing but doesn’t have much else ‘new’.

@Gregory Connor “It seems to me likely that the Green Party membership will vote down the government programme including NAMA over the weekend and then, if I understand correctly, the government will fall on Monday?”.

I believe that’s what John O’Donoghue is betting on anyway 🙂

Are you sure they weren’t arguing about ‘minka’ rather than ‘mink’?
Much more relevant to NAMA and the property sector.

民家 = houses of the people.

@Zhou

Thanks for the NAMA ver. hist.

Just had a look at Constantin’s completely out of sequence Nama Trust proposal (aka Nama 3.0) on true economics.

http://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/economics-23092009-cost-of.html

Jeez, you gotta give the guy credit, very closely argued, I would need a week to read it.

But he seems a good guy, one of the 46?

“We” don’t have it yet. The Green leadership have it.

It’s not over till the fat lady sings.

Although she may be warming up.

Not much sleep for the Green membership tonight.

@jl

Nama did seem plausible at the beginning. The analogy I would use is that of fostering children. The way social worker Brian Lenihan soothingly described it made it sound like we were minding some problem children for the banks because they were too ill to take care of them. While we fostered their troublesome children they would give plenty of love and care to their other younger children. But instead of the troubled but decent kids we thought we were getting we now learn they are really violent criminal chavs. Also, we are now being asked to give a cash reward to the parents, not usually a part of a fostering process. Especially strange as one of them owns a Polish Estate and the other owns a palace on College Green. The parents children are malnourished, but they intend to feed them only on bread and water for the next five to ten years. Unless that is we give them more cash gifts. As a concession, Lenihan, who has only been in the social services for a short time, having previously been a police man, is offering to give us back one third of the cash gift if the children violently assault us before the age of eighteen. Our Uncles Eamon and John, also social workers (and both keen organic gardeners), who have negotiated with Lenihan on our behalf, have now come back with a deal. A special tax will be charged on the parents if their violent children assault us. But they say they have no money to feed their starving kids at the moment. We will have to wait for their children to grow up before we see any of the money. And in the mean time they may starve their children even more to save up the money to pay for the tax!

Ideally we would suspend social worker Lenihan and our gullible uncles. But I think at the very least we should all accept that this adoption process cannot go ahead as planned.

Lets follow the advice of our good friend, world renowned child psychologist, Dr Joseph Stiglitz.

(For those of you who need an ending, we send the violent children to a boarding school, Bondholder College, where they thrive, and we ensure that the loving but chaotic parents mend their ways. And we all live happily ever after. The End)

@Robert

Nama has turned into a dogs dinner. It is as if an eccentric artist of our acquaintance, Brian Van Lenihan, offered to to paint us a giant classical style landscape painting for a small fee. But instead he covered his bicycle wheels in paint and cycled round and round. We were horrified, as were 46 passing art critics. Lenihan reacted by briefing local journalists to attack the motives of the art critics. Several other buyers of Lenihans work, worried about damage to their investments from the controversy, have gathered around our house demanding that we agree to buy the painting. We have been badly hit by the recession, and he is proposing an unusual scheme where the price of the painting will be related to the future value of the Irish property market. The protesters have now been outside the house for months, and Lenihan is telling journalists that we will “end up like the Icelands”, a local family who bought ten of his paintings and whose house mysteriously burnt down. Now two artists of our acquaintance, Eamon & John, both keen organic gardeners, have negotiated a compromise with Lenihan. If we still don’t like the painting in fifteen years he will come back and throw five buckets of paint over it.

This Program for Government is a real “Peace in our Time document! All FF care about is getting NAMA over the line.

This Program for government document like the last one is not worth the paper it is written on. It is really, really sad to see how FF are getting 100% what they want, 100% what they need which is NAMA.

Once they have got that over the line, finito. Lenihan will not even bother to contest the next election leaving it to the Greens to knock on doors and explain why they allowed themselves to be fooled not once but twice!

Second time is much more serious than the first. Because, it involves saddling us with debt that will ensure a zombified banking and economic system for 10 to 15 years minimum as we can only watch in horror at the mother of all quangos drain the life blood from the economy.

Almunia should save his advice for Spain an economy nearly as bad as Ireland which became like that under his stewardship or does he just want to turn the Irish people into his laboratory rats!

@ Robert

Just my little comment on the Pea’s in our time Theme:

http://www.politics.ie/2181280-post155.html

From the above Doc:

Pending legislation, all credit institutions participating in NAMA or availing of a Government Guarantee will be expected to comply fully with the key principles of the ‘Combined Code’, subject only to necessary adaptations agreed with the Minister for Finance or the Financial Regulator.

The Government’s approach to asset valuation within the NAMA initiative is a carefully balanced and reasonable approach, having regard to the need to stabilise the financial system and to ensure that the economy has access to credit and financial services.

Alternative approaches risk leaving the banking system impaired and without access to funds or capital for future development.

Public concern in relation to the risk undertaken by the Exchequer is, of course, appropriate, and entirely shared by the Government who have taken considerable steps within the proposed NAMA legislation to mitigate and control risks and ensure the best possible return for the taxpayer.

Included among the measures to mitigate risk is the proposal that a portion of the consideration for the assets transferred would be in the form of issued subordinated bonds, ensuring that risks are shared by the institutions.

In addition, the Government has always stated that, should NAMA make a loss over time, a levy would be imposed to recoup the cost to taxpayers. The Government proposes to amend the legislation to ensure this levy is put on a statutory basis.

This levy will be dealt with in the legislation establishing the Agency, having regard to the importance of maintaining the sustainability and stability of financial institutions. Any such levy would arise only if NAMA has made a loss on its eventual wind-up or after 10 years, and would be carefully judged so as not to disrupt the stability and sustainability of the banking system.

Net Present Value For Dummies – By Limerick Escapee & Language Teecher.

NPV of NAMA to Green Party Leaders: Zero.

NPV of NAMA to Taxpayers: €38 billion in lost interest
(assuming ‘break-even’ from forced house-price-inflation causing homelessness).

NPV of Mr Gormley’s Pension – Oct 2009: Not bad.
Escape from Ringsend’s lousy bicycle paths and incinerator. Free at last.

NPV of Mr Gormley’s Pension – Oct 2012: Excellent.
Retirement in Bali. Lucrative directorships in the Green Friends-of-EPA Industry.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qdRqFPGZw2o/SqQNPClC5aI/AAAAAAAABzo/pEKy_UccBJc/s1600-h/thegormley-5.gif