thanks for the comment back Robert. Interesting view in terms of the investigation. There is a lot of good merit in what you say there.

A lot of people now admit that the tribunals protected people for years and years from the rigors of the law. This is what would happen here and like the tribunals many of the main actors would be dead by the time it issued its findings, none of which, in any event, would be binding in an actual court of law. Let the academics write as many papers as they like, about what they think, happened. Meanwhile, the Garda fraud squad need to do their job unhindered by the academics.

Fully agree on calls ‘for the major reforms that are required in the institutions and process of democratic governance.’ Broader hats and better more appropriate models …… inclinations of the conservative dominant logics to to get back to ‘business-as-usual - asap’ which is a frighteningly dangerous option - it didn’t work and almost took us down! I’ll settle for 51 percent - and we need institutional leaders we can trust within the systems of democratic governance to mind that one per cent (-;

Thank you. Wrt to three of the gentlemen you mention (I have no grounds to comment on Alan Ahearne as his public uttterances have been curtailed since becoming ensnared in the Government machine) my opinion is that the views they have expressed (which have been widely interpreted as being supportive of Government policy - and subject to calumny as a result) are guided by a desire to foster some national solidarity since there is risk that public anger will boil over and the country will become ungovernable.

I view Colm McCarthy’s continuing calls for an inquiry into the banking/property bubble fiasco in a similar light.

I also recall that Dr. Fitzgerald’s perceived support of the current policy thrust is conditional on the Government taking necessary steps to begin to stabilise the public finances and to secure Ireland’s reputation in the international capital markets. After that the Dail should be dissolved.

Where I am, perhaps, a little disappointed is that they have not called for the major reforms that are required in the institutions and process of democratic governance - and which seem to be getting a little more attention on this blog. Their stature would contribute enormously to securing the necessary politcial and public engagement.

As a result, they are seen by many - rightly or wrongly - as part of the establishment that created this mess and which wishes to return to “business-as-usual” asap.

I always say, it starts at our own dinner table. Most families in the modern world cannot sit together at a dinner table and conduct a semi-sensible conversation for even 5 minutes. Yet our population has never been better educated and qualified in all kinds of subjects and theory. I think that scene in the American Beauty movie with Kevin Spacey throwing the dinner plate against the wall was quite appropriate to the times we live in.

the core issue as regards to Dukes and Dr Fitz is that they perhaps see a more complicated bigger picture than an individual TD might do. Nationalising the banking sector sounds great down in the local constituency office, but you have to ask why governments across the world always see it as the very last gasp option they are willing to undertake, only doing it when, literally, everything has failed. Is there a possibility that its easy for those in Opposition to suggest something, but far more difficult for those in power to actually do it due to so many other factors being at play? Im not just talking about the banks here. Witness the bizarrety of various Opposition responses to the budget in both the lead up to (”FF will do a cosy deal with the Unions!”) and the aftermath of (”FF screwed over the Unions!”). It’s always easier for a spectator on the side of the pitch to make the big calls, especially when they are often impossible to disprove.

As i said above, i think its a sad state of affairs when the opinions of the 4 previously highly respected people above that i mentioned (as well as others in our economy) are completely trashed in an over-simplified way on sites like this when people simply disagree over what is in reality an immensley complicated situation concerning our banks. I see even the incredibly fair and open-minded Paul Hunt was at the end of a dose from you as well, coming shortly after your equally frothy attacks on Ms Carey on another thread. Spot a pattern?

I can see that you’re angry and I can understand why. But I don’t think you should treat me as part of the problem. Like many others who post on this blog, I am searching for, advancing and discussing possible solutions.

Fraud may well have been involved but investigating it is a job for the Gardai!
The whole point of these Inquiries is to avoid a genuine investigation with teeth! There was no FBI, NYPD investigation into 9/11. The results were declared as the buildings were being pulled!

Send in the Gardai and allow them acces to all public records to investigate what corruption was involved. Set up a permanent body to do the job as with every other civilized jurisdiction! Or else do it the Irish way where the dogs in th street know, but nothing is ever done to stop a recurrence!

After all it is 100,000,000,000 Euro. Worth a few million Euro investigating this mess! Betcha find some EU papers on these banks too! We are not being told the full story, as George Bush Sr said ” If the people knew what we had done they would (lynch us)”

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/1216/1224260756287.html

In terms of a 9-11 style inquiry into the banking collapse in Ireland. The Caroline Madden piece is very short and sweet, but it gets across a point. It is a point that Brian Lucey has made on several occasions in the past I think, about the behaviour of Irish Banks. But the trick with a 9-11 style inquiry is to write it up in a short concise way, that gets the point across and produces an overall document that someone could read - a future historian for instance - who may live in a period of even worse turmoil than we now experience. This 9-11 style document could be important for posterity for future researchers to trace where things went wrong, how they went wrong. To provide a decent snapshot, no more and no less.

Caroline Madden’s piece is exemplary from that point of view. What it does is it explains the relative positions of Anglo Irish versus the two other main lenders in the Irish economy. If you look at BOI or AIB on their own, which we have been doing a lot in recent times, their behaviour looks terrible. But when you juxtapose BOI and AIB with Anglo as in Madden’s writing, you get a different picture.

One can almost begin to re-create the context in which CEO’s of AIB and BOI operated. They must have come under extreme pressure from shareholders to be more Anglo-like in their agressive-ness. Possibly at shareholder meetings, BOI and AIB management were accussed of being too tame and not earning enough on the shareholder’s behalf. Perhaps AIB and BOI felt they would lose capital if they didn’t display the right kind of aggressive, go-after-the-action psychology.

That was definitely the psychology that I began to experience in the building and development industry. Go-after-the-action. It is up to future generations to interpret the 9-11 style report how they so wish and augment the analysis perhaps. I suggest Caroline Madden’s piece in the IT as a kind of template for what could and should be recorded. Good factual information useful to future researchers or hobbyist historians for all I know. Most of the work and observations of economist Brian Lucey and others could be re-compiled into this ‘format’, so the information could be represented in one consistent style of document. (that in therory could be studied from cover to cover)

That is my best suggestion.

I think the company was taken over my an Irish-American for buttons, and David McWilliams may have been stuck somewhere in the middle of it. But anyhow, the details are not that important.

Following that initial career, my accountant friend moved on to other posts. Some more permanent and stable, some less so. The strange thing is, I am now in my mid thirties and I know my accountant friend is busy closing down one of the huge Irish property development companies. Same story, a dozen employees left rattling around in the headquarters, probably waiting to sell what is left of the carcass to a friendly Irish-American dispora or something. Who knows.

I don’t know much about the original company that went bust years ago. It was an industry that I do not understand. Although I do understand the construction industry where he currently resides. But what struck me about this accountant or financial controller/director to be exact, is how similar his life seems to be. No matter what industry he goes into.

It is a bit like that quip about couples getting their photo taken in Hello magazine, or a startup business that was featured on Gaybo’s old ‘Late Late Show’. Shortly afterwards the couple had broken up and the business would be gone too. So the rule was, if you are a couple don’t be seen in Hello magazine. If you are a successful startup business, don’t go on the Late Late. If you are a company and you employ my accountant friend as a financial controller who know what to expect also.

This is the problem as I see it in Ireland. There is a kind of an elite financial class, who simply move around from pillar to post, assisting good Irish companies to throw themselves into an early grave. They are like the grim reaper and they get paid enormous salaries to do this kind of work. I just thought I would bring up this observation about the ‘Irish system’ for your interest.

Everyone always called economist and TV presenter George Lee, the grim reaper. But he isn’t the real one. We need to become more acquainted I think with the ‘real grim reapers’ we have in Irish society. No one has ever followed up their story properly or pursued it. We have heard almost every other contribution except that one. I don’t know enough about companies and capitalism to put all of this jigsaw together. But I do know this is a crucial piece of the story of the Irish society.

I always come back to the issue of looking at the system. It is much more important that we learn to see and understand how our country operates in a systemic kind of way. Otherwise, if we don’t attain that skill we will continue to require blanket guarantees for every little problem we come across. Because we don’t know exactly which part of the system is crucial to functionality and what is not. We will never know, but we need a better understanding.

Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks by Mark Buchanan is a good reference for those of you new to this kind of subject area. He has a chapter in particular where he talks about natural ecosystems, and how one certain species in the system might be devastating if it removed or killed off. That is, it would have a dis-proportionate impact on the entire system, if it ceased to be. Of course, the problem for environmentalists is that they can never be sure which is that key ’super-connector’ species. There may be several.

But the fact is, they cannot all be crucial to the system. The fact is, that in Ireland property developers, banks and institutions like Dublin Docklands Authority all believed they were crucial to the system. But by definition, they cannot all be. The point is, we haven’t begun to understand this properly. Obviously Lehman brothers had some dis-proportionate importance which Bernanke, Paulson, Geithner did not understand.

If you are to look at things from the ‘green’ perspective, it appears we are going to enter a period of turbulence in our history. Whether the cause be global trade, sea levels, population movement, species extinction, natural disasters or some dasterdly combination of all of those (most likely). In that context, it makes it even more important that economics explores the use of tools and science which enable us to visualise what is going on.

If my experience is design and architecture is anything to go by (thumbs up to the people at Zoe dev. who taught me such important lessons about ‘Lateral Thinking’) the human brain is by far the most powerful instrument in this particular kind of thought process. Finding the right connections and make associations that would never seem sensical to a machine. It just so happens that our brains, though running at less than a Megahertz I think Ray Kurzweil suggested, are massively parallel and ideally suited to such large and diverse problem solving. Edward De Bono was right, climate change is a huge challenge facing our species. But the challenge to learn how to think better is the most important challenge of all. The education system has to respond and react fast to this reality, IMHO.

My understanding from listening to Elizabeth Warren and other commentators at that side of the Atlantic, is that Madoff’s work, large in scale though it was, was still only a small part of the bigger picture in the US problem. The problem in the US is really, really big in scale when you take everything into the picture besides individuals such as Madoff. It’s huge.

That is not to say that Madoff’s case didn’t deserve the attention it got. On the contrary. But the other thing that bothers me about Madoff, is the fact his scheme was so well buried in the middle of Wall Street, without the 2008 financial near-collapse, he probably have gotten away clean with it. I mean to say, it was in no part due to the diligence, skill or otherwise of US authorities that the matter finally came out.

That aspect to the Madoff case, should be a lot more un-settle-ing to us, than the crimes he got away with and crimes he was convicted of. The fact that other Madoff’s have probably happened in the past, are probably going on as we speak. That is the most un-settling thing about Madoff to me.

“Mr Dukes is in no position to make an impartial public statement on Nama,” Mr Bannon said. “He is a Government appointee to the board of Anglo Irish Bank which was bailed at a cost of €3 billion despite the misgivings of those who are footing the bill – the taxpayer.

“The timing for Mr Dukes’s support of this Fianna Fáil proposal is extraordinary given that it follows hot-foot on the pro-Nama remarks of another ex-party leader Garret FitzGerald, who also appears to be dancing to another tune.

“What price party loyalty, Alan? Why weren’t you more vocal on the big beasts of the Irish property sector who attacked the very foundation of this State for their own gain? Why did we not hear from you about the cronyism that is rife in Fianna Fáil and has brought this country to its knees?”

Mr Bannon concluded: “Mr Dukes should under no circumstances be given the option of renewing his role as vice-president of Fine Gael. He should, in fact, be shown the door sooner rather than later.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0909/1224254134812.html

Let’s hope those in FG who think like Mr. Bannon refuse to be bullied by the establishment figures in their party and insist that justice is done on the destroyers of the country.

All we have gotten in the way of accountability has been some criticism in our major media of FF/Developers/Bankers that died out long ago. The only people the media have gotten really angry about for many months now have been public sector workers.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/george-garvey-we-cant-allow-semistate-sector-to-escape-pay-cuts-1975006.html
Why do we not see this sort of tone being used about FF/Bankers/Developers, the evil triangle? Why are we to take €100Bn of nonsense from them but only workers deserve quick punishment?

Are you saying then, Mr Hunt, that we should let the mass emigration, mass unemployment and massive cost of our establishment’s greed, recklessness and criminality go by without any justice being done? How much justice does €100,000,000,000 of illegality buy?
How many jailed TV licence non-payers does that equate to?
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/ideysnmhey/
At 1 week for each licence fee of €160 unpaid that equates to
4 BILLION, 375 MILLION days in prison deserved by the perpetrators.
So far they have had NONE and they probably never will have.
And you believe they have already suffered enough?

Is justice completed when a few critical articles have appeared in the newspapers? Would you make the same argument for Madoff? “Ah, the press coverage was enough of a punishment. A proud man like him, sure the loss of reputation alone is enough.” Sorry, all these people have necks like jockey’s unmentionables. They are laughing at our meek response. In a few years they’ll be back, like Larry Goodman was, still superwealthy and still in their homes on Ailesbury and Shrewsbury Road.

As a country, we should simply not allow ourselves to be treated like this.
In Ireland the only people who suffer are the victims.

Regulatory failure is one piece of a much more cryptic puzzle but seems, conveniently for others (e.g. D/Finance, professional economists in the banks and property game etc.), to be the focus of so much of the public ire and the ire of so many contributors here. Regulation of the legal profession, of the medical profession, of nursing homes, of the care of children and many areas of Irish life is equally inadequate and as evidenced by recent reports can have profound conseqtly , that so many seem so obsessed with was a function of the entire culture and the arrogance and complacency of governance that spills from the top down - apparently the ruling junta thought the show could go on forever as did many of those otherwise lauded as if they were achieved olympian feats whereas they during the - ever notice how as an alternative as well as deeply ingrained culturalneed to meet associated tax breaks and greed all shored up by a

The issues I raised yesterday would need to be resolved if a DIRT-type inquiry were to be able to avoid getting bogged down in a legal quagmire. PH seems to recognised this in writing that “I expect that the Oireachtas will, in time, decide to authorise some form of inquiry to try to understand the deeper, underlying causes of this crisis so that wider lessons can be learnt for the future. In considering how best to do this, I suggest that new models need to be explored.”

Surely, this is a recipe for never getting to the bottom of anything. This “remedy” called for would make sure that those responsible would never, ever answer for their actions. Politicians, social scientists, economists….? Why did he not throw in the need for a few jungian analysts just for good measure? This is just playing to the gallery. We need a Madoff style investigation and a Madoff style conclusion. In the US they not call in social scientists to explain fraud. Fraud is fraud!

Given the extent of legal protection mechanisms available to those who would be subject to inquiry combined with an apparently widespread visceral public desire to see heads roll, I fear inquiries of this nature would generate more heat than light and fail to make progress on the reforms required to minimise a repetition of this crisis.

At the root, the source of this problem is in failures of the institutions and procedures of democratic governance. All the parties involved - whether commercial or regulatory - responded rationally to the policies implemented and the signals conveyed - either explicitly or implicitly - by successive governments. And these governments have been elected by a plurality of voters in free and fair elections.

By all means, inquire into what went wrong, but start with the source of the problem and follow through with meaningful reform of the process of democratic governance.

Finally, a man of courage and integrity steps forward.
This is indeed the beginning of what will be a long hard fight to put our economy back on a sound footing.
It is now necessary to compliment Minister Lenihan on the quality of this appointment and to hope that Prof Honohan’s advice is swiftly acted upon.

@ colm mccarthy
You are absolutely correct;

“The government should see a full inquiry as the next necessary building block in the construction of public support for the period of austerity which has to be endured.”

Nothing less will do if we are to restore confidence in the banking system.
There are many waiting to tell their story and ultimate success in the effort to restore the health of our economy will be determined by giving them the freedom to do so and TO DO SO QUICKLY.

The terms of reference must be broad and all encompassing, to include the insurance and pension companies who may have been involved in the cross financing of deals with the bankers which subsequently caused the destruction of the wealth of their investors and customers.

VERY IMPORTANT: It is necessary to point out that in New York Mr. Madoff was first arrested exactly one year ago, on Dec. 11th 2008, and has since been investigated, charged, forfeited his ill-gotten gains and sentenced to 150 years in prison.
Appeal was denied and the severity of sentence was granted to prosecutor Irving Picard when he informed the Court that “Mr. Madoff has not provided meaningful cooperation or assistance.”

The Irish commission of enquiry now proposed will need to be backed up by a ‘Criminal Assets Bureau’ style until (with international expertise) which will vigorously investigate any and all evidence of fraud and criminal behaviour.
Should any individual being asked to give testimony attempt to mount a hugely expensive legal obstacle, then a way must be found to make such persons liable for ALL their own legal costs.
To allow such people to burden the Irish taxpayers further would be unjust in the extreme.
The scandal of the various tribunal legal costs must NEVER be repeated.
If people want to engage outrageously expensive legal teams then it must be made absolutely clear at the outset that the Irish taxpayers will most certainly not be liable for the bill.

Nationalising the banks last year would not have meant a €3.3bn spend by the govt to get control of the banks, it would have gotten them for “free”. They were insolvent (still are) and shareholders would not have to be compensated. As we found out last week for Northern Rock (and will soon for Anglo), shareholders are entitled to nothing as the intrinsic value of the shares has been deemed worthless.

in todays IT “he conceded that State ownership of one or both of the two biggest banks – Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland – may rise to 50 per cent”.

Why only 50% is there a brick wall at 50%, is there a line in the sand an armageddon? We pump all this money in to get 49.99% Why?

Alan Dukes? Once respected and now villified on this site.

Garrett Fitzgerald? Once respected and now villified on this site.

And now? Patrick Honohan? Once respected and the comments are now starting to turn towards villification on this site.

Its becoming a sad joke on here. Ever thought that some of these guys see a bigger picture which is not as a simple as total bank nationalisation? But yeah, you’re right, you guys know better…

Having fewer governments makes it easier to deal with the right people for those “in business”! NWO here we come!

We do not ask those who swear truth or true service as public servants whther they have already sworn never to act against the interests of any class of persons. Why not?

We know the public service is riddled with Catholic and Judaeo/protestant Freemasonry. Do we care? What does an oath mean to a Godless society?

Has he got a good parachute?

Chow and Lie has a good point and even if an enquiry ever develops into an Inquiry, then it will have very precise terms.

The 9/11 Commission is widely regarded as the same and I believe that many of the members of it realize that they were not fed anything like the truth…….

Do we want to find out? What would we do then? Surely we do want a whitewash that everyone can believe in. The UK has decided to rein in coroners inquests just as calls for the Dr Kelly case to go to the coroner. Do we need to waste money when we already know what happened but not who nor how much passed in secret accounts? What good would it do? The public would push for criminal sanctions and then where would we be. Keep a lid on it. Solidarity. Peace. Mine’s a treble Jameson

Never happen! Not at the political level. And expect a better class of lawyer to act for the “owners”!

No mention of The Call on the RTE website yet.