http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2009/12/21/what-kind-of-banking-inquiry-and-why/#comment-29187

But also look at the ‘transaction costs’ in terms of planning permission for wind farms and such. Okay, the debate rages about the most cost effective means to supply power. But lets look at wind for a second.

I am informed that in order to get into the wind business, one requires 3 no. items. A license to connect ‘X’ amount of power generation capacity to the national grid. One requires the right to use land for the means of energy generation. One requires an agreement with the wind generation equipment maker to make and deliver the gear to your chosen location.

It is kind of difficult to gets those 3 no. things in alignment. Worse, as I understand it, there are considerable mis-matches. Certain parties are granted one piece of the triangle, without holding the other parts. Apparently, a situation can exist where these 3 no. parties find it hard to make a deal, or even find one another.

I guess these are the kinds of problems we will encounter more and more. Elaine Byrne writes sometimes in the Irish times about the institutions in Ireland and how they function. It is up to ourselves I guess, how we look at this and propose solution(s). Elaine Byrne had one very good story about a piece of ground in Cork city which was threatened by a local Irish school for building land. Interesting story.

I am always reminded of Edward De Bono’s teaching. The biggest challenge facing humanity going forward is the ability to think. It goes beyond mere disciplines, professions and so forth. It requires a lot of people to be able to think, and to think together. De Bono’s workshops are full of little ‘problems’ he puts to his students. Like the problem I described above about the wind farm. I only use it as an example.

But one could probably find examples all over the place. In every sector.

I am probably not as well informed on the law as other contributors to this discussion. But I have benefitted somewhat throughout the year while reading Dearbhail McDonald’s pieces in the Irish independent. Certainly it has drawn my awareness to a debate which needs to occur in relation to the legal system in Ireland.

I would also like to thank Sandeep Gopalan for linking to his blog recently also. It seems there was a lot of effort put into the blog, and I am looking forward to reading some of it’s entries on the subject of a financial investigation.

Does it not strike anyone, the fact that Ireland requires this whole new infrastructure which will ‘fit’ right with Ireland’s new green-er policy and direction - while at the same time, Irish seems to be experiencing so many ‘growing pains’ on its other ’systems’. Be they legal, economic, financial, industrial, political, legal. Practically everything seems to be in need of rehab at the same time.

Why didn’t this urgency become so noticeable during the ‘boom’ times? Why has all of this stuff suddenly surfaced now? Why are we so poor in Ireland at reporting on stuff that needs to get done? Is it because we still struggle to envision what the future will look like? Was property and indulgence a kind of opium for society, which guaranteed we were effectively ‘whacked out’ while pressing needs grew and grew?

All good questions.

That renewable energy as one instance where the law does come into it big time. It appears as though in terms of satisfying the nation’s energy requirements via cleaner, safer means - we started with a planning system for the country, based around domestic buildings.

This planning system legally was extended to include larger commercial development. Now that system has been stretched beyond a point where it aught to be, and we have a pathetic situation whereby each new wind farm has its own individual planning process. Instead of something like an ‘overall’ energy roadmap for each county in Ireland.

In other words, at certain turns in the road, Ireland is going to have to do the opposite to working within our existing, over-extended legal frameworks - and instead, detach itself completely from existing legal frameworks, in order to lay foundations for a new approach.

The argument that Ireland aught to tie itself back to legalities. That Ireland should not shy away from battles which need to be fought through our existing legal channels - is a crucial point. However, to counter-balance against that argument, we should bear in our minds the need to maintain an open mind.

Sometimes we have to lay a bit of new train track, a bit of new framework. Over the period of the next decade or two, there will be instances in which Ireland will attempt to try something new, do something for the first time. The seems to me to be a legitimate strategy also.

It seems to me you are both missing something important and that is unless people actually believe there is a price to pay for ignoring the rules, they will continue to ignore the rules. Veronica, your attitude to ‘ethics’ and ‘rule of law’ comes over as ‘What idiot believes in such banalities?’ whether you intended it as such or not. I agree that politicians and the media will take advantage and will highlight issues which are not terribly important and ‘the right to my good name will be bandied about interminably’, but we cannot run scared and neither must the Law. The government ran scared from the Judges on the Pension Levy, I believe unnecessarily. If I’m wrong, it’s simple: let’s have a referendum on whether Judges should pay the Levy and the more recent decreases.

We simply cannot have it both ways. If the reality of corporate life is that the only purpose is short-term profit maximisation, and practitioners use all means to achieve this end, then ’strict regulation coupled with strict enforcement and severe penalties is the only answer’.

There simply is no point to any inquiry which does not name and shame, and then give the evidence to a court of law who can punish the persons mainly responsible and that’s not being vindictive or salivating at the thoughts. It’s simply to show that regulation matters and those who do not play by the rules will be punished.

Democracy depends on some form of implied consent of the terms of cooperation of all in society and if a majority decide that those terms of cooperation are not fair and do not apply to all, we may face serious consequences for the legitimacy of government and law.

There are no guarantees for stability in 2010.

Excellent points again, thanks.

We need an inquiry into what went wrong with the processes and structures of our banking and regulatory systems so that obvious flaws and weaknesses can be rectified. That, and a greater public understanding of how it all happened, is about the most any inquiry can achieve. It’s nothing to do with ‘ethics’ or ‘if we have a rule of law at all in this country’. Anyone seeking retribution from the exercise is likely to be sorely disappointed.

How the inquiry is constituted is therefore very important. It has to be done in such a way that it will get at the facts of what went wrong, not provide opportunities for politicians whose ambitions exceed their abilities to further promote their careers; the media to foment bouts of collective hysteria and shock and outrage on a daily basis in order to sell newspapers or boost phone-in programme ratings; or allow bankers, officials or serving politicians to have recourse to the courts to ostensibly protect their reputations from unfair attack but, in reality, to frustrate the inquiry. We’ve been there, done that several times over already, at great expense to the taxpayer.

no issue with sending white collar criminals to jail. And no issues with having a very thorough inquiry. I think the important point is that they need to be conducted seperately. The inquiry, from a constitutional point of view, may in fact be unable to deliver any “heads on plates” that lots of people seem to want to get. Indeed, looking for these heads on plates may scupper the entire notion of an inquiry altogether from the get-go, as the Oireachtas discovered in the Abbeylara debacle. The criminal justice system needs to deliver convictions and statements of judicial fact completely independent of an enquiry. The enquiry simply needs to figure out the truth and nothing more. If the facts lead to other proceedings, then so be it.

This is not about “revenge” it is a test to see if we have a rule of law at all in the country. If we have not, then people will not subscribe any longer to a corrupt, financially and morally bankrupt system. The system is on its knees least you have not noticed.

I see where you are going, yeah, it’s shock-ing.

To top it all off, we have spent the last decade in this country trying to exercise a model of free market operation - only to arrive at one of the most expensive and comprehensive central planning arrangements undertaken by any state in the EU zone.

WOW!

http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2009/12/20/profile-of-this-blog/#comment-28975

About the McCreevy era of Minister for Finance where the private sector in Ireland was massively guided in a certain trajectory by a central planner. McCreevy is the last person in the world, I am sure who would like to be remember-ed as a ‘central planner’. But who knows, perhaps the label will stick?

Given the notion that McCreevy might have managed to influence the economy in a given direction, with its growth and development, we have to be careful to say the least with our attempts now to influence ‘culture’ one way or another. It is quite possible in Ireland that we micro- manage down to such a degree where we don’t breed fighting beasts any longer, capable of competing on the global scale. But instead we produce house pets.

Re: transaction costs

Nama expects to spend more than €240 million a year, including liquidation expenses.
Running costs - €30 million.
Banks and other providers service fees - €51million per year.

The plan assumes that only 20% of Nama’s €77 billion loans portfolio will default.
BUT it anticipates spending nearly €1.4 thousand million on liquidation costs.

WOW!

I didn’t intend to imply above, that the generation of JFK’s administration in the US were ‘outstanding’ or a model of any sort to judge other generations by. I only picked the JFK era as an example of something that in the popular mind is identifiable as a time, a place, which is somehow different from that we live in today. But I am sure there were a large number of people in the early 1960s who thought, things will never change. We have arrived at a time and place, and things are more or less settled as they are.

I do believe the effort to change culture is a bit futile. It is like like trying to change the climate - oh yeah, we are trying to do that - but you know what I mean.

The thing about culture, it seems to be subject to the law of tipping points. Take the year of 1968 for instance. It seems like a succession of things kept on happening around the world. Things just kept happening. Someone who lived through that time joked once, the fact he had so much LSD available to him, probably convinced him even more than the world was really getting un-stuck. But the point is, a lot happened at once. Or a year after, or a year before that point.

But what is so special about 1968? Why did it define so much of ‘culture’ in many ways for a long time afterwards? Those are questions that some modern historians are coming to terms with only today.

A useful reference is Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point. In that book he describes the mayor of New York City and his attempts to subtley change the culture of that city. Which had been sliding down hill for quite some time, to the extent that many had given up on it. Then suddenly, as if for no reason whatsoever, things began to improve.

This seems to be one of the points in favour of a ‘mayor for Dublin city’. Indeed when people reflect on changes to Dublin city in recent history, people usually extract individual ‘tipping points’ which subtley changed the flow, and resulted in massive un-expected change. It is interesting to see a member of the ‘Dublin Transport Organisation’ on the board of NAMA I believe. That particular transport organisation was intended to create a good overview for the city’s development. Something that suffer-ed because of the choice to go with 4 no. different authorities to administer the development of Dublin.

I believe what scares people in power the most - be it the banking, financial system, political system or whatever professional body out there - is a public that is informed, a public that knows how to make choices, a public that in short can detect the crap.

That is the one thing that seems to exert real change. I am surprised this point has not arisen sooner on this commentary on the IE blog site.

So taking that point on board - I conclude, it is simple. We blame all of the journalism profession in Ireland for not informing the people better during the Celtic Tiger.

Am I being a tad un-fair?

There is no better way to stop people making critcal comment than going on the offensive and accusing them of negativity and envy and witch-hunts.

I wonder what characteristics were most important for ‘audit and compliance’ employees in Ireland: that they know how to turn their eye away at appropriate times, an ability to note and list minor infringements whilst ignoring any serious issues which are of ‘corporate importance’.

WE have to look at systemic issues such as the ’short term’ concentration on share price, whilst ignoring long term stability. If, as Karl Dieter says repeatedly, neither the banks nor auctioneers did anything wrong, they just maximised profits, then we are in a-catch-me-if-you-can situation and we need ‘ferocious regulation enforcement’. However, I think we should build a culture of ethical business behaviour where people will mainly regulate their own behaviour, but with serious repercussions for those who don’t follow the rules.

We need to change behaviour in all the professions; it isn’t just business.
Accountancy and law don’t look so hot either.

“We hear a lot about changing “culture” in a very conservative society.

Maybe the only hope is a near-death of FF, and its return as a party of reform!”

I don’t worry so much about changing culture to be honest. Look back at the society of JFK in the United States - you could not have held onto that culture, even if one wanted to. Even if one had the entire resources of the US government services at one’s disposal. It simply wouldn’t be possible. That culture was a snapshot in time.

No more than the Ireland of 2009 is a snapshot in time. One thing is pretty much guaranteed, future generations of Irish people will not want to associate themselves in any way with the ‘culture’ we live in right now. We are only fooling ourselves if we believe the culture is Ireland, will not change. My fear is more of the opposite, it is going to change no matter what, but how is it going to change?

It is interesting when one reads Shane Ross’s book, The Bankers that Bank of Ireland for instance, helicopter-ed in some ‘blast-from-the-past’ to try and re-establish the bank on firmer footing. Am I the only one who has noticed the number of ‘Space Cowboys’ rampaging around in high level board room positions of late?

It is like Ireland’s future, is to go back to the Ireland of at least 20 years ago. If I searched, I could probably find a Brian Vader quote or two, which amounted to the same thing. We are trying to re-institute the culture in Ireland, but we are trying to re-invent 1985. Without the dodgy clothing I presume.

http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2009/12/21/what-kind-of-banking-inquiry-and-why/#comment-29093

I watched a bit of this talk. Low and behold, Stiglitz mentions the high ‘transaction costs’ of the financial services industry in the United States. Where financial services rose to account for 30% of all corporate profits, that in itself should be enough reason for alarm. Stiglitz maintained that financial services should not be an end in themselves. We cannot eat transactions, we do not ‘enjoy’ them like other produce of the economy.

Stiglitz even suggested that the financial services industry may have had a distorting effect on the economy. (Bearing in mind that Stiglitz’s view of financial services is much darker than that of Larry Fish, who views that sector as one of the few in which the United States remains competitive)

But lets take Stiglitz’s criticism for what its worth. You put Ireland’s commitment to developing a financial service industry alongside our distorting effect of Charlie McCreevy’s property tax schemes. Whereby 25% of GDP was tied up with construction industry activity - another huge distorting influence.

Between financial services and construction, what else is there in the Celtic Tiger? It is like half of our economy is based on activities which far from being sustainable, are more akin to distortions in any normal, healthy function-ing of an economy.

If I was an economist, I would surely use the term pro-cyclical to describe our policies, but who cares, it still adds up to the same thing.

After the last general election, when the first set of FF/GP talks broke down, the then Green Party leader Trevor Sargent plaintively asked: What about the Kenny Report?” as his colleague John Gormley stood beside him looking disheveled, as his dream of becoming an avatar on Planet Bertie, seemed to have evaporated.

Twelve years ago last month the Flood/Mahon tribunal was established. Compared with the level of bribery in the US system, politicians were shown to have come cheap but the cost of corruption was likely similar.

The Government went along with the lawyers’ cartel and paid €2,500 per day, which is apparently cheap by today’s going rate for those called to the exclusive inner sanctum of silks.

There has been no reform of the land rezoning system and the brown envelope has been replaced with legalised bribery.

Let’s not fool ourselves, any inquiry report would be a one-week feast in the media and absent political reform and the memory of the current crisis, we will be on the way to the third major economic disaster.

We hear a lot about changing “culture” in a very conservative society.

Maybe the only hope is a near-death of FF, and its return as a party of reform!

(1) We could expose political collusion, end a few political careers, and maybe even improve Ireland’s political culture…and I mean an across the board culture change, not just a temporary adjustment.

(2) We could expose criminal or civilly culpable behaviour in the banks, developers, regulators and politicians, and imprison people or potentially sieze assets. (asset siezures would not significantly impact the fiscal situation but either imprisonment or asset siezures might help make the mood more accepting of austerity). This could be important in reasserting the idea that “bad behaviour” is likely to have consequences.

(3) We could become leaders in corporate governance policy, particularly for the banking sector. (highly unlikely)

None of these are likely outcomes of any inquiry, no matter how it’s structured. They’re probably still worth aiming for as long as a credible structure can be outlined, whether that’s a CAB enquiry or a Garda enquiry or an invited panel of foreigners.

Another Tribunal is hardly a good plan.

Twenty, thirty, forthy years from now this notion that such-and-such politician ‘paid the price’ by resignation or whatever would be pretty meaning-less. A bit like reading Tom Garvin’s book about Sean Lemass today, is wonderful if you are an economist maybe. But it is quite far away from a lot of average readers.

That would be the outcome of a successful trial and execution type of format.

On the other hand, a document, an artifact, a residual account of events from many perspectives - that can only increase in value over the coming decades and no doubt, future generations would thank us for having the confidence to do some important self-reflection.

One thing that Tom Garvin did say at his recent lecture at the Royal Irish Academy provides us with a useful clue. One of the people best positioned to understand and comment about the career of Sean Lemass was past president Patrick J. Hillary who died in 2008. But as Garvin mentioned, no one bothered to interview Hillary before he passed away, specifically on the subject of Lemass. That opportunity is lost.

So, what we need is fair punishment for abuses. Unfairly acquired or structured bonuses, for example, have two components - those who set the short-term targets to achieve the bonuses (and should have known the dangers of what they were doing) and those who met them (and knew that there wasn’t a rats chance the bets wouldn’t turn bad). As you go higher up the corporate/regulatory ladder the culpability increases…

Irish bankers and regulators have shown themselves to be incompetent, from the top down. There is no justification for keeping them on in the jobs they have failed to do. As they are of systemic importance and have been effectively nationalised by the state, if they cannot remove their own incompetence, it must be removed for them.

Excellent comment above.

The trial of Howard Hughes for aeronautical contracts handed out in WWII springs to mind as one example of the kinds of play-acting, which has happened in the past.

I cannot find fault with Karl Keeter’s observation either that it is Dublin, not Rome. And we don’t require a circus. I hadn’t realised that 9/11 turned into a bit of a show trial. I am not well up on that history. But I do know the inquiry produced a report and that report was available to me or anyone to buy in any bookstore.

What I always hold in my mind is the JFK scenario. Forty years from now, what kind of presentation of the event do we wish to leave for people to study?

http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2009/12/11/honohan-on-systemic-risk/#comment-27987

It is important for this generation of Irish people to leave some artifact there, to speak for themselves in years to come. A bit like the United States society found itself unable to account for flaws and mis-doings in their system after the faithful day in Dallas. But in a strange way, that generation of United States citizens will always be somewhat ‘on trial’ and somewhat ‘responsible’ for something they somehow ‘allowed to happen’.

Whatever documents are left around are important, as they serve as a main pillar in the defense of an entire generation and a society that existed in the 1960s.

show me a company where the board is not supervised by the owners of the company and I’ll show you a company where the board is taking advantage of the owners.

If you want the state to control private companies, and it seems you do, then you are saying that the state should run private companies without getting the benefit (the profits) of owning it. That is something I don’t think I’ll ever believe to be a good idea.

I thought the argument against nationalisation was that the banks should not be under public control and now the argument is that the banks should be under state control in all but name?

I do agree though, that in practice it seems boards are not as well supervised as they should by the shareholders, thus making a member of the board the highest paid low responsibility/accountability job out there.

Insofar as I would take pleasure in taking a filling a few black marias with bankers from our more well to do suburbs, I consider myself to be a paid up member of the salivating masses.

I agree that we need the rule of law to observed and that one of our core problems is that certain organisations and people have been able to avoid the rules developed over time to protect ourselves from illegal behaviour.

My reference to “less democratic countries” might have been confusing. I simply wanted to point out it is a core value of our country that human rights and due process must be accorded to all. We must be careful to avoid Bush’s mistake of abandoning what is right and what defines us as good people in our upset at wrongs perpetrated against us.

Certainly the Governor of the Central Bank is not out looking for ‘revenge’ and enitehr is Colm McCarthy. The criminal justice process will bring errant bankers to book if they have a case to answer. It is, and msut remain, entirely separate to the inquiry that Colm and Patrick Honohan have called for.

Naturally those who are entirely pure of heart and always right in their own judgement want ’show trials’ and ‘bankers in handcuffs’ and all sorts of emotionally gratifying morality play stuff. Some of them would also seek to boost their personal careers on the back of it. But it would be damn all good to the rest of society and wouldn’t do much to ensure that we don’t ever end up in the same place again with our banking system.

By the way, I don’t think that an inquiry will prevent future banking scandals. the most it would achieve is to lessen the risk of a similar one occuring in the future. ‘Where there’s brass there’s muck,’ and all that.

The ‘mental reservations’ of Cardinal Connell and the ‘mature reflection’ of the late Brian Lenihan typify our cultural relationship with truth and justification.

We fault regulation in the banking and financial sector because we clearly see the results of poor regulation. The fact that our legal system is regulated by itself does not seem to concern anyone. Insurance costs for legal practitioners are increasing by the day. Has anyone thought to ask why?

Access to competent legal representation is only available to very few. Deliberate delay or as zhou_enlai says ’sufficent resources to frustrate’ any but those with deep pockets and incredible persistence makes our legal system unavilable to most. And this system of delay is aided and abetted by our legal practitioners: the system is blamed when in reality it is the deliberate policy of the persons involved.

I’m also somewhat amused at zhou_enlai’s reference to ‘less democratic countries’ than ours. I just wonder what conception of democracy he is using. Doesn’t democracy entail some notion of accountability and actual rule of law?

The practical reality is that shareholder supervision of the boards has proven to be ineffective across the board intenationally. Furthermore, the board are responsible for drafting and agreeing their own employment contracts meaning termination may not be quite so painless.

The owners (the shareholders) can sack the board. The shareholders have lost 90-100% of the value of their investment due to the actions/inaction of the board. The shareholders should be disappointed in their performance. A strong owner would sack the board, the current owners are not.

The board can hire and fire senior executives. The board should be under pressure from the owners, the owners should want the board to recover some of the losses.

There is no need for a separate banking enquiry. The owners should sack the board. The new board should replace the current executives with better ones (sounds easy to find better but is probably not). Internal auditors should be sacked & replaced. New external auditors appointed. Large deals should be scrutinised for fraud. The people who were following directions/policies are not to be blamed and cannot be charged with anything.

Strong management together coupled with weak owners will create situations like this. The managment will take risks as they know that they will get a share of the profit if the venture goes well and they also know they are walking away from the losses if the venture goes bad. It is the owners who will be stuck with the losses so the owners should be controlling their managers.

The current owners should shoulder the responsibility of owning and replace the board. If they do, then there is at least a chance that what has happened will not happen again. If they don’t, then expect more of the same.

Is it the owners that are fighting against nationalisation?
I doubt it. If they’d stood up equally strong against their board & executives as it appears they are doing against nationalisation, then this situation would not have occurred.

The regulator cannot be blamed for allowing irresponsible owners to hire reckless executives who turned out to be making bad decisions.

re. PAC inquiry on DIRT - Questioning of Ministers
Was there some of arrangement agreed with Ministers not just on the form of questioning but also on the scope by PAC?

Looking beyond the immediate need for as complete an inquiry as we can in order to learn lessons on how we can improve our wayof governing ourselves and beating my usual drum, is this another instance of why we need as complete a separation between the Government/Executive/Rialtas and the Legislature/Representative/Dáil as we seem to have between the Judiciary and the other powers of our government?

“Where the executive and legislative powers are united in the same person, there can be no liberty” Montesquieu

When people are put at risk of losing their good name, their capacity for future earnings and possibly civil liability then the constitution allows them to defend themselves against being unfairly accused or stitched up. That is a human right under our system that people in less democratic countries do not enjoy.

It is correct because Irish bureaucrats, law enforcers and regulators have a flair for spurious accusations and attributing the status of “fact” to rumours and prejudices.

Every individual coming before an Oireachtas committee is advised that they enjoy no immunity for what they say. Even in Tribunals where people enjoy immunity they are entitled to protect their good name.

Nevertheless, the current enquiries can ruin people at the whim of the Chairman who can decide that somebody did not co-operate to his liking and so will not get their legal costs awarded to them. This means that not only do they lose months or years of their lives dealing with these monstrous political enquiries but they can also face personal financial ruin. The tribunals are not only a mess from the taxpayer’s point of view but also from the point of view of anyone involved.

The Supreme Court which seemed to be inclined to turn a blind eye to these injustices in the past has now seen the error of its ways and is less willing to see witnesses so abused. This leaves any new inquiry in a difficult position.

But why do we need an inquiry into the actions of private individuals and companies?
- The appropriate punishment for messing up in your job is that you are sacked or resign.
- The appropriate punishment for breaching regulations is prosecution and censure.
- The appropriate punishment for breach of fiduciary duty is civil liability.
- The appropriate punishment for fraud is prosecution and punitive civil liability.

It is clear that those who have suffered at the hands of banks and bankers do not have access to the information to piece together the wrongdoing. The banks are able to shield themselves with the expense and gamble of resorting to the law.

It is like a slander case where the witnesses will not co-operate. Do you go to court at a cost of tens of thousands of euros to subpoena the witnesses to repeat the slur and gamble that they will tell the truth and that the words will constitute slander? Of course you don’t. You get angry and then give up.

Worse again, the banks have huge resources to frustrate civil actions at every turn so that any victory will be years down the line and will have sucked the life out of the ultimately successful protagonist. The banks know that the lawyers will be slow to take another similar case even if they will win having seen what it did to their last client.

We need the following:

1. Greater transparency in banking.

2. Greater investigatory powers for watchdogs.

3. Compulsory publication of documents which could otherwise only be obtained through discovery (a kind of FoI for banks?).

4. Cheaper access to the law. People should be allowed to view documents and quiz witnesses under oath at an early stage and before putting their life on the line. A balance would have to be reached to allow the proper functioning of the bank but that could be done.

5. Whistleblower protection.

6. Better investigation and monitoring of banks by a body with equivalent powers to the Gardai to recommend prosecution to the DPP.

7. Regulations relating to banking Information Systems. Regulators/Central Bank should have access to all bank information systems with full rights to run reports and query databases (subject only to restriction on viewing individual customer names save in the case of suspected wrongdoing). [BTW - This should be an integral part of NAMA loan management but one suspects that such ICT issues have been ignored.] The banks should further be required to input all data into such information systems and to assign unique identifiers (i) to all customers, (ii) to all group entities and (iii) to all groups of related parties.

In the meantime, we need an Inquiry into the behaviour of the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank (and perhaps even the DoF) because these are the organs of state which failed to prevent this scenario arising. These are the organs which we must rely on in the future.

————————-
Eventually the Inquiry wil take place, will report, will be commented on and will be forgotten. I suggest that the Dept of Education put JK Galbraith’s hugely entertaining and apposite “The Great Crash, 1929″ on the pre Junior-Cert (assuming it’s not abolished) history syllabus with a compulsory exam question on it.