“Tull and his minions clearly have some sort of jones for me - which means im winning! So, no, i cant be bothered giving them more troll bait. anyhow im off on holidays tomorrow.
So, tull and all the rest reading from the FF “what to say when challenged on Anglo - Ch 3 : Dig up old stories and latch on like a rotter” playbook, ”

I must contact FF HQ to see if they have room for me at the trough.

“Yor attitude that anybody who does not share your view is mendacious and in the pay of somebody else is arrogant in the extreme.” If you read my earlier post you will see that I too disagreed with unnecessarily personalised comments about Alan Aherne.
I’ll leave it at that.

Brian Lucey himself turned this thread into a thread about himself with his attack on Alan Aherne and his attack on everybody who disagree with him. i would reject you characterisiation of my spat with Mr Lucey as a co-ordinated attack by the NAMA lobby. For that,
* would have to know who John Martin, Gary S et al are which I don’t.
* would also have to be a supporterof the govt, which believe me I am not.
*I would also have to be a supporter of NAMA-a toughie-I genuinely am not sure about that.

I divide people in this economy into 4 groups
*those who genuinely called the bubble. I would include people like Morgan Kelly, Dave McWilliams possibly George Lee and definitely Cormac Lucey
*thos who saw it but were not proactive enough but were sceptical enough not to lever up too much & will survive as long as we can earn the AIW.
*those who maxed out on the coolade- Fingers,Seanie,Cowen and the CIF
*those who were boosters for the bubble and now dishonestly try to tell you they were not.

Yor attitude that anybody who does not share your view is mendacious and in the pay of somebody else is arrogant in the extreme.

What do you mean?

Pointing out your track record is not an attack. Anybody who prognosticates in a public forum is going to make mistakes. Chances are they willbe wrong about 50% of the time if they are any good.

Aherne is only one man (personally I think they should have brought in many more good men and women) and can’t freely debate with his critics. Most importantly he is an ADVISOR, not a decision maker. And he was brought in AFTER the collapse. It is quite possible that he has been a brake on government insanity, in which case we are all indebted to him.
I hope so.

Hasn’t the different skills of different economists a part to play here. At least from my observation of the Irish Economy blog - I know that Colm McCarthy has delved into competitiveness, perhaps because stimulus is so miserable an option for a small, open economy. Kevin O’Rourke has taken a view of world trade, over the centuries. Philip Lane looking at Macroeconomics. Some others have tried to explore issues with capital investment programmes. Karl Whelan hasn’t dared to venture too far into the EU macro-economic situation, though it pertains highly to the operation of NAMA. Brian Lucey has looked at all kinds of debt, in all levels of Irish society. Pat Honohan looking at governance and so on, in recently published report. Mr. Tol on all aspects of a new green economics. External bloggers, such as Ronan Lyons making contributions on property economics. I always find Constantin Gurdgiev’s look at taxation etc, of interest. You have Stephen Kinsella in Limerick taking a re-think about education of economics at third level, to include more debate/discussion. For a small country of its size, we are not doing so badly at all. I don’t know much about Peter Lunn’s work. We have also external commentators such as Stiglitz, Krugman, Johnson wrapped into the debate. Lets not leave out McWilliam’s contributions either, or those of former deputy Lee. The list is endless, I’m leaving lots of people out as it is. But the field of economics is trully vast. BOH.

The current NAMA version envisages haircutting that 80billion total by about 40-50% with part of the proceeds paid in the form of loss bearing subbies. The diffence between version1 and the current version is about 16bn.

So forensic analysis by this site inter alia has influenced many actors ranging from the EU/DOF/NAMA/GP/FF to cut the price and the taxpayers exposure accordingly. Anybody who tells you that NAMA will make a profit or loss of Xbillion is engaging in B/S. Nobody knows what will happen over ten years. I find no evidence that AA has been a malign actor in all this. I am reassured that he is in there in the first place.

“target it in the right direction”

you’re quite right on that. And im pretty sure Brian Lenihan takes a lot of flak on these pages, amongst other outlets, from a wide array of people, and very often from Brian Lucey himself. Calling Prof Lucey out on his inaccuracies (im being kind) is only the other side of this debate. As i alluded to earlier, if you are given the opportunity to pen a wide variety of semi-regular opinion pieces/contributions in national newspapers and radio shows, there is a rather large onus on you to be correct in what you are saying. Adding in previous contributions in 2006 about ever rising house prices and sub prime lending, and there is a fair question out there about Prof Lucey’s underlying credibility in criticism aimed at both the banks and our government. Throwing in the critical comments on AA and you get a picture of someone who seems quite willing to throw out damnation on people for not calling things completely right, while completely forgetting about his own lack of foresight or knowledge at certain times. Humility wouldn’t go amiss here.

and told the Dail “There is understandable concern that the Exchequer is potentially significantly exposed by this measure.”

The political rebuttal to this nowadays goes something like - sure, it was due to the diligence of the FF government in running up a fiscal surplus for a number of years - that Ireland is today, not in a much worse position.

Make of that rebuttal, what you will. But Jim O’Leary’s recent Irish Economy note, was a timely and certainly welcome comment. BOH.

http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2010/07/05/external-surveillance-of-irish-fiscal-policy-during-the-boom/

I have no desire to defend Alan Ahearne. He is a big boy and is alot smarter than me so can look after himself. How do you know that he is wrong about NAMA being able to wash it’s face? They announced Q1 results and haven’t even finished transferring all the loans. It’s way too early to make definite judgements on the eventual success or failure of NAMA even if the business plan didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

All people can do is speculate and that’s fine. You can criticise NAMA, figures, assumptions etc but leave the personal attacks out of it. Brian Lucey has written some crap in his time and yet still considers it appropriate to sneer at other people’s contributions. That’s what some of us have a problem with. Not healthy debate about facts and figures. As you say, there has been alot of useful forensic analysis and I don’t want to see it get drowned out by a people trying to settle personal scores. People can go onto politics.ie if they want to try and score political points.

If you must vent your ire at the billions being poured into Anglo and INBS, then target it in the right direction. The person who boasted the “Cheapest bail-out in the world so far” and told the Dail “There is understandable concern that the Exchequer is potentially significantly exposed by this measure. I want to reassure the House and the Irish people that this is not the case. The risk of any potential financial exposure from this decision is significantly mitigated by a very substantial buffer made up of the equity and other risk capital.” has more to answer for.

@tull, one can only speculate the contribution AA has had if any in improving the legislation. MAybe it has been substantial, maybe it has been none. We can only make a judgement based on what is public and what is public is that he helped sell NAMA to the ordinary people by making statements that have since turned out to be flat out wrong i.e. “NAMA will wash its face.” KW’s forensic analysis has helped incredibly. But I have no evidence that AA did the same from the inside.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/nama-deal-is–a-pig-in-a-poke-1871890.html

Of course, the current process may mean that the facts of the case are identified sooner than I feared. Is it good that we know quickly that we’ve been totally screwed? Probably.

You probably never heard the podcast, but I remember I got in from Newstalk 101 website one time, where Garret Fitzgerald intended to give Karl a good dressing down, in relation to some point about fiscal deficit figures. Fitzgerald is really a person who doesn’t take prisoners. If you ever get a chance to listen to the podcast, it is worth a good listen. I mean, what Fitzgerald was saying was, statements on fiscal deficit by prominent economists are capable of affecting markets. That was Fitzgeralds point of view anyone, even though, I don’t think Karl needs to use Fedspeak either. BOH.

About as un-sticky as deposits can get, I should imagine. Good response. BOH.

there’s a difference between having an opinion and it turning out to be incorrect, anyone is capable of and allowed to do that. And as you say, Prof Lucey has added at other times some very valuable analysis to the debate. However, the deposit selling concept is complete fantasy, based in little or no reality, and there has yet to be a proper correction of this issue. Even today he seems to suggest that he was only a little bit off on his figures, or that there is some missing academic context that can only be discussed in private which will clear it all up! Unfortuantely there are probably still people out there saying “why the hell have we not sold the deposits like that Lucey fella suggested!”. It belongs in a skit on Apres Match (regular watchers will understand!), not in the Irish Indo, Irisheconomy.ie and on Newstalk.

@ Tull

+1

Alan Ahearne “made his choice”??? Jesus, the guy tried to honestly help the country out at a time of crisis and he’s painted out to be some sort of academic turncoat or mercenary. Depressing stuff.

It is the depsoti gathering institution that has the value not the deposits per se. I was merely trying to establish how you got to your numbers.

I was also disppointed at the the attitude towards Alan Aherne. The guy is a valuable resource to have in the DOF and I hope played a key part in improving NAMA from the original iteration where the govt and banks appeared ready to connive at 20% haircut to the current version of a 40-50% haircut. If you could only realise that the constant forensic analysis of KW and others all on this site has resulted in a better outcome for the taxpayer.

Anyway enjoy your holidays. Perhaps you would like to come along to the next Dail CC meeting.

Perhaps if we are to line up old newspaper articles and take pot shots at them, we should not omit some real classics. What was that DD’s article said about the Irish banks sorting out their own problems? Michael O’Leary of Ryanair was sort of in the same camp - the Irish banks know where the bodies are buried etc. I guess in a years time, some articles will appear even more ridiculous than they do today. But what about professor Lucey’s article about the mortgage arrears and consumer debt? His article at least helped to introduce that element into the debate at a time it was being ignored. BOH.

is the key to selling a deposit book for a material amount of money some sort of third-secret-of-fatima type riddle that can only be discussed in private? Jesus man, stop digging, and stop ‘disappearing’ whenever people ask questions about it…

Btw, as regards your earlier contention, essentially, that the Sun-day Ind-ep-end-ent was full of shizzle, wasn’t it their sister paper the Ir-ish Ind-ep-end-ent that published your opinion piece about selling on deposit books for fantastical amounts of money? Was that the reason we shouldn’t have paid any attention to your nonsense back then? Unfortunately none of us on here have a newspaper opinion page as an outlet to tell people that you can’t sell a deposit book in the manner you have suggested, and thats probably the reason a lot of people “latch on like a rotter”. Ask the Indo for a spot to correct your error and all will be forgiven.

Of course, deposit books have some value. But you are, in effect, valuing the Anglo deposit book at 49 billion. You are expecting the prospective buyer to take on the liability of the 28 billion and then pay an extra 21 billion for the pleasure. A prospective buyer (i.e. another bank) might be interested in the 28 billion in customer deposits. It gives such a prospective buyer new customers which will enable it to lend and therefore generate new interest income. But such a prospective buyer would expect Anglo to take care of the liability.

I think it is best to break the deal into two steps. In the first step the prospective buyer would expect Anglo to give it 28 billion in exchange for taking on the liabilities of the customer deposit book. In the second step the buyer would pay Anglo an amount for taking over the customer deposits. I doubt if this amount would be much more than one billion. It would certainly not be anywhere near 49 billion.

Enjoy your holiday.

Why can you not reply to my question on this site?