Readers will definitely be interested in this piece by Tom Lyons on what the Ireland’s top bankers (and Indecon’s Alan Gray) knew, chiefly about the state of Anglo Irish Bank, in the run up to the crisis. There is at least one record of the events of the night as set down by Dermot Gleeson.
The (reported) state of knowledge is pretty much the same:
- No one knew how deeply damaged Anglo’s balance sheets were, or could be;
- Much of the focus was on restoring confidence in the system, with everyone talking in terms of liquidity rather than solvency issues, and in terms of preventing a run on the banks.
Despite this invaluable reporting by Tom Lyons one wonders why it took 2029 days to put these accounts into the public sphere. Brian Cowen was right when he argued in his GeorgeTown speech (.pdf) that “if we are to learn from the crisis it is necessary to understand why many of the actions taken seemed sensible at the time”.
Cowen goes on to write:
We had to deal with this crisis in real time. Our view at the time was that we would get one shot at calming the markets.
Tom Lyons’ piece seems to back up this account.
This piece by the FT’s Vincent Boland, featuring TCD’s Constantin Gurdgiev, The Irish Examiner’s Mick Clifford, and (ahem) myself has more reaction to the fallout from the Anglotrial.