Tag: NAMA

A NAMA for Germany?

From today’s Eurointelligence

There is some movement in the debate on bank resolution policies in Germany. FT Deutschland has the details, according to which the government is currently favouring a model proposed by investment bank Lazard. According to one variant of this model, the government takes the toxic assets from the banks, in return for government debt obligtation, which carry ultra-low interest rates, and which the banks promise to keep on their books for a long time. The idea is that such a construction prevents spillovers into the general bond market. Another construction is a bad bank, which holds the bad assets, and which issues government-guranteed debt obligations to the good bank.

IT Opinion Piece on Nationalisation

Readers may be interested in this article in today’s Irish Times in which some contributors to this blog and a number of other leading academics argue in favour of temporary nationalisation of the banks.

Lessons from Sweden

I linked last weekend to former Swedish Finance Minister’s Bo Lundgren’s appearance on the Marian Finucane show.

Lundgren also appeared recently before the TARP Congressional Oversight Committee, chaired by Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren and his written testimony was the basis for the section on Sweden in the committee’s latest report. Here’s a webpage containing the written testimony of Lundgren and three other experts on other banking crises (Great Depression, 1980s S&L and 1990’s Japan) who all appeared before the committee at the same time.

The webpage also has full video of this meeting. The experts delivered short verbal testimony (Lundgren’s starts about 14 minutes in) and about 40 minutes in there is a question and answer session. Prof. Warren’s opening line of questioning about arguments against nationalisation was of particular interest to yours truly but the whole session is really useful.

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Arguments Against Nationalisation, Part 5: Lack of Government Expertise

[Last in Series …. For Now]

Speaking with Myles Dungan on RTE radio on Thursday, Minister Eamon Ryan put forward the following argument against nationalisation:

You have to run the whole bank, the system, from Merrion Street … And there’s no ability, I believe, in the Department of Finance to run six banks at the one time … They [the Department of Finance] recognise that you don’t just suddenly start running six banks. And you can’t do it in a very transparent way.

I think the Minister raises a fair concern here, so I thought I’d throw this one out there as my final (for now) post on this.

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Arguments Against Nationalisation, Part 4: Continuous Stock Market Listing

Peter Bacon’s final argument against nationalisation in his Morning Ireland interview was the following:

Also, if you nationalise the bank, it’s gone. If the bank remains there, even if it comes to pass that in some cases there is majority ownership by the government, by the taxpayer, there will be a quotation on the Irish and London stock exchanges. There will be a price every day that bank shares will trade at and that will provide taxpayers with an exit mechanism out of their ownership of the banks in due course.

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