Thursday 11 October 2012

Ireland Nationalizing Banks or Gobshites Saving Banksters







Ask any economist - and they will tell you that the housing crisis is still very real - and it's still one of the major headwinds for our economic recovery. Yet - in the last Presidential debate - there was virtually no attention paid to this crisis and the millions of Americans who are on the verge of losing their homes. Why is that? Well - it's because both candidates know that the one best solution to the mortgage crisis is to make the banksters take a hit. And - as anyone who's familiar with post-Citizens United politics knows - if you're in favor of a policy that's gonna hit Wall Street - and you want to be elected to political office - then you need to keep your mouth shut about it. And that's exactly what both men did.

But in Ireland - they're not afraid of the banksters. This year - the Irish government is expected to pass a law will force the banks to write down principal on their home loans, which will substantially lower monthly mortgage payments for struggling homeowners. Of all the nations hit by the global housing crisis - not a single one has taken bold steps to help homeowners at the expense of the banksters. But Ireland is trying to change that now. Here's what they're doing. They're changing their bankruptcy laws to make it easier for struggling homeowners to walk away from an underwater home mortgage. And when a homeowner declares bankruptcy this way, the bank gets nothing.
  • When Irish politicians start telling the public the truth about the nature of the money loaned to them by banks, that it is money that simply didn't exist before the loan agreement was signed, that it was "created" by the bank using the borrower's signature as collateral. That the borrower isn't equally entitled to create money out of nothing to pay it back. When they do this, I'll believe they are not afraid of or in the pockets of the banksters.
  • This is bullshit. Ireland's bankruptcy laws are currently amongst the most punitive. Debts stay with you for the remainder of your life. Your ability to obtain credit is permanently reduced. In contrast, the laws in the United Kingdom limit the effect of a bankruptcy on an individual's life to seven years. Ireland making the bankruptcy laws a little more lenient doesn't equate with them being unafraid of the banksters.
  • In Ireland, the government is afraid of the banksrers, but more afraid of the people
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  • Ireland bought a share in the banks a large share, its now selling them off to the ESM all while the Government has told the banks to increase the mortgage interest rates so the banks can get back to profit.

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