TRALEE Public Meeting: 'The Global Bank Crisis'

international | anti-capitalism | event notice Thursday October 02, 2008 22:41 by sean moraghan - swp earthsoulrocknroll at gmail dot com

Kieran Allen will explain 'What's behind the Global Bank Crisis' at a Public Meeting in Tralee, hosted by the SWP

Venue: Grand Hotel, Tralee
Date: Thursday 9th Oct @ 8pm

Irish banks have displayed a fanatical enthusiasm to stoke up a speculative bubble in the property market. Without their enthusiastic opening of credit lines, there could not have been a property bubble. Their desire for ever more profits meant that Ireland became debt economy that is now threatened with a crash. The personal debt to disposable income ratio has shot up from 48 in 1995 to 113 percent in 2004, mainly because of the greed of Irish banks.

The result is that Irish banks must now have a mountain of bad debt. Nearly 30% of their loans are to builders and developers, amounting to a total exposure of e105 billion.

A further indication of the level of potential bad debt is that insurance is now costing Irish owned banks nearly ten times as much as it was costing a year ago. Last year, banks paid out 30c to insure every e100 borrowed but now it has risen to between .50 and e3.50.

The Irish government's bail-out is proportionately bigger than Henry Paulson’s proposed bail-out of the US scheme for mortgage-based assets. No figures have been produced for how much it might cost us. Elected representatives will have no say on what charge the banks will pay for this extraordinary guarantee but the power will be vested in a Central Banks that have allowed banks to build up this risk.

The Irish banks have traditionally made large donations to the political elite - and
we are now facing pay back time.

The costs for this fiasco, however, will be borne by the poor who will be deprived of public services as taxpayers money is used to salvage the risk.

--- Hear more from Kieran Allen at the Public Meeting, presented by Tralee branch Socialist Workers Party
--- All Welcome!