Tapes released of Anglo Irish Bank top staff joking about Government bailout

For those of you who didn't follow the fallout from the Celtic Tiger eating itself alive, Anglo Irish Bank primarily dealt in business and commercial lending, largely to builders and property developers. It was left badly exposed when the housing market collapsed, and the last Government decided that the best thing to do was pour public money into it. This week the Irish Independent got hold of recordings of phone conversations between top executives in 2008, just prior to the bailout, discussing how best to scam the Government out of billions of euro, and have been slowly releasing them.

Highlights include:

1) Their plan to mislead the government as to how much money was needed for the bailout:

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Mr Bowe speaks about how the State had been asked for €7bn (£6bn) to bail out Anglo – but Anglo's negotiators knew all along this was not enough to save the bank. The plan was that once the State began the flow of money, it would be unable to stop.

Mr Bowe is asked by Mr Fitzgerald how they had come up with the figure of €7bn. He laughs as he is taped saying: "Just, as Drummer (then-CEO David Drumm) would say, 'picked it out of my arse'."

2) Laughing about abusing bank guarantees and singing the Nazi anthem down the phone:

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One conversation - taped two days after the fateful September 30, 2008 bank guarantee - hears former chief executive David Drumm giggle while his colleague John Bowe recites lines from ‘Deutschland Uber Alles’.

3) Bullying the regulators into giving them what they want:

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[Anglo boss David Drumm] explained his strategy about dealing with the Central Bank to senior colleague John Bowe: "Get into the f**king simple speak: 'We need the moolah, you have it, so you're going to give it to us and when would that be? We'll start there."

In the latest Anglo Tapes, Mr Drumm is heard saying he would be threatening regulators unless they wrote him a cheque.

"We'll be going down there with our arms swinging. I'm very clear on the proposal," he told Mr Bowe.

He is also heard threatening to shut Anglo Irish and "hand the keys" to the State if he did not get a fresh influx of capital from the taxpayer.

"I'm going to keep asking the thick question: 'When, when is the cheque arriving?'"

Did I mention that these greedy robbing fuckers got to keep their jobs and obscene salaries for another three or four years?

I wish we could take everything these fuckers own. Just take everything they own, shove 'em in a ghost estate, give them a minimum wage job and say YOU start from nothing. Because nothing's gonna happen to them. Nothing legal, anyway.

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I wish we could take everything these fuckers own. Just take everything they own, shove 'em in a ghost estate, give them a minimum wage job and say YOU start from nothing.

Yes, because your socialistic government meddling and similar retarded horseshit has worked SO WELL up to this point.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

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I wish we could take everything these fuckers own. Just take everything they own, shove 'em in a ghost estate, give them a minimum wage job and say YOU start from nothing.

Yes, because your socialistic government meddling and similar retarded horseshit has worked SO WELL up to this point.

As a matter of fact there has been no government meddling so far, but things have changed. You can hardly find about it in the news, and that's no surprise, because the Eu doesn't own media, but finance groups do.

First of all, the bank closure decree has been approved. So let's review what happens in case of a bank in trouble on each side of the pond now:

In the US:
1) The CEO fucks up.
2) The bank has no more liquidity.
3) The bank is bailed out with the taxpayer's money.

In the EU:
1) The CEO fucks up.
2) The bank has no more liquidity.
3) The bank has to sell all its assets and the value of its stocks plummets.
4) If a debt remains, it is covered by converting the customer's credit into bonds. The state bailout fund guarantees these bonds.

Second, new EU rules for the rating agencies. First of all, they are going to be paid by those who use the rating, not by those who are rated. And they will be held responsible for the rating they give - whether it is too positive or too negative.
You would say such a thing would have happened in the US after the Enron scandal, but obviously they are not a socialist meddling country.

(There is a third one, but it is about hedge funds and I really don't know how it works, but it will be in the same direction)

If a bank in the EU goes Tango Uniform, it will be a problem for those who own the bank, it will be a problem for those who have stocks in that bank, it will be a problem for those who have money in the bank. In this order. It is going to be a problem for the taxpayer only if the bank can't sell the bonds, but I doubt it will be a problem as the countervalue comes from an EU fund.
And the rating agency will have an interest into tattling about the bad health of the bank long before it comes to this.

Yes, it has come a lot too late, but in the case of the US it doesn't seem it will come ever.
So let's see in ten years how many banks and companies will need to be bailed out by the state on each side of the pond. Especially since all the speculators now will have no other playground than the US and UK.

Funny how the bank owners are actually being held responsable for their actions (if a bit after the fact) despite all of the 'socialistic government meddling' on the guv'mint's part.  Doesn't your willy get hard every time someone has to take personal responsibility for something, Mikey?

Every time a CEO is forced to answer for what he's done an angel gets its wings.

Are you two stupid for a living?  That is exactly what I'm saying.  I didn't say that the US bank bailouts were any less retarded.  The routine short term Federal Reserve loans to banks that are temporarily short on cash due to the nature of fractional reserve banking is pretty much required for the economy to survive.  Throwing money at goddamn idiots is a different matter, and it rarely leads anywhere good (See: Alex Rodriguez).

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Second, new EU rules for the rating agencies. First of all, they are going to be paid by those who use the rating, not by those who are rated. And they will be held responsible for the rating they give - whether it is too positive or too negative.
You would say such a thing would have happened in the US after the Enron scandal, but obviously they are not a socialist meddling country.

>Implying there wasn't a drastic overhaul of auditing standards and laws, some useful, some retarded, after Enron

Pay attention.

Let me try to explain my point because apparently you two are such morons.  Cyberwulf said (probably not 100% seriously) that the government should take everything the CEOs own and force them into a minimum wage job because she's a senseless, vindictive bitch with a persecution complex.  I meant to imply that government meddling (THE BANK BAILOUTS YOU ARE WHINING ABOUT) had LED to this fucked up position and that further government micromanaging, jerry rigging, and other assorted bungling is probably not going to improve things.  The definition of insanity and all that.

Banks (and other companies, say, for example, inept auto companies) that made a long string of objectively terrible decisions need to be allowed to fail.  It incentivizes unretarded business practices.  But you two dumbshits probably supported the GM bailout because spoiled, uneducated union monkeys are somehow more holy that drunken bankers running around with their pants on fire.

God damn it.  I feel like I'm being trolled.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

>Implying there wasn't a drastic overhaul of auditing standards and laws, some useful, some retarded, after Enron

Pay attention.

I did, and noticed that the people who had asked for correctness went up in a chorus of "How DARE you!"when S&P correctly lowered the rating on the US bonds.

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I meant to imply that government meddling (THE BANK BAILOUTS YOU ARE WHINING ABOUT) had LED to this fucked up position

Excuse me for not keeping up with your du jour definition of socialism, which seems to be Anything Reagan Wouldn't Have.
Also excuse me for not having direct access to your thoughts. In the US, the government bailed out the banks and printed money like there was no tomorrow because everyone will always buy dollars yeah. In the EU, the government(s) bailed the banks and gritted teeth while adjusting the rules. Since you used "your" in reply to Cyberwulf, I supposed that by "government meddling" you meant the EU form.

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and that further government micromanaging, jerry rigging, and other assorted bungling is probably not going to improve things.

Recap: paying for the banks' mistakes is bad. Making the banks pay for their mistakes is equally bad. What is 'good' in your opinion?

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Banks (and other companies, say, for example, inept auto companies) that made a long string of objectively terrible decisions need to be allowed to fail.

Banks are not given a special treatment because they don't make cars, they're given a special treatment because they buy a lot of state bonds. We can't all be Japanese.
What do you think would happen under the new regulation (effective as of 2014) to a bank that after having sold its assets and converted its customers deposits is still short of cash?

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But you two dumbshits probably supported the GM bailout.

I am completely indifferent to the ultimate source of any US industry but your cars are so far behind as the crap of a galloping horse and just as ugly. The only thing I'd have supported is a carpet bombing of the Chrysler plant so that your monstrosities wouldn't be on our streets, driven by nostalgic middle-aged shopkeepers whose role model is still J.D. Hogg.

Has anyone not seen this yet?
It seemed relevant.

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I did, and noticed that the people who had asked for correctness went up in a chorus of "How DARE you!"when S&P correctly lowered the rating on the US bonds.

I recall only a handful of Obama apologists saying it was a political move by the rating agencies (which, I believe are a completely differently thing that auditors of publicly traded companies), while pretty much everyone else was going, "What the hell did you EXPECT to happen when our total debt is greater than our annual GDP?!"

Either way, despite however much bitching their was, the agencies did their jobs.

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Recap: paying for the banks' mistakes is bad. Making the banks pay for their mistakes is equally bad. What is 'good' in your opinion?

Are you deliberately misunderstanding me? Or are you just stupid?

Or am I REALLY doing this bad of a job communicating my point?

LETTING the banks pay for their mistakes is good. The US and EU done fucked up their opportunity to let that happen when they perpetrated the bailouts. Further bureaucratic interference to "make" the banks pay for mistakes retroactively is only going to cause more trouble.

Basically, don't compound mistakes. If When this happens again, remember how we fucked this up and don't do it again.

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What do you think would happen under the new regulation (effective as of 2014) to a bank that after having sold its assets and converted its customers deposits is still short of cash?

Please tell me it's bankruptcy.

Theoretically, that's what's suppose to happen. In the US we have the FDIC to ensure customers' deposits of up to $250,000 (it was raised from $100,000 during this mess) in the event that a bank goes bankrupt. This allows people to safely put their money in a bank (something needed for functioning banks, which is something needed for a functioning economy), while still allowing the banks to go tits up when they deserve it.

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I am completely indifferent to the ultimate source of any US industry but your cars are so far behind as the crap of a galloping horse and just as ugly. The only thing I'd have supported is a carpet bombing of the Chrysler plant so that your monstrosities wouldn't be on our streets, driven by nostalgic middle-aged shopkeepers whose role model is still J.D. Hogg.

I get the feeling we agree more than this argument implies. Chrysler owes its continued existence to a bailout from the US Federal Government. Without that bailout, no more Chrysler.

You'd be waist deep in Fords.  

Chrysler, GM, and to a lesser extent, Ford, were in such trouble for a number of reasons. Partly because their product sucked, and partly because their products were grossly overpriced due to paying uneducated, easily replaceable monkeys on assembly lines a small fortune in straight cash and a mountain of benefits required by burdensome union contracts that they had signed in better times. Chrysler and GM went crying to mommy about needing more allowance to continue stupid shit like the Volt. Ford got their shit together on their own.