April 4th 2011
Dear Sir/Madam;
BALLYHEA SAYS NO! TO BONDHOLDER BAILOUT
The fifth march in the above weekly People’s Protest took place in Ballyhea on Sunday last, again at the regular time of 11.45am. In what is often presented in deliberately complex and diversionary terms, our protest is based around a few simple and straightforward points:
· 1) Through a combination of factors we have been engulfed in an economic tsunami.
· 2) We, the Irish people, have already suffered hugely; jobs lost, people lost, salaries slashed, levies imposed, tens of thousands in negative equity – on and on.
· 3) The previous government, those who – through their ineptitude – were hugely to blame for getting us into this mess, have paid a massive price, both parties blitzed in the last election.
· 4) Our banking-system is destroyed, no longer functioning as a banking-system should, the price paid for the reckless lending that inflated the nuclear property bubble/bomb.
· 5) Through all this carnage, the bondholders, those who fed the billions to the banks who fed the property bubble, remain untouched and – by orders of the ECB – untouchable.
In Ballyhea, we say ‘no’ to that, and every Sunday at 11.45am until such time as we are heard, we will continue to say ‘no’. It’s wrong, pure and simple.
Everyone in this country is already paying a very high price for the recklessness of our bankers, our developers, our government, paying a high price also for our own foolishness in being persuaded by those bankers/developers/politicians.
What price are those bondholders paying for their bad investment, for their poor judgement, for their ineptitude in carrying out due diligence before bankrolling our madcap banks? The ECB have demanded that we cover the losses of those bondholders – I repeat, in Ballyhea we say no; we’ve suffered our share, let the bondholders suffer theirs.
Contagion; for a variety of reasons the ECB is terrified of it – let’s give them another. We ask now that parish by parish, village by village, town by town, city by city, the rest of the country join us in our protest, and give our new government our universal backing as they try to get the ECB to see reason.
Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn.
