Any of
you who may be tempted to believe the fiction being peddled in the last few
days from the government spokespeople on the Promissory Notes of 2012, please
read this extract from the report from the Comptroller and Auditor
General's office on the Gross Government Debt, Item 2.11, page 20:
The level
of Government bonds in issue increased in March 2012 when bonds were issued to
meet a promissory note payment of €3.06 billion due to Irish Bank Resolution
Corporation Limited (IBRC). The bonds issued will mature in 2025 and have
an annual interest rate of 5.4%. As the market value of the bonds at the time
was just over €88 per €100 nominal, the State issued bonds with a nominal value
of €3.46 billion in order to meet the payment. The yield on the bonds and,
therefore, the effective interest rate on the repayment of €3.06 billion, is
just over 6.8%.
Contrary
to the outright lies being told by various Ministers, not alone was the 2012
Promissory Note paid in full to the Central Bank of Ireland, who then destroyed
the €3.1bn, it actually cost us as a nation €400,000,000 more than it needed to
and we’ll be paying more interest than we needed to, right up to 2025.
Read the
C&AG paragraph above; because the 'market value' of the bonds were only €88
per €100 'nominal' at the time, the State (that's us, people) issued bonds of
€3.46bn to get their hands on the necessary €3.06bn to give to the Irish Bank
Resolution Corporation - Anglo - which Anglo then gave to the Central Bank,
which then - under orders from the ECB - destroyed that money. That's the extra
€400 million in the amount borrowed.
Compounding
the additional cost of what was done last March, and again referring to the
above, the effective interest rate on the €3.06bn is just over 6.8%; we could
have got that money from the ECB emergency fund at around 3%. So, not alone did
we pay an extra €400,000,000 to get the money, we are paying an additional 3.8%
per annum on the €3.06bn - that's an additional €116,000,000 per annum until
2025, when that bond is due to mature (the total annual interest on just that
one bond is 6.8% of €3.06bn = €208,080,000).
That, my
friends, was Michael Noonan's vaunted 'deal', that's what it cost. As stated in
black-and-white above, the Promissory Note WAS paid; to give the appearance of
a 'deal' however Michael went to a new and far more expensive source for the
money, issued a sovereign bond that will NOT be paid by this government or even
by this generation but now forms part of the growing debt legacy we will leave
our children.
To give
the appearance of having done a 'deal' Michael and Enda engaged in their new
favourite sport, 'financial engineering'. The only 'deal', however, was on how
they got the money; the P Note WAS paid, on time and in full, the €3.06bn WAS destroyed, taken out of circulation, but at much
greater cost to us, the people.
Now, they're planning to do the same again. The lies, the lies, the lies, the ongoing betrayal of the people at so many levels - it is almost beyond words.
Regards,
Diarmuid O'Flynn.
