Ireland: Bankers joke about their €7 billion bailout scam
Steve James: Transcripts released this week by the Irish Independent record conversations in 2008 between leading Irish bank executives, joking about how they had scammed billions of euros to bail out the now-defunct Anglo-Irish Bank. The conversations provide an insight into the reckless, sneering cynicism of the ruling elite as they proceeded to swindle the working people to the tune of trillions of euros. The conversations focussed on the Anglo-Irish Bank board’s attempt to stem the massive losses it suffered following the collapse of the Irish property bubble out of which it had made billions. The board’s sting was to downplay the scale of the bank’s mounting losses and sucker the authorities into offering large sums of cash. The hope was that, once committed, the Irish government and central bank would be unable to back out of further support. In one conversation, the retail banking director Peter Fitzgerald asked the head of capital markets, John Bowe, how he had arrived at a sum of €7 billion to bail out the bank. Bowe responded, “as Drummer [David Drumm, Anglo-Irish CEO] would say, I picked it out of my arse.”
AWIP: Ireland: Inside Anglo Irish Bank - the secret recordings