You are not responsible for the crisis (Oh yes you are)

Whoever it was aimed at, Enda Kenny’s performance in Davos doesn’t seem to be going down well back home.

The Irish Times reports that he said:

“What happened in our country was that people simply went mad borrowing,” Mr Kenny told a meeting at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

“The extent of personal credit, personal wealth created on credit was done between people and banks – a system that spawned greed to a point where it just went out of control completely with a spectacular crash.”

His statements flatly contradict his state of the nation address in December where he told everyone:

“You are not responsible for the crisis.”

Earlier in the week, a €1.25bn unsecured, unguaranteed Anglo-Irish bank bond was paid out in full by the IBRC without any form of negotiated or dictated write-down (Anglo’s debts were largely those of developers rather than individual mortgage holders). At the same time, it is widely believed that the bondholders who were repaid in full purchased the bonds at the expectation that only 30-40 cents in the euro would be recovered.

On the same day, Ivor Callely was arrested for questioning about some dodgy expenses claims (from eighteen months ago) in a repeat of the questioning of Sean Fitzpatrick and others magically coinciding with various other fiscal nadirs. Notably, three years on there is still no sign of charges over the various alleged breaches of the Company’s Act by Anglo staff.

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