If you want a lesson in why it is bad idea – a very bad idea – to offer government banking guarantees, such as those on offer in Australia, then you cannot go past the tapes recently revealed by the Independent in which executives at Ireland’s Irish Anglo bank joke as they plan their abuse of the Irish tax-payer. This makes me angry to listen to.
As The Oz says today:
In a set of phone calls recorded five years ago, executives at the toxic Anglo Irish Bank laugh about abusing a blanket bank guarantee to beef up the books at the expense of the UK and Germany.
One conversation – taped two days after the fateful September 30 2008 bank guarantee, and published by the Irish Independent – features former chief executive David Drumm giggling while his colleague John Bowe recites lines from Deutschland Uber Alles.
Drumm, who has since fled to the US, and Bowe are heard laughing about concerns that the guarantee would drive a wedge between Ireland and its EU partners.