Peter Sutherland: Vampire Squid?

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Sunday October 17, 2010 23:27

by Marcus McSpartacus

Are Irish Taxpayers About To Bail Out Goldman?

Is Peter Sutherland Stealing From His Own People To Give To The Vampire Squid?

From Zero Hedge:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/are-irish-taxpayers-ab...e-vam

With the recent nationalization of half of the country's six big banks, and the blanket guarantee over the rest of them, the Irish government has effectively made sure that bondholders in all banks, even those which such as long insolvent Anglo Irish bank will be made whole by the long-suffering Irish taxpayers...
Yet what is amusing is that in between the cracks of exclusively European-bank based senior and subordinated bondholders in such bankrupt banks as Anglo-Irish, a familiar name emerges: Goldman Sachs...
Guido Fawkes, who managed to obtain the Anglo Irish bondholder list, shares the following commentary:

Anglo-Irish Bank did not represent a systemic risk to the Irish economy, it wasn’t a high street bank like AIB or the Bank of Ireland. If it had been allowed to go the way of Lehmans the only losers would have been shareholders and bondholders. The Irish state stepped in and nationalised a bank that was basically run by crooks lending to property speculators. The Irish people are taking losses that should rightly have been shouldered by bondholders.

Every child in Ireland is being bequeathed a huge debt at birth to protect the interests of foreign, mainly German, bondholders – why? Guido was once a bond trader, it was always understood that sometimes the bond issuer defaults. That is the risk investors take.

So why is Dublin’s political establishment so keen to protect foreign investors at the expense of future generations? Guido has obtained the list of foreign Anglo-Irish bondholders as at the close of business tonight. These are the people whom Dublin’s politicians really seem to care about.

Between them they hold Anglo-Irish bonds with a face-value of €4,034,756,880. Shouldn’t they take the hit rather than future generations of Irish taxpayers? Capitalism is a system of profit and loss, they took the risk of investing in Anglo-Irish Bank. Is the Irish government under pressure from the European Central Bank in Frankfurt to protect German investors?

...we would like to add Goldman Sachs to the list of bailoutees. Surely, few firms in the world deserve to be redeemed as much as god's little helpers...

Little else that can be added here... except for this amusing anecdote of another Goldman Sachs International Chairman, one Peter Sutherland, former Ireland attorney general and EU commissioner who just so happens was a chairman of British Petroleum (remember those guys?) previously. To wit from the Irish Times:

[Sutherland] and [recently heckled] Lenihan have remained in contact through the financial crisis. On one occasion, Sutherland visited Lenihan to tell him what a great job he thought he was doing and to say that Lenihan had the potential to be one of the great taoisigh of the 21st century. Lenihan was taken aback, he says.

Surely, this great son of Ireland, who obviously has Lenihan in his back pocket, is in active negotiation on behalf of his current employer, Goldman Sachs. Yet something tells us Mr. Sutherland will be the last person to share light on Goldman's twilight relationship vis-a-vis the Irish government...

Lack of revisionism is not too surprising coming from a person whose personal, and future, fortune, is based on the past generosity of American, and now Irish taxpayers. Because his wealth is certainly not due to his skill at anything related to his actual career:

Sutherland was also a board member at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) during the financial meltdown when the UK bank collapsed into state arms after a frenetic, debt-fuelled growth. Of the bank’s 2007 role in the €71 billion acquisition of Dutch bank ABN Amro, the biggest ever banking takeover, Sutherland says it made “the mistake of buying at precisely the wrong time when the world was falling off the back of a bus”.

Perhaps instead of driving trucks full of cement into Parliament, Irish taxpayers can be a little more proactive, and ask one of their most respected "leaders" just on whose behalf he is working on in this latest bailout, which could easily be Ireland's last.

More Goldman Sachs shennanigans (the original "vampire squid" description) at:

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Comments (7 of 7)

More Bank Bailout clips

Mon Oct 18, 2010 12:36

An Angry Ireland Calls Out Europe On Its B...s... Stress Test

ZeroHedge / http://www.zerohedge.com/article/angry-ireland-calls-ou...-test

10/17/2010

Remember when the pathetic farce that was the stress test presumably prevented Europe's collapse, and served as the inflection point preventing the EUR from hitting parity with the USD? Well, one of the banks that the "stress test" uncovered to be solvent was the recently insolvent Allied Irish Bank, which earlier this month needed a taxpayer injection of billions to presumably make sure that European creditors (and likely Goldman Sachs, very much like the case in Anglo Irish) never see even one dime lost. And today, an Irish Member of the European Parliament Alan Kelly said he intends to write to the EU Competition Commissioner to discover just how it is that one of Ireland's top banks slipped through the stress test cracks only to require a bail out mere months later. It appears that slowly everyone in Europe is starting to turn against the trillions in German bank liabilities that stand to be impaired, and lead to a systemic collapse, unless local taxpayers dutifully reach into their back pocket and make sure fat bankers continue their worry-free existence.

From BreakingNews.ie:

A Labour MEP is to write to the EU Competition Commissioner to find out why the Commission gave Allied Irish Bank the all clear in July only for the bank to require billions earlier this month.

Alan Kelly has said Europe's failure to anticipate the development is very worrying.

Mr Kelly said: "The fact that AIB passed the stress test raises many questions."

We can't wait for the response from those uber pathological liars at the head of the ECB.

How The ECB Directly And Indirectly Monetized All Irish September Treasury Auctions

ZeroHedge / http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-ecb-directly-and-i...tions

10/10/2010

One of the most bullish stories coming out of Europe last month was that Ireland, despite a drunk and disorderly finmin, and banks either increasingly more nationalized or on the verge of full scale restructuring, managed to fund its €25 billion in sovereign debt maturities. Of course, the European media took that as a sign of strength and from that point on it was off to the races for the EUR. Yet it appears the celebration was just a little premature. We learn today that virtually all of the maturities were funded indirectly by the ECB: in other words the monetization shell game so well mastered by the Fed is now being conducted by European banks everywhere. In September Irish bank borrowings surged from €95 billion to €119 billion, a €24 billion increase, and virtually a euro-for-euro match for all the new Treasury issuance. And since no demented monetization ploy goes unpunished, the action raised Irish ECB borrowings to 9% of liabilities, the same as Portuguese banks. As for the balance, as readers will recall we highlighted that last week the ECB purchased €1.4 billion of government bonds directly, therefore confirming that every single Irish bond auction would have been a 100% failure had it not been for Jean Claude Trichet's direct and indirect monetization scheme. But yes, somehow the euro is considered more viable than the dollar. [...]

Peter Sutherland's connections to International Finance

by Hu Bris

Tue Oct 19, 2010 16:57

A Map of Peter Sutherland's connection to various International Financial and (sometimes very shady) Political organisations currently involved in subverting/destroying what little remains of Irish soverignty

http://hubriticanomaly.blogspot.com/2009/04/at-last-why....html

Is Peter Sutherland a Traitor?

Sutherland's sovereignty

by southern comfort

Tue Oct 19, 2010 21:07

Don't you just love it when someone else's one-way bet goes wrong, and then they expect *you* to pay for it? Can we call that a one-way-one-way bet? We can't call it a two-way bet because there would be a risk of losing.

In 2008 the state had 2 choices - get tough on the bondholders and expect the wrath of the ECB, or sing along because we might need the ECB to bail us out. In fact the ECB is a bondholder in some banks - at the time it was considered good to support them and invest in them.

So the ECB will bail us out, but will make us pay for years, and nobody at the top will complain because their salaries and pensions are guaranteed. A glorified county council at Leinster House, taking its pats on the head from Sutherland while paying lip service to the "patriots", and desperately hoping that we will have forgotten come the next election.

WTF

by J. P.

Sat Nov 06, 2010 15:24

Sutherland opens Jim Kemmy school and calls for austerity.
-Mr Sutherland was invited to Limerick yesterday to deliver a lecture at the official opening of the Jim Kemmy Business School at the University of Limerick.-
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2010/1106/1....html

IMF intervention...

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party

Sat Nov 06, 2010 16:45

...is not inevitable, says PS.

Provided we anticipate IMF policy and self-immolate, thus obviating the necessity of the 'invisible hand' choking us directly.

And Madam delivers the solemn paternalist nostrum with all due matronly authority. Nurse Ratchet hasn't gone away yet. On Jim Kemmy's grave, now thats chutzpah enough for Bibi.

laird

by paddar4 - xat.org~~~~

Wed Jan 18, 2012 14:28

padardoyle at ymail dot com

@s.crofrt.kildare

0863285339

troika of former attorney general at last st. moritz :"":shin digg""" why???

Sutherland is playing a long game of social engineering to profit the elites

by v for vendetta

Fri Mar 21, 2014 16:39

G
oldman Sachs policy wonk Peter Sutherland has the ear of the FG government:

"The EU should "do its best to undermine" the "homogeneity" of its member states, the UN's special representative for migration has said."

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-18519395

Diluting our national identities is EU policy. It makes us easier to exploit, puts downward pressure on wages and speeds the run down of state run services, easing the transition to profitable privatised services.

The destruction of national cohesion based on common values, history, language etc results in a cultural "grey goo" of citizens with little in common with each other and much weaker social ties hence less ability to mobilise and resist EU diktats and a pro corporate race to the bottom imposed by an increasingly authoritarian and dishonest EU there to serve the interests of the 1%

No doubt Part of a many pronged attack on our country and others on the periphery of Europe to prepare us for "free trade agreements" like the TTIP by dilution of any residual resistance promoting cohesion within our society.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/02/tr...eu-us

It's all part of a very cynical long game to exploit weaker countries for profit.

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Peter Sutherland: Vampire Squid?

Comments (7 of 7)