The bankers are still not lending to the small and medium sized companies that will create the jobs we need to bring our economy back to health.
What the bankers are doing, and have been given permission to do, is to engage in proprietary trading and investing overseas. That is not how Irish taxpayer’s money should be spent.
Yes, we had to bail them out but did we get something back in return and unfortunately the answer is NO.

The original purpose of the taxpayers banking guarantee and the government’s adoption of the NAMA model was to stabilise the financial markets and get credit flowing to businesses and consumers.

Mr. Boucher of BOI and Mr. Sheehy of AIB appeared before an Oireachtas Committee this week.
AIB and BOI have each got about €3.5 billion from the government and they get to transfer about €15 billion each of bad loans to NAMA.

Mr. Sheehy of AIB said “if people think that credit will begin flowing freely again after NAMA, that is not going to happen. The bank’s balance sheets will be stronger and that will allow them to finance their long term funding cheaper and there will be a ‘trickle’ down effect.”

So there will be no perceptible difference at AIB branches in terms of lending to customers.

Mr Sheehy also said AIB would like to keep its Polish bank BZ WBK.
BOI chairman Pat Molloy said that €2.1 billion has been drawn down by small and medium sized businesses in the first nine months of the year.
Then Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton said it was not credible to suggest that every business needing credit was getting it. Mr Molloy then acknowledged that there was a mismatch between what politicians hear from their constituents and what the banks say.
Was Mr. Molloy indicating that he himself was lying, or that Mr. Bruton was?

There was another rather odd exchange; asked what the bank will do with the bonds it was receiving from NAMA, Mr Sheehy said AIB would use the bonds to improve its overall funding position.
Previously the banks were very sure that the ECB was going to accept these as collateral for additional finance. I wonder has this situation changed, because if it has where does that leave NAMA. The banks seem ready to simply dump their bad loans into NAMA, with the emphasis on bad.

The current situation seems to be that the banks are getting their funding and they will next be allowed to park their bad debts with NAMA and then they will very likely become active in other more lucrative markets than Ireland.

But the taxpayers who provided the guarantees and capital for all this are going to end up with very little.

One wonders where the Finance Minister Mr. Lenihan stands in all this.
Well there was a clue to that in an address he gave to the American Chamber of Commerce this week in which he said; “hostility to bankers and media attention is what held up recruitment of executives at AIB.”
The whole country knows the real reason was that AIB defied the minister on the question of appointing an insider.

So, in answer to your question “do we believe the bankers this time,” the answer is NO and the same goes for the Minister for Finance.