reblog of letter from joe higgins.
Yesterday the government outlined it’s plans for the National AssetManagment Agency – a digusting bailing out of the banks. Here Joe
Higgins restates his fundamental opposition to NAMA, and calls on
working people to turn out on Saturday’s demonstration against this
obscene bail-out. The banks now being bailed out for their reckless lending to greedy
speculators and developers are the same banks who show precious little
consideration to ordinary householders who fall behind on mortgage
payments on the overpriced houses they were forced into buying The Green’s may be pleased with the 30% ‘hair cut’ but the fact
remains that already 60% of the proposed loans being taken on are not
performing and that’s a figure only likely to go up in the years
ahead. No individual in their right mind would buy a house or a second hand
car for that matter for anything other than the current market value
and yet in this instance we are expected to swallow a concept of ‘Long
Term Economic Value’ which in plain language is nothing more than an
aspiration by the government and their builder, banker and speculator
friends of a return of the property bubble in the not too distant
future. The government makes a great play of the approval their plan has
earned from the ECB and IMF, institutions for whom the interests of
Irish working people do not figure highly. They are remarkably silent
however on the recent judgement of the courts in Ireland on the
Carroll case which has essentially rubbished the whole premise of
NAMA. Capitalism we were told rewards the risk takers but without a hint of
irony this afternoon Minister Lenihan justifies NAMA as he refers to
‘risk that the private sector is not willing to take on’. I say to the
Minister let them take their losses and nationalise the banks under
the control and management of the bank staff and working people
generally. Only the pressure of people power can stop NAMA at this stage. I
therefore strongly urge people and especially the youth who could be
saddled with the consequences of NAMA for their entire working lives
to turn out in force at the demonstration against NAMA this Saturday
19th September at 1pm beginning at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin
or at any of the other actions planned around the country on that day http://www.joehiggins.eu/
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