NAMA – We need to stop it!

When Brian Lenihan introduced the bank guarantee scheme last year he said it was the cheapest bank bail out in the world.  One year Later we find out it is costing us €54 billion!  We should not be surprised at this.  Up until the last minute we were told there was nothing wrong with the banks at all!!

Now we are told that NAMA will make a profit yet the bad loans that will supposedly make this profit haven’t even been valued!  The banks have priced them and say that they will make a profit but if that is so then why can’t they keep them?

The NAMA fairy tale, sorry - business plan – has revealed we are also going to give developers over €5 billion to finish their bankrupt developments.  Nothing could further underline the criminality of this State and the economic system than this fact – the December budget will cut over €4 billion from health, education and social welfare. This same amount of money, and more, will go to developers.  Workers will face pay cuts and the most vulnerable in our society will face misery so that those who did so much to cause the crisis are protected.

The latest lie is that the €54 billion that the State is borrowing to bail out the banks will not be added to the State debt.  There is not one person with any sense who will believe any of this.  Irish workers will still have to pay back every euro of it, and with interest.  This cheap ‘off-balance sheet’ accounting trick fools no one and is the sort of sharp practice that got us into this mess in the first place.

We have no alternative - we have to stop NAMA.  We cannot protect our wages, our public services, our jobs, our terms and conditions and our social welfare and pay €54 billion to bail out the banks.  ICTU and the trade union leaders are not organising to stop NAMA.  Therefore we must organise to do it ourselves.