I’m really surprised the ECB rejected this idea. It should make perfect sense to them.
Dublin wants to avoid having to pay 3.1 billion euros a year until 2023 to service a promissory note it issued to underwrite failed Anglo Irish Bank during a meltdown of the main Irish lenders after a real estate bubble burst in 2008.
Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan had proposed converting the note into long-term government bonds that would be taken up by the Irish Central Bank with the intention of keeping the bonds in its portfolio for a long period.
So, I’ll give you an IOU to forget about the IOU it gave you in 2008….. deal?
Well it works in Greece. ALT-currency and barter, IOU’s at ten paces. In Greece the reason is “we don’t want to pay sales tax to them guvmint wastrels” (a concept which admittedly has some merit) and in Ireland its “we don’t want to pay back all that money, printing ink is sooooo much cheaper”.
Scoundrels the lot of them.
Yes, the lot of them. And, why would the ECB want this when the point of it all is dependency and perpetual payment?