It’s time we pleaded inability to pay for dead banks and risky businesses

THE implosion of our financial services sector just keeps giving more trauma and we have been constantly misled with only partial, minimalist, optimistic instalments of information. This has led the state to take ownership of virtually the entire indigenous banking sector and its liabilities.

The next generation of taxpayers have already had their future mortgaged by these commitments. The elastic is set to snap. The state’s comfort blanket cannot underwrite this meltdown.

We were told by Anglo bosses throughout 2008 that their bank was profitable, solvent and well capitalised. Its only problem was short-term liquidity. This resulted in the state bank guarantee of September 2008. There was systematic falsification of the year-end balance sheet, with bogus deposits being misrepresented.