It will be another day of bleak bank news — we had better get used to it

TODAY was supposed to be the day when we would get “finality” and “definitive” endgame figures about the extent of bank losses and size of ultimate cheque tax payers would have to write to bail them out. Dream on.

Today is Groundhog Day — merely another staging post in the drip feed of partial information. A deliberate decision has been taken to avoid announcement of total losses. This third round of stress testing will not be the last. This is because €85bn of non-core assets are not going to be sold off in the foreseeable future.

Multiple media leaks since the weekend of the announced recapitalisation suggest between €18bn and €23bn is required. This compares with the €10bn of our own money through the National Pension Reserve Fund that was agreed to be injected by Brian Lenihan before the end of February. This was to meet new 12% capital adequacy ratio requirements. The IMF/EU bailout also provided a contingency fund of buffer capital of €25bn, intended to provide extra recapitalisation arising out of shrinking of bad loans off the banks’ balance sheets. Stall the ball.