Protest march against promissory note deal

Your rich and powerful neighbour drops you a line to let you know that, without your permission, without even asking your permission, he has arranged with your bank for you to pay his massive mortgage on his stately home, the terms and rate set by him.

You protest, and a few years later he drops you another line to let you know that he is extending the term so that the burden on you is eased somewhat but now, after you retire, your kids and even your grandkids can continue the mortgage payments, those payments still on his stately mansion.

It is a catastrophe for Ireland, our worst fears in the Ballyhea and Charleville protest confirmed. What had been a questionable and very arguable ‘promissory note’ has now been locked into sovereign debt. We are now in a race against time. While the Central Bank holds those new bonds they can still be destroyed, no external bondholder burned; once issued, and that process begins in 2014, then it becomes a matter of sovereign default, a very different matter.