Bank insolvency is a ticking time-bomb

The Irish banking crisis has not gone away and we could be sitting on a financial Hiroshima involving more than one bank. The three main high street retail banks have all shown massive sobering losses for December last year.

AIB have lost a whopping €3.8bn; BOI €2.16bn; and TSB €922m for one year’s trading. And IRBC, which was formerly Anglo Irish, and lost €743m for the first six months of 2012, has a current liability €16.6bn in loans. Bank of Ireland tells us that 10% of the mortgages are in arrears.

The main retail banks are now at a 45 degree angle on the chart which is staggering. There is no way these losses can be sustained for much longer. End of year losses will be a defining moment in this country’s banking history and the country’s future, if it has any. Political arguments aside, there can be no arguing with the figures which are grave and ominous. Obviously, there will be a further attempt to get more money of the IMF/EU, but the EMS fund was not intended for bank insolvency. There has already been intense resistance in using this fund for banking matters. The OECE (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in Europe) has berated Ireland as a shabby and poorly governed country with a ‘too little too late’ policy on everything.