Murphy´s Blog – The Proprietor of Charlie´s has his say…

August 13, 2009

How do we penalise the guilty, and who are they?

Filed under: Murphy´s Ramblings — Tags: banks, fine geal, government, labour, lenihan, liam carroll, NAMA, tax payer — Murphy @ 13:11

I look at the High Court case against Liam Carroll and think to myself this NAMA is unreal, and very unfair. They want to shove all of the bad debts of these kinds of people on top of the tax payer for a generation ahead.

Here are two very simple facts. The first is that Brian Lenihan said recently that he wouldn’t interfere in commercial decisions of a bank who wanted to put up interest rates. Think about it – the government let the banks do what they like for 10 years but the minute it went wrong they had to bail them out with tax payers´ money. If I had to give an insurance to a company, you can be sure that I would want to know exactly what was going on in that company, and if I didn’t like it I would pull the insurance rapido.

It seems to me that the government should never have bailed out the banks and, just like it said, should not have got involved in commercial decisions and let any bank that couldn’t stand up simply go bust. Sure, it would have created hardship, but at least we would get to the bottom fast and therefore could start to rebuild on solid ground. Now we are prolonging the agony for nearly a generation.

The second fact is that the property developers, bankers (is bankers spelled with a B?!) and politicians who stood to gain the world, with only others´ money to lose, should be stripped of their cars, homes and all assets for putting a generation of Irish citizens at such risk. There are good balanced property developers out there too, and they are the ones who kept a sense of reality over the last 10 years, and despite the fact that they are also hurting now, they are simply not hurting others for their own gain.

We have no choice now, only to continue with NAMA and bail out the greedy and stupid over time – but maybe along with the government having shares in these mismanaged institutions, there should also be a higher rate of tax applied to them when they return to profit to compensate the tax payer. Of course, there is another catch in this because they will make the profit by rising interest rates and charges on the very same tax payer who bailed them out in the first place. So therefore, as far as I can see, we have to pay the debts of these greedy, immoral, irresponsable a**holes for years – or else simply let them sink and pull all state guarantees.

Fine Geal and Labour are knocking anything the government are doing, and whether they are right or not is irrelevant, but what is relevant is that they are only knocking and not coming up with any positive alternatives of substance, which means a change of government ain’t going to help either.

One alternative that I can think of would be to tax the profit of exporting companies only, which means we would get other nations to compensate the Irish tax payer. However, this is also immoral and it would further turn manufacturing exporting companies to relocate elsewhere.

The bottom line is that we are simply f*cked for a while, and we might as well accept it with a smile, a song and a pint in Charlies, and do the best we can to make the whores that put us in this position pay for it personally. I would love to hear others´ opinions or solutions here on this blog that my simple brain can’t see. Ah, just a few thoughts, sure, ya know yourself.

Drink sex feck arse & fags!!!

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October 1, 2008

Ireland – have your cake and eat it

Filed under: Murphy´s Ramblings — Tags: banks, brian cowen, cityboy, geraint anderson, money — Murphy @ 20:34

We are f*cking geniuses. I read a book in a day written by a City analyst by the name of Geraint Anderson in the Square Mile, and it’s brilliant. Probably the best book I’ve ever read. The book is called ”Cityboy“. Of course, he has Irish descent in him as you can tell by the language he uses and some of the phrases. It’s very funny, very real, and extremely human, and tells a lot of which I already knew/suspected, but it’s great to get it confirmed.

Anyway, the reason I think we are geniuses is because I was thinking with my stupid brain that it would be a good idea to open a bank where you could deposit money with no interest paid on it, and you would actually be charged a nominal fee for storing your cash. This bank would not lend your money to anyone but would simply store it for you safely and you could withdraw it at the drop of a hat. Then you know that the bank won’t go bust and that your money is dead safe. The negative side would be that you won’t earn the 4% or 5% or whatever it is today in interest, and you will have to pay a small fee for leaving it there.

Along comes the mighty Brian Cowen and guarantees that the Irish government will stand behind all money deposited in Irish banks. One of the lads told me last night that 50 odd million had been withdrawn from Irish banks in the last few days. Now there will be millions, if not billions, pumped into the Irish banks because of Cowen’s guarantee. There are calls all over the English newspapers today for a*shole Gordon Brown to follow suit – but he won’t. I presume Cowen checked the risk to the tax payer on this one and did his homework, and realised the Irish banks were healthy enough to be able to take this risk, and the only reason that Brown won’t follow is that he knows some of the English banks are f*cked big time. I was also told today by a colleague in France that the Irish bank shares jumped 55%. If this goes wrong in Ireland there will be a lot more than just the banks f*cked, but I presume that Cowen has some type of agreement with what the banks can and can’t do with the influx of money they are going to see.

We had funds coming from China in my own business and they were being sent through a USA corresponding bank, and we were advised to get that changed in case the USA bank went bust. This means that the Irish banks trust the Chinese banks more than the New Yorkers. What a great day for the balance of humanity!

My own instinct is that you should never give your money to someone else to invest, given the fact that they can gamble your money. If it comes good, they will make money as well as you yourself, and if it goes bad you (and only you) will lose. Stick your money into a business that might create jobs for people, or if you’re not into that, stick it into property. And even if it falls it will always come good again, but some of these companies fall and stay dead forever. I’m
certainly not clever enough for the stock market (except I was in that wonderful world of being a stockbroker where I couldn’t lose), and I know that nobody is. I wouldn’t want to be in that world because I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I thought I was making decisions with someone else´s money, who broke their back to get it in the first place. I’m only clever enough to stay away from it.

Spend more time drinking, having sex and singing. And f*ck ´em all!

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July 5, 2008

Bush and the Banks need our help…. don’t shy away from the opportunity!

Filed under: Murphy´s Ramblings — Tags: banks, bush, greed, recession — Murphy @ 20:31

At the tender age of 43, this is my second time living through a recession, and recessions by and large are not a bad thing if you are ready for them. For most of you this is going to be a long-winded post that you may have no interest in, and I will just give my opinion on this recession that we are facing. If you’re not into this kind of thing, stop reading now, find yourself a partner of which ever sex you are into and go and do what you have to do – or just stroll down to Charlies for a pint.

Funnily enough, recessions boost the bar trade in general, and the holiday trade. The reason for this is simple and well documented – when we are going through periods like the Celtic Tiger, people feel the need to move fast with the economy and they can see others buying property and making money, and any fool could make money in those times, but not every fool could hold on to it. The stupid banks fuel the problem giving out mortgages left right and centre, and nobody can relax and enjoy life because of greed. Then you get a down turn in property and the economy and it’s cool to do nothing. People start to relax and spend their time drinking a few pints and enjoying themselves again because they don’t feel that they will miss something, and they don’t worry that others around them will move on faster than themselves.

There are those who unfortunately are under pressure to pay banks for their first home because, again, the bastards lend too much money fighting for a share of the market. It’s my opinion that those who are in that position should realise that this is much more the banks´ problem than yours. People who are struggling should get together and collectively tell the banks to go and f*ck themselves. They should pay what they can comfortably afford, and the banks can wait for the rest. If everyone did that, who are the banks going to sell the houses too? It’s time for the people to control the banks and not the other way around.

Over the last three years or so my own lads in their early 20s have been saying to me “why did you stop building houses, apartments and warehouses?” etc. I told them that everything was too expensive. Just by looking at average salaries against average house prices, and even working couples can’t afford to live at this rate. They said to me that everyone was still building and there would never be a recession again…. Mmmmmm!!!!

Unfortunately I was right and they were wrong. At that age they have only seen everything going up, people buying, buying, and no stop in sight. I am happy that they now see what can happen at an early age, just like I did in the late eighties, so that they won’t forget it for the rest of their lives. They obviously don’t remember when they were two years old and I was in and out of court with the banks trying to hold on to our house, which thankfully I did, by the skin of my teeth. But I wasn’t too worried about it, living in Ireland, the government would give you a corporation house anyway, and I knew if that’s the worst that can happen, things ain’t bad at all. This was a much bigger problem for the bank than it was for me. I would get going again and buy another house. What I do remember about those times was that there were a lot of people under serious pressure and life was grey to dark – or moral was I suppose.

Take a couple with 52,000 Euros per year net income. This is the way they will work out their finances, in this order, weekly:

mortgage 600
shopping 150
insurance 20
etc. etc.

The way it should be worked out I believe is the following way:

spending money 300
shopping 150
insurance etc. etc.

And whatever is left is what they can pay for a mortgage which would reduce the price of property and give people a quality of life.

How long will this reccesion last? I think things will go down about another 20% in the next two years and will steady, and slowly, start picking up. For sure, it will start to get a little better a year after that a/h Bush is gone.

The bottom line is that banks are greedy institutions that are only answerable to shareholders to make as much profit as possible at anyone´s expense, regardless of the consequences. Their greed blinds them from making long term steady decisions for the benefit of all including themselves. Now, because of their lack of vision and greed, they have thrown money at anyone that will take it, driving up the price of everything to a false level, which is now correcting itself (otherwise known as a “reccession”), and they are unable to keep life in balance for the public, or for themselves. As I have said before, if they lend more than a certain proven income to a couple or individual, they should be left swing and have no opportunity by law to get the money back.

If our governments can’t control them, or won’t, then we (the public) should. If everyone stopped paying their mortgage or any loan for one month, then you would see very quickly what would happen. The banks would be very accomodating very fast, and they would be begging the public instead of the public begging them, and even more of the public would be at Charlie´s having a few pints and a laugh singing along with Skin & Hide,while the greedy would be in their suits 24 hours a day, scratching their heads in offices, worried and thinking “what will we do now?” Then, after a while, the public would feel sorry for these poor assholes and agree to give them X amount per month, and we would never have a recession again as long as we don’t have another Bush, spending billions killing people.

That brings me to think again about people power. The American and English soldiers should not be waiting for Bush to withdraw them out of Iraq. They should simply say “Adios” and walk off to the airport and join the rest of us at Charlie´s for a few pints and refuse to put themselves in the way of fire, or to be firing at others.

Power and greed has the likes of Bush and the banks fcked up,which in turn has the world f*cked up. It’s a disease they have, just like cancer, and they need our help to cure these diseases. I hope none of us would walk away from someone lying on the street sick, so let’s not walk away from the opportunity to help the likes of Bush and the big w*nkers (sorry, bankers) of the world. It’s our opportunity to relieve them of their pain.

That’s enough shit for one day. Or is it shit?

Murphy

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