Meet the Scapegoats
Last week, an Irish court sentenced three prominent banksters for their roles in the 2008 financial crisis. Judge Martin Nolan, who pronounced judgment, said that the bansksters had committed ‘a very serious crime.’ He continued:
‘The public is entitled to rely on the probity of blue chip firms. If we can’t rely on the probity of these banks we lose all hope or trust in institutions.’*
Meet the scapegoats! Three Irish bankers sent to jail: former finance director at the failed Anglo Irish Bank, Willie McAteer (42 months); former Irish Life and Permanent Bank Chief Executive Denis Casey (33 months); and former head of capital markets at the Anglo Irish Bank, John Bowe (24 months). This may very well be a case of going to jail for stupidity. They were doing the bidding of regulators, in the erroneous belief that they wouldn’t throw them under the bus when push came to shove. The three had engaged in a scheme of pushing money around in circular fashion in order to make Anglo Irish Bank look healthier than it was. However, as the defense noted: they reacted to the what Irish regulators told them at the time, who demanded that ‘Irish banks support one another as the financial crisis worsened, in a program called the green jersey agenda.’ As former Irish central bank governor John Hurley said in testimony, ‘The ECB told Ireland to stand with its failing banks’. Former Taoiseach Brian Cowen in turn said:’Ireland was bounced into the bailout by Hurley’s friends in the ECB, which was ‘at all times pushing’ us into an international rescue program.’ We would note: not a single regulator, central bank bureaucrat or politician was ever even remotely in danger of getting jail time!
This post was published at Acting-Man on August 5, 2016.
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