NAMA is a different issue - that's an actual, not contingent, liability
Nah - its off balance sheet - in a special purpose vehicle - so its not really real in the world of "modern" accounting.
If there is a negative with the Euro for us, it is that it made the lunacy of the bank guarantee to bond-holders possible. Otherwise we would (presumably) have let the banks go into into examiner-ship (our Chapter 11) or some such purgatory, and reconstituted them as new banks the next week - with shareholders and non-senior bond-holders and not taxpayers taking the hit. notes from no w here
Like I said, the Irish banking sector would be a 20-times-bigger smoking crater than Iceland's were it not for the Euro. It's a mixed blessing. I'm not sure what's worse for ordinary people. Systemically, in the long term, maybe the smoking crater is preferable. But zombie banks are less immediately painful. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
