Oh boy, this sounds really awkward, and it bodes ill for Ireland's ability to finance itself or establish any credibility with the financial community going forward.
On Friday, Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan held a conference call with London investors to discuss the restructuring, but a screwup by Citigroup meant that all of the dial-ins could be heard by everyone else.
Between 200 and 500 investors are understood to have been on the call, and as they realised their lines were not muted many began to heckle Mr Lenihan.
Some traders began making what one banker on the call described as "chimp sounds", while another cried out "dive, dive". A third man said "short Ireland" before adding "why not short Citi too?"
As the call descended into chaos, with one participant heard to say "this is the worst conference call ever", Citigroup officials shut down the line.
if theres a god hank paulson would die
Wall St saved all us peasants from doom.
you would provide and audo link.
They are Satan worshipping demonic beings that deserve to be in jail.
Thanks to their demonic gurus: Greenspan, Rubin and Summers, this country has been knifed in the back.
They should have reorganized Anglo Irish bank and forced the debt holders to take the haircut, but instead, based on the initial lowball estimate of E5B, they decided to bailout the bond holders. The problem is the cost is going to be over E25B and Ireland can't absorb that without nasty economic side effects.
It is interesting that TARP was originally intended by Paulson and the last Republican Administration to go down the same path. Fortunately they realized that $700B wasn't enough and switched to recapitalization instead, which actually means the US Treasury will get most of that money back, perhaps all of it.
See the Irish Times - http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/1002/breaking15.html
I get my best reporting on what is actually going on in America by reading German and Russian reporting.
“The Minister was not interrupted as reported by the Telegraph . There was no heckling - indeed participants congratulated the Minister and the NTMA.”
He said a number of media organisations were on the call and that none of these “offered a similar analysis to the Telegraph which was not on the call”.
“At the end of the call, spreads on Irish bonds narrowed which indicated that the 200 investors on the call were reassured,” he said.'
Q. (Knowing the Jesuitical nature of the Dept. of Finance Mandarins): Is this call (singular) to which they refer the second, shall we say, "official" one, or does it include the first aborted one? I'm being serious.
There is just something about how this reads that sounds spookily like a report from North Korea or the Soviet Union... there was no heckling, indeed participants congratulated Great Leader... at the end of the call spreads narrowed and participants were reassured... four alarm fire in downtown Moscow clear way for glorious new tractor factory...
We should execute only the leaders as an example. The rest should be imprisoned. We must remember we are Christians so we need to provide compassion eventhough they deserve the firing squad.
many of these idiots don't seem to realize that they have been allowed to float, not to gloat.
fire them.