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From BBC News click on link below for full article

Greek politicians are struggling to form a new government.

There are powerful factions that do not want the austerity measures imposed on Greece by its international lenders.

But unless Greece can satisfy the demands of the European Union and the IMF, then they will cut off Greece’s last remaining lines of credit.

Without that, Greece will not be able to pay its bills and could drop out of the euro altogether.

Below are the views of several experts on what would happen if Greece were to leave the euro.

Carsten Brzeski, senior economist, ING Belgium

Chaos. Greek banks would go bust. Greek companies would go bust. Unemployment would go up. The new drachma loses lots of value.

Food and energy prices go through the roof. It would be an explosive cocktail.

The turmoil would weigh on growth. The outlook for the eurozone would worsen.

Michael Arghyrou, senior economics lecturer, Cardiff Business School

The drachma would be devalued by at least 50%, causing inflation.

Interest rates will have to double and all mortgages, business loans and other borrowing will become much more expensive.

There will be no credit for Greek banks or the Greek state.

That could mean a shortage of basic commodities, like oil or medicine or even foodstuffs.

A lot of Greek firms rely on foreign suppliers, who may cut off Greek customers. Greek companies could be driven out of business.

Greece will lose its only reference point of stability, which was its euro status.

The country would end up in a volatile period. There would be institutional weakness.

The worst case scenario would be a social and economic breakdown, perhaps even leading to a totalitarian regime.

Sony Kapoor, managing director of the Re-Define think tank

I think that either the Greeks or European policy makers talking about an exit in a casual blase way are being highly, highly irresponsible.

Total cost versus the total benefit remains overwhelmingly negative, both for the eurozone and Greece.

In one shot, a Greek exit could undo a large part of good work in Ireland and Portugal.

If you are a Portuguese saver with money in the bank, even if there is a small likelihood of losing that money, it would make perfect sense to move euro deposits while you can to a safer haven, like the Netherlands and Germany.

There would be a significant deposit flight in peripheral countries.

It would immediately weigh on investment in the real economy, because corporations would be very reluctant to invest anything at all.

Megan Greene, director of European economics at Roubini Global Economics

You would see cascading bank defaults in Greece and everybody would take money out of Portuguese and Spanish banks.

A big part could be plugged by the European Central Bank (ECB) through a liquidity operation that would backstop the banks.

The ECB has already done that several times and it would step up to the plate again.

But that would not stem the political contagion or unrest. We have seen four elections in two weeks. In Greece, France, Italy and Germany, electorates have voted against austerity at home.

However, Greece is a small country and the rest of the eurozone has been making provision for this for a long time now.

The eurozone could survive a Greek exit. Depending on the choreography, the exit could be better for everyone involved if managed in a co-ordinated orderly way.

But if it were done by a unilateral default, an exit would be a worse option for Greece.

Jeremy Stretch, head of forex research, CIBC

In the currency market, we are already seeing money fleeing to safe havens.

The alternatives are few and far between for those who want to stand aside from the euro.

The dollar is performing relatively well. The dollar index – the dollar against a basket of other major currencies – is at the highest level in two months.

A new drachma would not be the most widely trading currency in the world and would probably drop in value by 50%.

Jan Randolph, head of sovereign risk, IHS Global Insight

What everyone is missing is a third possibility.

If credit is withdrawn by the EU and IMF, then Greece becomes a cash economy. It means the government can only pay what it collects.

The government starts shutting down, 10-15% of state employees don’t get paid and unemployment surges from 20% to 30%.

But Greece can still use the euro.

It would be difficult for the ECB to keep banks afloat. The Greek banking sector would collapse as well.

That would cause more unemployment, as credit for companies would dry up.

What happens next is a political question.

European nations would probably not accept another Western European country descending into chaos and collapse.

The EU and IMF would probably negotiate some kind of aid. But Greece could continue with the euro.

Click on link for full article  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18057232

From todays Irish Independent see link below for full article

HARD-pressed homeowners face having to wait until next year for another mortgage cut after the European Central Bank yesterday hinted that it’s likely to keep rates unchanged until 2013.

Rates have been at an all-time low of 1pc since last December, but some experts had expected the ECB to reduce rates even more to try to help Europe out of a deepening recession.

Yesterday, ECB president Mario Draghi said his powerful governing council — which includes Irish central bank boss Patrick Honohan — had discussed interest rates for the first time in four months.

But he said that they consider monetary policy to be “accommodative”, the ECB’s way of saying interest rates are where the central bankers think they should be.

In his monthly press briefing, Mr Draghi also revealed that the ECB now believes inflation is “likely” to stay above 2pc for the rest of the year before falling below 2pc “in early 2013″.

The ECB’s main aim is to keep inflation rates “close to but below” 2pc. Lower interest rates lead to higher inflation rates, so the central bankers typically don’t cut interest rates unless they believe inflation will stay below 2pc.

Prevailing

This means that, if things stay as they are, it might be early 2013 before the next interest rate cut comes.

Mr Draghi stressed repeatedly the “prevailing uncertainty” about economic growth. This implies that if uncertainty leads to lower growth and lower inflation, interest rates may come sooner.

Yesterday’s news will come as a particular blow to homeowners in struggling countries like Ireland and Spain, where protesters gathered close to the hotel where the ECB met in Barcelona.

Mr Draghi said he could “understand very well” the anger of those who were “young, poor and unemployed”.

But he insisted that the actions taken to resolve the crisis were “the right ones” and would ultimately bear fruit.

The ECB has been pushing countries across the eurozone to pursue structural reforms that Mr Draghi believes will improve youth unemployment.

The Irish Brokers’ Association called for banks to cut variable rates, even though there was no move from the ECB.

Ciaran Phelan of the IBA said: “The banks charging mortgage holders in excess of 4pc on Celtic Tiger-sized mortgages need to cut their rates as they are no longer tenable in today’s economic climate.”

- Laura Noonan and Charlie Weston

Follow Link to full article

http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/blow-to-mortgages-as-ecb-hints-rates-wont-fall-3098244.html?service=Print

Charlie Weston Irish Independent Friday 16/3/2012….. click below for link to article

HOUSE prices have further to fall, the country’s biggest stockbroker said yesterday.

Davy said house prices were showing no signs of stabilising and could plunge as much as 70pc from the peak reached five years ago.

The new prediction on property prices came as leading ratings agency Moody’s indicated that arrears had shot up.

Davy said uncertainty about the property market and a chronic lack of mortgage lending were the main reasons that prices would go on falling.

Economist Conall Mac Coille calculated that prices have already dropped by 55pc from the level they were at during the boom.

This was higher than the official figure of 48pc calculated by the Central Statistics Office.

Both bad bank NAMA and Goodbody Stockbrokers said this week that official figures were not recording the true extent of property price falls.

“Because the CSO measure is based on mortgage transactions, it excludes cash purchases and lags developments in the property market by several months,” Davy said.

Affordability measures indicated prices were now approaching sustainable levels. But several factors, including the constraints imposed by banks on credit and a shrinking pool of potential first-time buyers, will hold back demand, the report stated. “Reports from estate agents and auction dealers suggest that peak-to-trough declines of close to 60pc have already occurred and that cash purchases now account for almost 30 per cent of all transactions. So the CSO measure probably understates the true decline in property prices.”

Sharper

The report noted a sharper decline in Dublin, where prices have declined by 57pc compared with 43.5pc in other areas.

Earlier this week, Goodbody Stockbrokers estimated that house prices may have fallen by around 60pc since the peak, with recent auctions by Allsop Space showing a 68pc decline.

However, the Davy report said the auction results may overstate the level of decline — because they represented distressed sales. This was also noted by Goodbody, which pointed out that the auctions included a relatively small number of properties.

Meanwhile, the number of homeowners in arrears has shot up 92,000, figures from leading ratings agency Moody’s indicate.

This is nearly 18,000 more families behind on their repayments than recorded by the Central Bank last month.

Moody’s warned of a “rapid deterioration” in the condition of €51bn worth of mortgages sold on by our banks.

It said that at the end of January almost 12pc of the loans hadn’t been paid in more than three months.

This was up from 10.14pc at the end of October.

If the 12pc arrears is applied across the entire residential market it means that 92,116 home loans are in arrears for three months or more.

Moody’s figures have consistently been more up to date than the Central Bank data.

The ratings agency said that 4.23pc of mortgage loans were a year or more in arrears. This translates into 32,525 home loans a year or more behind on their payments for the entire market. The London-based ratings agency said the outlook for Irish mortgages was negative. It predicted that unemployment would rise to 14.7pc this year and falling house prices will increase the size of losses on defaulted mortgages.

- Charlie Weston Personal Finance Editor

http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/house-prices-could-plunge-70pc-from-peak-says-report-3052568.html?service=Print
 

PROPERTY prices have hit rock bottom — but could stay there for years, according to a new report.

The average price of houses and apartments is now as low as €100,000, the report claims.

This is just a third of the average price properties sold for during the boom.

Prices have fallen so far in the last five years that it now takes less than three times the income of a single person to buy a property.

But now that they have reached a floor, prices may stay at their current level for ages, the report from Goodbody Stockbrokers says.

The report makes it clear that this is due to the current mortgage lending famine.

The study by economist Dermot O’Leary found prices have now fallen 68pc from the peak in 2007.

These are based on the prices reached on the Allsop Space distressed property auctions which have drawn a lot of interest.

Mr O’Leary said this fall was far greater than the 48pc recorded by the official Central Statistics Office (CSO) property price index.

His report contends that the prices achieved in the Allsop auctions more accurately reflected what was really happening in the market.

This is because the CSO figures do not take account of cash purchases, which account for up to a third of sales.

The lack of up-to-date data was contributing to the length of the house-price crash, he said.

“Allied to tight credit conditions, housing oversupply and a weak domestic demand environment, the lack of transparency on sales prices in the Irish residential property market has contributed to the prolonged nature of the Irish housing market crash,” he said.

The report said that mortgage lending last year was back to levels last seen in 1971, adding that a key ingredient for any recovery in the Irish property market was credit availability .

Mr O’Leary calculated that the price of houses and apartments was €100,000, based on a 68pc price fall.

The average property price peaked at €314,000 in January 2007.

The new average price means that it now requires 2.8 times the salary of a single person to buy a home. That calculation is based on an average wage of €36,000.

This compares with a long-term average of three-and-a-half times to four times income in the UK and a peak of 8.6 times income in Ireland.

Mr O’Leary said prices had now hit the bottom.

“While it would be our contention that prices are undershooting due to lack of access to credit and a weak domestic economy, this analysis suggests that residential property, at 60pc-plus from peak, is now transacting for prices very close to, or at, fair value,” he said.

However, he said that the mortgage market was set to “remain moribund for a significant further period of time”.

Goodbody Stockbrokers is owned by Kerry-based financial services group Fexco, and not connected to any mortgage lender. Mr O’Leary’s findings chime with a study of 325 cities in English-speaking countries that found that property here had now reached affordable levels for thousands on average salaries.

The prestigious Demo-graphia International Housing Affordability Survey found house prices were 3.3 times average salaries in the winter of last year — just a little above what international researchers deem affordable.

Mr O’Leary said a lack of mortgage lending was hurting the market.

Just AIB and Bank of Ireland are lending to first-time buyers.

AIB will lend to those who have a deposit of at least 8pc of the property’s value, but Bank of Ireland requires a deposit of at least 10pc.

Last year 14,000 mortgages were advanced, but this falls to 11,000 once top-ups and re-mortgaging are excluded. A normal level of lending would mean 40,000 mortgages being advanced

http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/house-prices-have-hit-bottom-and-will-stay-there-for-years-3049095.html?service=Print

HARD-PRESSED homeowners are in line for another three interest-rate cuts on top of the one delivered this month, it has emerged.

From Charlie Weston  Personal Finance Editor The Irish Independent.

However, a billionaire investor in Bank of Ireland appeared to rule out variable-rate customers of that bank benefiting from a series of ECB rate cuts.

Analysts said they were expecting a eurozone rate cut in December, another in January and that a third in February or March was now highly likely.

This would take the ECB rate from 1.25pc at present to 0.5pc, economists at Danske Bank, which owns National Irish Bank, said yesterday.

Four cuts, including this month’s one, would reduce repayments on a €200,000 tracker mortgage by €120 a month.

Over a year, a family with this size of mortgage would be €1,440 better off.

Danske Bank said the ECB was likely to keep cutting rates in a bid to counteract disappointing growth in the eurozone and in an attempt to contain the sovereign-debt crisis.

A string of cuts in ECB rates is set to reignite the controversy over banks failing to cut variable rates.

A billionaire investor in Bank of Ireland, Wilbur Ross, has defended the bank’s decision to resist government attempts to persuade it to cut its variable mortgage rate.

Rebuffed

The vulture capitalist said a more “normalised” funding environment was needed for Bank of Ireland to pass on ECB interest rate cuts to customers on variable-rate mortgages.

Mr Ross, who owns 9pc of Bank of Ireland, told Reuters news agency that the lender’s high funding costs made it difficult to pass on the ECB rate cut.

Bank of Ireland boss Richie Boucher stormed out of a meeting with Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore last week after being asked to pass on this month’s European Central Bank rate cut to variable-rate customers.

Mr Ross said: “I can assure you that Richie Boucher is well aware of the need for responsible pricing of loans and also is aware that lower rates make it easier for borrowers to remain current in their payments.

“High funding costs are hopefully a temporary phenomenon. In a more normalised environment, it would become easier to synchronise interest rate spreads with changes in rates charged by ECB.”

Ulster Bank has also rebuffed efforts by the Government to get it to pass on last week’s ECB cut to its variable rate customers. Its variable rate is 4.95pc, compared with Bank of Ireland’s 3.99pc.

The State owns 15pc of Bank of Ireland. It has no stake in Ulster Bank.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Michael Noonan said yesterday that he had been told by Financial Regulator Matthew Elderfield that he does not need additional powers to force banks to pass on ECB interest rate reductions to customers.

Mr Noonan last night ruled out introducing emergency legislation to force two banks to pass on interest rate cuts to struggling help the mortgage holders.

Follow link to full article

http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/more-cuts-on-way-in-mortgage-rates-say-analysts-2935699.html?service=Print

- Charlie Weston Personal Finance Editor

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The Article looks at how various Greek Financial Scenarios would impact on Ireland.

Click on the link below for the full Article

On the likelihood of Greece defaulting on its debts, EU political leaders seem to believe that it’s more a case of when rather than if, write Cliff Taylor and Jon Ihle.

If someone has a masterplan to sort out the euro crisis, they are keeping it well hidden.

On Friday, the US treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, made an unprecedented visit to a meeting of eurozone finance ministers, and warned that the EU need to act to combat the ‘‘catastrophic risk’’ that was stalking the financial markets.

The ministers appeared to respond by shrugging their shoulders, agreeing to delay the release of funds to Greece and pushing back the timescale for the signing off by national parliaments on the expansion of the mandate of the European Financial Stability Fund, which was agreed at the emergency EU meeting last July.

It wasn’t quite a ‘‘crisis, what crisis?” response to the man from Washington DC – but it wasn’t far off it.

One key thing has changed over the past few weeks. The financial markets have thought for some time that a default on Greek debt would happen.

Now, there seems to be a tacit acceptance at political level that this is the case, even if political leaders are still trying to workout how it will all be managed, So how might it work out, and what would it all mean for Ireland? Here are three alternative scenarios.

1. Europe continues to muddle through

The EU leaders have managed to get this far without fundamentally changing the way the eurozone operates.

And they may get away with it for a while longer, though the extent of the pressures they face is making it more and more difficult.

Initially, the idea appeared to be to cordon off Greece, Ireland and Portugal as three bailout countries and hope that ‘‘contagion’’ did not spread. This worked for a while, but a crisis was sparked over the summer when the Italian and Spanish bond markets started to come under pressure, leading to an emergency summit and extensive bond-buying by the ECB.

For the EU to continue to muddle through, the ECB will most likely have to continue this buying, a move that is clearly controversial, as shown by the recent resignation of its German chief economist, Jurgen Stark. It will also have to stand ready to continue to support the liquidity of the EU banking system, which has been hit by fears over which banks would lose out in the event of a Greek default.

In particular, this has led US banks to be nervous of lending to their EU counterparts, necessitating a coordinated drive by international central banks to provide US dollars to the eurozone banking system last week. More of this will be needed if a lid is to be kept on the pressure cooker.

‘‘If markets begin to believe that the ECB will continue to act as a backstop, their attention may focus elsewhere, but in the background will be the unfinished business,” according to Kevin Gardiner, head of investment strategy at Barclays Wealth, speaking after addressing a conference for the firm’s Irish clients last week.

‘‘A comprehensive resolution is going to be way down the road, but I don’t think this (Greece and the euro crisis) will be flavour of the month all the time.”

A muddling-through strategy would allow the EU leaders to gradually prepare the way for a Greek restructuring, and also for the kind of economic and fiscal union that might underpin a more stable euro.

‘‘This is all leading to a United States of Europe,” said Gardiner. ‘‘The markets and the leaders know this. It’s just a question of bringing the electorates along.”

He said Merkel and Sarkozy were playing a game of ‘‘granny’s footsteps’’ – advancing while voters’ backs were turned.

The key question is whether the markets will give the EU leaders space to pursue this longer drawn-out strategy.

What would it mean for Ireland?

A muddle-through scenario would leave open the likelihood of bouts of volatility. This would not be good for Ireland, and if the underlying problems were still not being fixed, Ireland would be likely to find it difficult to return to borrow from the markets on schedule in 2013.

We have had some positive news with the improvement in the terms of the bailout that was announced last week. This improves the outlook for our national debt.

However, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has said he has still to decide whether to seek longer-term financing from the EU and IMF, and is also pressing for financial assistance for Ireland in funding the Anglo Irish Bank bailout.

The best hope of achieving this would be if the rest of the EU believes Ireland has a chance of becoming a successful bailout country and that it is to their advantage to encourage this.

2. Greece Defaults

Sooner or later, Greece’s debts are likely to be restructured, involving a significant write-off for its creditors who include the private sector, the EU and probably the ECB.

A game of chicken is now going on between Greece and the EU/IMF.

At Friday’s summit, eurozone finance ministers agreed not to realise the next €8 billion in funding due under the current rescue programme just yet, while the terms of an extended bailout beyond the end of this year have still to be signed off.

The troika – the EU, IMF and ECB – return to Athens this week to try to get agreement, and it is likely that the EU is trying to push the Greek government to start getting its budget in order. However, growth in Greece is collapsing – the economy will shrink by 5 per cent this year, well above previous estimates of a 3.8 per cent contraction, and the Greek public are suffering from ‘‘austerity fatigue’’.

The likely eventual writedown of Greek debt will be substantial, and this is what could bring the issue to a head sooner rather than later. Europe’s leaders will be asking why they should be pouring in money that they may never get back.

A research note by economist Willem Buiter for Citigroup Global Markets last week estimated that creditors could be facing losses of 65 to 80 per cent, not in one fell swoop but over a series of restructurings in the years ahead.

He pointed out that one way of achieving this is to greatly extend the maturing of the debt without writing down its principal.

This can save political face, while still having a major impact on Greece’s debt dynamics.

Lengthening the average maturity of Greek bonds from the current seven years to 28 years, for example, would reduce debt levels by close to 65 per cent.

Under the current EU programme, countries could restructure debts if they were assisted by the new European Stability Mechanism, due to come into place in mid-2013.

However, the Greek situation may well be dealt with sooner.

A lot depends on whether Greece can do enough to keep the EU and IMF on board and whether its government can be seen to deliver.

A Greek default, if it happened suddenly, would cause a new bout of nervousness in markets, who would ask: who will be hit next?

Asking if he thought a Greek default was already priced in, John Looby of Setanta Asset Management said: ‘‘You would expect it to be, but we thought Lehman was well-flagged and look what happened.”

He added that a Greek default could lead to a new drying up in liquidity in interbank markets.

There would be an immediate focus on the holders of Greek debt and how much they would lose. French banks are big holders, for example.

‘‘There will be a run on French banks and the government will have to recapitalise them,” said Justin Doyle of Investec Ireland.

He added that the worry would be also that other sovereign debt markets would be hit, including our own.

What would it mean for Ireland?

A Greek default, particularly a sudden one, would lead to investors asking who would default next. Interest rates on Irish government bonds, which have fallen significantly recently, could rise sharply once again.

Much would then depend on what was said and done to help other states to avoid the same fate as Greece.

Funding could dry up in the EU interbank market, leading to situation similar to that which followed the Lehmans collapse. Irish banks, with small Greek exposures, would not be in the firing line and are, in any case, largely reliant on official funding.

http://www.thepost.ie/story/text/ojidgbmhql/
However, a messy Greek default and a new credit crunch could hit growth and confidence across the EU – and here.

The advantage would be that, if handled in amore organised manner, a Greek default could be seen as a real step to addressing the underlying crisis and perhaps also provide some negotiating leverage for Ireland.

3. Greece leaves the euro

Most analysts, even those who have taken a sceptical view of the euro, continue to believe that, on balance, this will not happen.

However, as Buiter’s research note for Citigroup said last week, it has become more likely in recent months. The events that could lead to this are not hard to imagine. The E U and IMF demand new spending cuts or tax hikes from Greece. The Greek government refuses and new bailout money is not extended.

More crucially – the vital factor, according to Buiter would be if the ECB cut off liquidity to Greece’s banks. The mechanism by which a country would leave the eurozone remains unclear, but clearly it is not impossible that this could happen.

An unplanned Greek exit of this kind would create chaos, both within Greece itself and across Europe. The Greek banking system would almost certainly collapse and, as reported here last week, a UBS analysis estimated that a country leaving the eurozone could face costs of up to 50 per cent of GDP.

The shockwaves would spread across the EU Greek’s sovereign debt holders would face immediate losses as their holdings were redenominated in a currency which would crash. Big holes would appear in the balance sheets of many EU banks as a result.

If Greece left, questions would immediately be asked about who would be next. Funds would leave the banking systems of Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain; and US funds would move out of Europe. New funds would not be provided by investors to these countries.

‘‘The funding strike (the lack of new funds from investors) and deposit run-out of the periphery euro-area member states would create financial havoc and most likely cause a financial crisis followed by a deep recession in the euro-area broad periphery,” according to the Citigroup paper..

The advantage for a country like Greece leaving the eurozone is that a rapidly depreciating currency would effectively cut its debt burden and give it a competitiveness boost (how sustained the competitiveness advantage would be is a point of debate among analysts). However, the risks are the costs sustained in getting there and particularly the almost certain collapse of the Greek banking system.

What would it mean for Ireland?

A sudden Greek exit from the euro still looks unlikely, given the risks for all sides.

If it happened, Ireland could not avoid being caught up in the financial whirlwind that followed, as speculation grows that more countries would leave.

There are other scenarios being touted: for example, that Germany would lead a group of stronger countries out of the eurozone. For the moment, however, the risks of a euro break up look like something that Europe will continue to try to avoid.

How the rate reduction will affect Ireland’s finances

The original terms of the bail out signed off last November were penal, in that the average interest rate on the loans offered was to be around 5.8 per cent, or possibly slightly higher depending on how market rates moved.

Successive agreements to cut the rates – including a surprise additional reduction agreed last week – will make a significant difference to Ireland and bring the total benefit over the term of the EU/IMF loan to around €10 billion, the figure forecast in an article in this paper by John FitzGerland, ESRI professor, a few weeks ago. The precise terms on which Ireland will borrow remain to be fully tied down.

However the annual benefit in terms of interest savings now looks set to be in the €1.1 billion to €1.2 billion per annum region – the full annual benefit is only felt in a couple of years time after all the money is drawn down.

It will not transform Ireland’s budget arithmetic, but it helps. To put the numbers in context, Ireland’s debt interest payments had been expected to rise to over €8 billion by 2013, but we can now subtract upwards of €1 billion from this.

It will make our financial targets a bit easier to hit, though in the next few years the EU and IMF will keep us under pressure to close the deficit between what we spend on running the country (before taking account of debt repayments) and what we raise in taxes – so the budget adjustment targets will remain. Closing this gap is a vital step to stabilising our finance.

The lowering of the interest rate also makes the job of the NTMA in funding our cash requirements a bit easier.

However they still face a big financing need of over €20 billion in 2014 – the year after the bail out cash is due to run out – with a big €12 billion bond redemption in January of that year.

Minister Noonan has said he will continue to consider seeking extended loan maturities on EU/IMF loans, which could lower the pressure to raise cash in the 2015 -2017 period when much of this money currently falls due to be repaid. He is also to talk to the ECB about a refinancing of the €30 billion Anglo bill, due to cost us €3.1 billion a year in principal repayments – and more in interest from next year.

If this could be refinanced it could be a major boost to the exchequer particularly if, as Noonan appears to be suggesting, it could be spread out over 25 to 30 years rather than the current ten.

Cliff Taylor

http://www.thepost.ie/story/text/ojidgbmhql/