It’s the “most ambitious measure taken by a sovereign state” since the credit crisis began, as Neil Shah said in The Wall Street Journal. Ireland has effectively nationalised its financial system for two years: it will guarantee deposits and debts for the country’s six biggest banks until 2010. This means it is assuming potential liabilities of around €550bn, compared with existing government debt of €40bn and overall GDP of €160bn. The move has increased pressure on the UK authorities to boost the size of the deposit guarantee.
The move was designed to shore up rapidly dwindling confidence in the banking sector. Irish financial sector shares plummeted early this week amid fears that it is particularly dependent on the frozen interbank market; loan to deposit ratios are 150% in Ireland compared with 130% in the rest of the EU, Sebastian Orsi of Merrion pointed out in the FT. Banks have been “bleeding money” as the Irish property and construction markets have tanked, noted Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph. Ireland has become the first eurozone member to slide into recession now that the property bubble has burst and consumption has slumped.
What next?
By effectively betting its economy, Ireland has “certainly upped the stakes in the confidence game that is banking”, as Alphaville said in the FT. The hope is that the guarantee will improve Irish banks’ access to funds on world markets. But Ireland may be in for a bumpy ride. Note that the banks’ assets are highly concentrated in “fast-fading” UK and Irish property, said Lex in the FT. At Anglo-Irish Bank, the exposure to these two sectors is 80% and at Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish it is 71% and 60% respectively. And if markets keep withholding wholesale funds from “property plays”, then the government “may have to reconsider that guarantee”.