Ex-IMF chief Ajai Chopra criticises Ireland’s bailout

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Ex-IMF chief Ajai Chopra criticises Ireland’s bailout - -> irishtimes.com/business/econ … -1.2452324
Dec 3, 2015,

Ireland and other crisis countries could have had bailouts with “fewer constraints” if the European Central Bank had not been involved in the troika, said former International Monetary Fund chief Ajai Chopra.
Mr Chopra, who was the International Monetary Fund’s head of mission during Ireland’s 2010 bailout, said his team objected strongly to ECB proposals at the time in “robust” discussions.
They included a proposal that Ireland borrow tens of billions of euro more – beyond the €67.5 billion bailout loan package agreed – so that the ECB’s emergency loans to Anglo Irish Bank could be repaid quickly.
“It was unfortunate and unnecessary for these things to be brought into the discussion because they were quite easily shot down,” Mr Chopra told The Irish Times, speaking in Washington.

Recalling the negotiations, the now-retired IMF official said there was “no question” senior bondholders in two “defunct” banks, Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society, should have suffered heavy lossses.
“To impose losses on those creditors I think would not have had the cataclysmic spillover implications that the ECB seemed to be worried about,” said Mr Chopra.
The IMF also resisted pressure from the ECB to force the Irish banks to sell off excess assets in a “rapid” deleveraging, far faster than the three years eventually agreed, so it could be repaid quickly.

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