I don’t always agree with Fran O’Sullivan. But she is a real journalist – one of the few.
Consider this from her piece in Wednesday’s Herald:
It will become clear in due time that the Government’s receivership option didn’t just appear out of thin air while Maier negotiated into the night to try to reach an accommodation with the preferred buyer.
And that the Treasury officials had been working on this for some time. And that word had obviously leaked into the market that the Government might entertain a so-called commercial solution aka receivership which arguably sparked a flurry of speculation before the trading halt was called on the Friday immediately preceding the $1.77 billion investor bailout.
As Maier said on Tuesday last week: “A lot of bets in the casino paid off big time today.”
and this:
What we have ended up with is very untidy: the Government has paid out “in the know” bond investors and foreign preferential shareholders who did not qualify for the guarantee.
It reminds me of those “in the know” who made huge amounts of money out of the 1984 devaluation. That was another badly kept secret, also worked on by Treasury; the details were in their briefing document “Economic Management”.
Now that Treasury is in charge of the receivership, let’s hope that it is not another casino for insiders. Please stay on this issue Fran; I think there is a lot more that we all need to know about what has gone on and what might go on in this sorry saga.
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