It is interesting to watch the whole “should we consolidate the banks into larger banks”, “should we let a smaller bank fail, in order to preserve the principle of moral hazard”, “should we bring in a foreign owner” from afar.

I’d be in the “keep the situation of a bunch of smaller Irish-owned and well-managed banks”. If one fails, then it is “creative destruction”, albeit more dangerous than the beneficial “creative destruction” which happens in the software industry.

I’d worry that a foreign fund may turn a large Irish bank into another Eircom.

People may question if they are “well-managed”, but certainly compared to the situation here in the US they are. As an anecdote, I applied for a Citibank air-miles credit card which I planned to use as a monthly sink for business expenses, and I was given a ludicrous credit limit of $12,500 right off the bat, and then was plagued with “just cash this cheque to get thousands of dollars” junk-mail from Citibank. That is despite me only having a couple of years of US credit history. Similarly, I used to get offers for “home equity loans” (i.e. what we used to call “second mortgages”, which were for people in dire straits, not people wanting 52-inch TVs) all the time, though not recently, ha ha.