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History shows Nama-style bad banks are profoundly corrupt and corrupting institutions. If Nama didn’t happen, the alternative would involve minimal cost to the taxpayer and banks would manage their business without political interference

WHILE MOST economists by now simply dismiss Brian Lenihan’s utterances on the economy as “not even wrong”, this is to miss the Minister’s almost eerie ability to predict exactly the opposite of what is going to happen. Merely to contradict Brian Lenihan is virtually to guarantee that you will later be credited with supernatural prescience.