Madam, – It amazes me to see at the Allied Irish Bank agm (Business Today, April 29th), the now annual protest by pensioners on losing their life savings. While I can appreciate their anger, I can’t understand why not one of them seems to have made the following logical conclusion. The underlying aim in investing in bank shares in this country over the past number of years was to piggy-back on the inflated profits of these institutions.
Clearly now, these profits were being inflated through a younger generation signing up to mortgages on properties that were overvalued.
Therefore all investors, young and old, were hoping to profiteer on a generation that was signing up for 30 years of crippling debt on assets that were worth a fraction of what was paid for them.
To everyone, feel free to be angry and feel free to protest. But, from profiteering pensioners to greedy twentysomethings and thirtysomethings who hoped to make a fast buck by buying a two-bed apartment in Naas in the hope of doubling the value and trading up to a three-bed semi in Sandymount, can we all at least admit that we played a part in this mess and that we all hoped to make as much money as possible from it, regardless of where this money was coming from.
Then we can all move on and put our energies into something more positive and productive. – Yours, etc,