Irish bailout: where the money is actually going

[Loki]

Of course, to the banks. And the Irish banks are just conduits - the reason why the EU pressed so hard for Ireland to accept the bailout, is because it will be to pay the non-Irish bondholders. And Irish citizens will face many years of austerity measures to pay for this mega-loan.

A blog (http://order-order.com/2010/10/15/anglo-irish-bondholders-should-take-the-lossesis-the-ecb-forcing-ireland-to-protect-german-investments/) managed to find a list of these creditors that are actually being bailed out:

http://orderorder.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/ai-bondholders.gif?w=480&h=623

[Great Dane]

An alternative to the big banks would be cooperative banking. In America we have credit unions, which are owned by their depositers. They didn't take any bailout money from the banks. They are also local and don't get too big.

The big banks, like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, are too big too fail and they take risks because they know they will have to be bailed off if they screw up. I believe in the saying "If it is too big to fail it is too big to exist".