By the weekend of the 13th September the finance department, government and NTMA had already decided on the main course of action to take, meetings and notes indicate that the sequencing and execution of how it would happen was taking shape, with the coming weekend session being used to finalise all streams. The communication and sequencing of the government actions was finalised on the 18th September at a meeting between the separate state institutions, this included the raising of the guarantee.
Presentations and meetings organised by the government around this time, with the other significant players in the banking crisis, sought reassurance that the suggested course of action was viable and indeed the correct one to choose. However these other players (the Irish banks and international investment banks advisors) appear to have a quite clear vested interest in the government bank guarantee coming to fruition. Time pressures may have played a part in the lack of diversity in the pool of advisors from which the government based their decisions.
Indeed on the 18th of September Anglo Irish Bank presented a misleading state of health for the bank. It’s distorted viewpoint consisted of metrics showing Anglo as class leading in it’s market when the reality could not have been further from the truth. Statements such as “Even at this level the bank continues to be highly profitable” presented a delusional state of thinking that was either intended to hoodwink those present into believing the logic for a government guarantee was strengthened or that the presenters themselves hadn’t the faculties to fathom the order of magnitude the crisis entailed combined with the ignorance of their own internal affairs. Either way it is highly questionable that members of Anglo Irish Bank should have been trusted to play any part in shaping or influencing the thinking of the key