Ireland’s finance minister warned on Tuesday that the nation faced “the challenge of [its] life”, as he slapped higher taxes on the middle classes in an emergency budget aimed at tackling the spiralling economic crisis. Brian Lenihan outlined plans to set up a national asset management agency to take over an estimated €80bn-€90bn of bad loans extended by local domestic banks to developers and property companies that now look as if they will not be able to repay. Bankers told the FT Ireland would be the first European Union country to adopt a so-called “bad bank” model to clean up the balance sheets of its main banks in the hope this would restore lending to the real economy.

This entry was posted by Stacy-Marie Ishmael on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 4:53 and is filed under Capital markets. Tagged with ireland. Edit this entry.