The purpose at the time was to get the pension funds to sell foreign securities in favor of the Danish government bond, whereby currency was released to the banks that could not pay installments on foreign loans.
The banking packages that were supposed to save and protect the banks during and after the financial crisis are still the subject of discussions between the two wings in the Folketing:
It was the taxpayers who saved the banks, and thus owe the banks to pay back. Or have the banks, on which the bourgeois parties have stood, paid the price.
According to state auditor Frank Aaen (EL), the conclusion is straightforward: The 30-year government bond was issued to save Danske Bank. And the price for this people need to know, he believes.
– It was probably important to save the bank, but then the expense must come. Changing governments have denied that there was a connection, says Frank Aaen.
Danske Bank was, as a commission study led by Professor Jesper Rangvid concluded, in a “threatening liquidity squeeze”. The banking packages helped save it from this crisis.
– It was only issued to save Danske Bank from bankruptcy, as the bank could not gain access to foreign currency due to the crisis, says Aaen.
The state auditors ask Rigsrevisionen to look at three things.
The decision to issue a 30-year government bond was well-founded. And it did so in line with the objectives of government debt policy.
Did the Minister of Finance pass on all relevant information to the Folketing?
What are the costs to the state until the loan expires in 2039?
The question of the role of the government and especially the Minister of Finance in the process has also been intensely discussed.
The then Minister of Finance Claus Hjort Frederiksen (V) said in the Economic Report in 2009 that bank package two was financed by the mentioned 30-year loan in 2008.
That prompted one of his successors to the post – Kristian Jensen (V) – later in the ground.
Three years ago, the then Minister of Trade and Industry Rasmus Jarlov (K) concluded on the basis of a major study of the bank packages that the result of the bank packages in total was a profit to the state of DKK 17 billion.
That study does not include the loan that the State Auditors have now asked the National Audit Office to count on. And which, according to Frank Aaen, has caused the taxpayers an interest expense of 120 billion kroner.
Once that calculation has been made, the big calculation over the bank packages will also look different, he predicts.
Source: The Nordic Page