News | Sunday, 08 February 2009

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

‘Genius of Mintoff’: in the positive or in the negative?

It was interesting to read Raymond Sammut’s letter about the National Bank in MaltaToday (11 January) Either the writer was not yet born at that time, or was a small boy, or whoever related the story to him had only one thing in mind: to project, as his title suggests, “The Genius of Mintoff”.
That event was a complex one because it carried a lot of strings attached politically, socially and of course economically. He mentioned the Communist ideal – does he know that the general communist idea was that those who are rich and own money were regarded as enemies of the people?
Does he know that the people would feel and read well even between the lines what our politicians said about our financial institutions?
Does he know that both the Central Bank of Malta and a large British Bank were not allowed to come in to the rescue of the National Bank?
Does he know that its shares were said to have been valued as nil by a rival bank, despite having been taken over with all the deposits, premises with full equipment, personnel with a wealth of experience and all the know-how as a going concern, and that it made a profit of about a LM 1 million after nine months of operations under the new name?
Does he know how funds of public corporations were big enough to affect temporarily the liquidity of any financial institution at that time?
Does he know that all major banks in Malta by the middle of the 1970s were either in Government’s hands, or had closed down?
If he can answer the above questions from the historical point of view, it will result that no parallel exists with the present world financial crisis, but if one wants to conclude it was just something of a much different nature if not the opposite.

Victor H. Cauchi
Victoria

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.