I seem to have annoyed someone with my post about the Central Bank’s bond sales, judging by this discussion of the issue by the Irish Times Cantillon column.

When the promissory notes were swapped for long-term bonds held by the Central Bank last year, various people pointed out that the faster the pace of sales of the bonds to the private sector, the smaller the gains from the swap would be. See for example, my post on this and also Seamus Coffey’s similar conclusions.  I don’t recall anyone disputing this point at the time.

Now, however, Cantillon is here to tell us that this point is “simplistic”.  Apparently, it “ignores the fact that the bank cannot hold the bonds to maturity.”  So who is doing this ignoring? Not Seamus. Not me – our calculations on this have always assumed the Central Bank will sell the bonds.

What then about all this stuff about this being a great time to sell the bonds? You wouldn’t know it from Cantillon’s long-winded discussion but this really is a pretty simple issue.  If we sell the bonds now, we start paying interest straight away and this adds to the cost for the Exchequer.

Of course, it is possible that yields on Irish sovereign bonds may rise so much in the future that we could end up paying more in interest by delaying the bond sales—we extend the period of time that cost is zero but at the expense of much higher interest costs later and this latter factor ends up dominating. With the ECB committed to low interest rates for the foreseeable future, the Irish economy recovering and the debt-GDP ratio falling, this doesn’t seem like a scenario we need to worry too much about.

Cantillon’s final point – that ultimately what’s going in is that faster sales “diffuses at least some of the anger felt in Frankfurt that Ireland in effect obtained monetary financing for itself via the deal” – is of course spot on.  Alas, little is likely to be done to diffuse the anger felt in Ireland about the ECB’s actions during the crisis.