The primary objective of the National Asset Management Agency is to increase the flow of credit to the ‘real’ economy — that’s you and me, homes and businesses — by clearing banks’ balance sheets of ‘impaired’ assets. The story goes that these assets reduce the banks’ abilities to borrow on the interbank lending market, choking the banks of the necessary funds to lend out to small and medium businesses. Starved of capital, the businesses fold, and people are made unemployed; economy and society generally suffer.
