another good piece

[winterbadger]

Completely different, this one, about the financial disaster in Ireland.

But it has this wonderful simile (my emphasis):

Ireland’s financial disaster shared some things with Iceland’s. It was created by the sort of men who ignore their wives’ suggestions that maybe they should stop and ask for directions, for instance. But while Icelandic males used foreign money to conquer foreign places—trophy companies in Britain, chunks of Scandinavia—the Irish male used foreign money to conquer Ireland. Left alone in a dark room with a pile of money, the Irish decided what they really wanted to do with it was to buy Ireland. From one another.

I'm still not much further ahead with economics than I was after Professor Srinavashnan's Intro course in senior year, but I have a glimmering that this article goes some way to confirm what I'e always suspected: that if you can "create" wealth from nothing (which has always seemed dubious to my 17th century mind) that the reverse is also possible, and vast amounts of wealth can actually be consumed by the mysterious engines of commerce and leave nothing behind. Nothing, of course, but debt and misery.

This passage

In October, Ireland’s Department of the Environment published its first audit of the country’s new housing stock after inspecting 2,846 housing developments, many of them called “ghost estates” because they’re empty. Of the nearly 180,000 units that had been granted planning permission, the audit found that only 78,195 were completed and occupied. Others are occupied but remain unfinished. Virtually all construction has now ceased. There aren’t enough people in Ireland to fill the new houses; there were never enough people in Ireland to fill the new houses.

Reminded me of the section in Charles Palliser's The Quincunx where the protagonist finds himself in a neighborhood of 19th century London filled with half-built houses, constructed, he discovers, as part of a huge confidence scheme. Just enough work was done to show investors in a development scheme, but once the capital for the whole project was accumulated, the projectors left with most of the dosh unspent. It seems as if the Irish housing boom was almost the same idea, just on a larger scale.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a huge scandal. I've chatted about it some with Irish friends and relatives. They're deeply angry.

[winterbadger]

I remember the film "A Taxing Woman" which was about the same sort of thing going on in Japan in the 80s and how their mafia was making a mint off it and their political class. Here it's caused a near-depression but had no apparent consequences for the perpetrators. Ireland. Doubtless other places. When will people learn?

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I think some Irish politicians need to be careful. There are a few old men left who were young men in the 1920s and might have some experience with "direct action" against pols who abuse the public trust. A man who once took up arms against friends he fought alongside wouldn't have too much compunction about doing the deed to someone he decides needs killing.

[winterbadger]

The 1920s? There are plenty of guys in Ireland that have a lot more recent experience with going very bad things to people with guns and bombs, and given that many of them ended up getting rich through the drugs trade, they may have put some of their money into banks.

That said, even a hint of "these are selfish, foolish men who have ruined millions, so let's unleash vigilantes on them" is enough to make me feel a little ill. Ireland's had more than its share of glorifying brutal violence by finding some noble reason to excuse it.