The Celtic Tiger Is Dead

After all the cruel twists and turns of Irish history (and part of mine and Scotland's belongs to it) it turned out that bubble economics was just the latest.

Blowing up bubbles has made international merchant bankers extremely powerful and rich down the ages. Banks like Goldman Sachs who Matt Taibbi described as:

"a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

Volatility is their speciality because they make their money on the way up and then on the way back down. They just need to con and bribe the vulnerable political class into it. Not so long ago it was Argentina, now it's the US and most of the rest of the world. Naturally, the first to take the hit would be smaller countries like Latvia or Iceland or countries with historical structural problems like Spain.

Ireland is going through hell right now trying to pick up the pieces but don't get carried away, bankrupt Britain can stretch this out a bit longer but what's happening in Ireland is a taste of what's to come for Britain.

I was at a reading last night in the centre of Madrid. Mostly in English. In among all the fiction was the following cracking poem by David R Wall:


After the Tiger
The infant wonder of Europe,
Has come crawling back to the teat,
We’ve spent your monopoly money,
A little more’s all we need,
Just give us this last dig-out,
We promise we’ll put things right,
We’ll make the tough decisions,
We’ll fix things overnight,

Just a measly sixty billion,
At least that’s the latest cost,
To plug this sinking disaster,
If we don’t it’ll all be lost,
We’ve had an ingenious idea,
To shovel off all the dirt,
We’re going to buy the assets,
For a whole lot more than they’re worth,

See the bankers are short of money,
At risk of losing their jobs,
What kind of cruel society,
Would throw this lot to the mobs,
We must save these noble fellas,
And the poor investors too,
Didn’t you know when you gamble,
You can win but you can’t lose?

Just think what they’d say abroad,
If the government bought the banks!
Kindly overlook the fact,
It’s been done by the Brits and the Yanks,
The burden must fall in the proper place,
You’ll agree, it’s only fair,
The guilty party knows who it is,
You, the formerly flush taxpayer,

Of course the load will be even,
We’re all in this together,
Rich and poor will both alike,
Have a decade of debt to weather,
And cuts to public services,
On which so much we have spent,
Though now it’s over it’s hard to tell,
Where all that money went,

Ah the innocent Irish nation,
So new to the self-rule game,
Your carefree childhood has ended,
You’ve only yourself to blame,
Grow up and face the future,
’s time someone got up and lead,
For the decade’s myth is over,
And the Celtic tiger is dead.