It's Over
Today the whole country knows that the seven fat years are well and truly over.
I listened to the Irish budget statement today with increasing anger and pain. Anger at the soldiers of destiny trying to make a political virtue out of the mess they’ve created. Pain for those who must suffer again as the politicians finally try to get to grips with the mess they helped create through their greed and lust for power.
There is no credit due when the tough decisions have been made, if these decisions were the last resort and made all the more tough by cowardice at an earlier stage.
The deeply sad thing is that there was no-one, and the opposition parties share the guilt, there was no-one with the wisdom of a Joseph to ready the place for the seven lean years. They all thought it would go on forever.
Glenn, you are right, we always think *this* boom will go on forever, that’s what we thought here in the Midwest (USA) about land prices in the 1980s, then the bottom fell out and many family farms, my family’s included, went under. Same with the late 80s savings and loan crisis where we had to bail out people who made horrible decisions thinking that values would keep going up, the dot.com bubble in the 1990s, and now housing, not to mention wall street, AIG (take that Man U!) et. al. Yes, *this* boom is different, until it’s not. The Reformed tradition has two words for it, “total depravity.” Lord have mercy.