mmelo wrote:But must admit, however, that out of this I am most surprised with the Irish condition. I never expected these many troubles after the last 15-odd years of prosperity.
Having just started to implement the NAMA (National Assets Management Agency) - re: NAMA-geddon, Viet-NAMA, etc. - it's all topical in the news here again. As usual, this legislation does nothing for "common people" it's only to bail out the Banks who got stung by the property developers.
It should be remembered that 15 years of prosperity followed on from 50 years (if not forever) of island-mentality, waste, decay, "the troubles", and emigration. Such things take their toll on a populace.
So along comes a bubble. A big bubble. A big 15-year-long bubble. Just long enough for a generation to grow up without knowing unemployment, or butter-vouchers, or how 5-pence could buy you one cigarette and a match from the local shop.
Instead you had overdrafts, holidays, "investment", big houses, fast cars, and immigration, lots of immigration. If you let a generation grow up thinking that working in MacDonald's is "beneath them" and that the "Polish people should do it", you're going to end up with a mess.
So, you can blame the banks, investors, governments, or abstract nebulous things like "the American economy", or just people's stupidity and lack of memory, etc., etc., etc.
But it's really very simple: Bubbles burst. And the Gods care not for the things of Man. One thing is built upon another, and another on top of that, and so on. People really do become irrational, ask for too much, and assume it'll last forever.
People are, as a general rule, always wrong. Even when they're right, they're still wrong, as a happenstance of social irrationality.
At the very least, a people who have been "doing their thing" quietly for 5,000 years will no doubt weather a simple glitch like this, accept the losses, and get on with complaining about everyone else, and in particular the noisy neighbours.
It's what we do.
You'd have to point me to a link saying Italy is magically "doing better these days". They've always been the poster-child for governmental and economic instability, no?
And just for the record, the "going rate" for a single cigarette from the shop these days is 50-cents in euro. And you don't even get a match anymore - you're left to beg for a light. Such is the way of things.
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