Here is how Paul Krugman renders the last 20 years of Irish history in the NYT ("Eating the Irish"):
"The Irish story began with a genuine economic miracle. But eventually this gave way to a speculative frenzy driven by runaway banks and real estate developers, all in a cozy relationship with leading politicians. The frenzy was financed with huge borrowing on the part of Irish banks, largely from banks in other European nations.
"Then the bubble burst, and those banks faced huge losses. You might have expected those who lent money to the banks to share in the losses. After all, they were consenting adults, and if they failed to understand the risks they were taking that was nobody’s fault but their own. But, no, the Irish government stepped in to guarantee the banks’ debt, turning private losses into public obligations.
"Before the bank bust, Ireland had little public debt. But with taxpayers suddenly on the hook for gigantic bank losses, even as revenues plunged, the nation’s creditworthiness was put in doubt. So Ireland tried to reassure the markets with a harsh program of spending cuts.
"Step back for a minute and think about that. These debts were incurred, not to pay for public programs, but by private wheeler-dealers seeking nothing but their own profit. Yet ordinary Irish citizens are now bearing the burden of those debts.
"Or to be more accurate, they’re bearing a burden much larger than the debt — because those spending cuts have caused a severe recession so that in addition to taking on the banks’ debts, the Irish are suffering from plunging incomes and high unemployment."
So, private investors and bankers pocketed huge profits while the markets was on a roll (or the bubble was being inflated); but the Irish government promptly nationalized their potential losses when the chips came down. One might wonder what this scheme would do to the sense of fairness and just returns of the Irish - and others who have seen socially destructive economic practices lavishly rewarded by "the market" and subsequent losses shifted onto the gullible public. But never mind - we all know that the crisis of values in modern societies comes from post-modernist nihilism and the indoctrination of the young by a motley gang of feminists, gay rights activists, and unshaven academics in tweed jackets. Why, oh, why is it so difficult even for highly cultured and talented people like Theodore Dalrymple and Kay Hymowitz to connect the dots?
