Recession reminder: we live in each other’s shadow

SUDDENLY the talk is of shared responsibility from people who were happy to freeboot their way to wealth by any means to hand. And many of those means were underhand. The game is up and the bank is bust.

People are angry and afraid. They look for scapegoats. Someone must be seen to suffer — but not them. The rich, in their time-honoured fashion, will sit tight, suffer little or nothing, may make a few token gestures before leaving on the next rising tide.

Governments are powerless, caught in a trap sprung by greed and ignorance, in thrall to silver-haired men wearing two-toned shirts whose immaculate tailoring matched their impeccable manners. Who would dare to question people so suave? A man’s word was his bond, after all. Except it was someone else’s bond, pension fund, life savings. And it has all disappeared. Regulation failed because it did not ask the hard questions.

Trust is destroyed and people face, at the least, very lean years. Many will face worse and we can expect a rise in suicide, drink and drug-taking as people fly from unbearable reality.

It was an unreal world that created the ‘wealth’ that has evaporated. It was not wealth at all. It was cheap credit and the lenders are calling in the debt.

Toxic parcels of ‘leveraged’ products are circulating in the global banking system and no one wants to be caught with the parcel when the music stops.

Old-fashioned ideas are gaining new currency.

There is a slight movement towards politeness which may lead to a return of civility. Formality, a necessary and useful framework within which people can relate to each other and do business, is no longer seen as repressive. It never was.

As the chill winds of recession blow about them, people realise we live in each other’s shadow.

We will recover from this in time. And in time we will forget how we got here. The old ways will reassert themselves and we will be assured it could never happen again.

Just as we were told the property boom would continue in perpetuity. What a shallow grasp of reality, what a blissful ignorance of history which, you may be sure, will have the last word, if not the last laugh.

Aidan Harman

Brian Dillon Park

Dillon’s Cross

Cork