Greece and Ireland running on empty
He declares to his friend that his new trainers were his means of protection from lions. His bewildered counterpart points out that he will never be able to outrun a lion. Our man responds “I don’t need to outrun the lions; I just need to outrun you”.
This then, is the only difference between this country and Greece. We have, so far, managed to run faster than the Greeks from the pack of wild animals, otherwise known as currency speculators, running us both to exhaustion. The current Greek government discovered on being elected, that the previous government had deliberately falsified economic data to attempt to fool their lenders into thinking the economy was in better shape than it was in reality.
The former government’s bunker mindset caused them to jeopardise, not just Greece’s sovereignty, but the entire single European currency.
Perhaps the drama surrounding Greece at the moment takes the heat off our own government’s reckless behaviour, exposed in recent days. Brian Cowan’s government deliberately suppressed information from the IMF that it dismissed the sole published argument for establishing Nama, that is, that Nama would facilitate lending to small businesses.
The terrifying question for us is what else has our government covered up with regard to their appalling stewardship of the economy over the past thirteen and a half years?
The reaction of Brian Cowan on being asked about this suppressed information is even more disturbing. Mr Cowan casually explained that “ten-month-old information” was not relevant to our current position.
Aren’t we are all learning, with unfolding horror, that old information, particularly the covered up variety, is most certainly relevant in Greece, and perhaps also to the next stumbling goner, soon to make a meal for the hungry lions of the international lending fraternity?
Declan Doyle
Lisdowney
Kilkenny
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