Power shouldn’t rest with financial markets

ON a recent sojourn to the Continent, I had the dubious pleasure of debating about Ireland’s severe financial woes with the numerous Germans I met.

After initial coldness to my point that Ireland’s economic problems were not all of the state’s own making — namely that those bondholders who gambled on our prosperity must share the burden — my German friends began to see things differently.

There was further convergence of opinion when I compared the Irish Republic’s situation now to that of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and ‘30s, stressing the point that if outside “assistance” is seen as punitive, who knows what that could lead to.

Now maybe these Germans I met were that rare kind — malleable — or maybe they just didn’t care. In any case, is the AWOL Taoiseach or his fiery finance minister stating such facts to their masters in continental Europe?

After all, the power rests with the politicians elected by the people of Europe, not with the financial markets, doesn’t it?

Brendan Corrigan

Belfast

Co Antrim