Merely following our financial masters

The critics of Mr Kenny’s contribution at Davos miss a crucial point in their reaction to his comments.

Mr Kenny was factually correct in stating that the Irish people over borrowed during the so-called boom, but to attribute any blame to them for the subsequent recession is disingenuous and highlights his ignorance of the current malaise afflicting the global economy.

The Irish people were merely behaving as the financial masters of Wall Street, Frankfurt and London expected them to.

As a result of globalisation, and the liberation of the financial industry from restraint, the West has long ago relinquished any claim to be a generator of wealth through manufacturing.

Globalisation has meant that goods are now manufactured on the cheap in the developing world and profit in the West can now only be generated by the bullish encouragement of irrational consumerism fed on credit.

The encroachment of the neoliberal ideology into government allowed this credit industry to swallow up, through privatisation, peoples’ pensions, welfare, education and health provisions gained in the great post-war social contracts. It has been allowed get so big that a significant amount of the tax take in western nations is dependent on it.

All of our present and futures have been taken from elected governments and sold out to an unaccountable and intangible entity called “the market”.

This is manifest in the abysmally weak efforts to regulate and reform it since 2008.

At Davos the great and the good from this murky world meet annually to slap each other’s backs and ensure that those pesky elected governments toe the line.

Mr Kenny was obviously keen to impress his masters and so gave them the sound bites they wanted.

I’m sure he’ll be invited back next year.

Barry Walsh

Church Rd

Blackrock

Cork