We’re losing the economic war

Like many readers I can recall from my early youth a children’s fairy tale which featured a character called Chicken Licken.

In short, an acorn fell on this poor creature’s head which caused him to believe the sky was falling in. As a result, he went about repeating the mantra that, unless the other animals listened to his warning, catastrophe would follow.

Well, the behaviour of the officials from the EU/IMF/ECB, commonly referred to as the troika, and their attempts to effectively frighten smaller countries into capitulation to their terms, reminds me of Chicken Licken’s cries. Their repeated mantra that terrible things will happen if their powerful and influential masters in the world of international finance don’t get their way, and the bondholders in Irish banks don’t receive adequate compensation for their gambling losses, is similar to the fabled bird’s flight of fancy. The current administration has done a complete, 360 degree turn since their time on the opposition benches and whoever might be “in power” at present in Ireland would find themselves effectively neutered puppets, their strings being manipulated from the same higher forces. As a result the Government mutters apologetic drivel about people “going mad spending” and meaningless pap about “bombs going off” and the “EU imploding” in the unlikely event that Ireland (ditto Greece, Portugal and Italy) get bolshie and refuse to make good the powerful gambler’s loses. Ireland is one of the smaller players in what has become, in effect, an economic war. An economic war between the interests of big business and high finance in the premier European states and the citizens of the smaller ones. In the middle lies the Irish Government. The traditional warring European nations of France and Germany are now allies in the pursuit of a common interest. One of the features of the economic war has been the continuous propaganda employed by the media to perpetrate the troika’s fairytale via a constant diet of stale and half-baked propaganda designed to instill fear and angst into a cowed country.