We must address our periodic economic self-harm

Tallyrand, the great French statesman and survivor, declared on its restoration that the House of Bourbon “had forgotten nothing and learned nothing”.

We are economic bourbons — we remember nothing and we forget nothing. We don’t learn from history in Ireland. Part of the problem is we perhaps have too much history. There is always an exception, some time that if not different was not quite the same to allow us the out of saying “ah, but this time it’s different”. From there it’s a short drive turning a corner, carefully not driving over the green shoots to see sound fundamentals and away we go.

The great economic historian Cormac Ó Gráda noted in 2011 that this crisis was the fifth in the history of the state. That’s one every 14 years, or 1.5 per generation. This is probably a world record for crises. Lets look at these and see what we can learn.