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When America Sneezes…
By Carole | October 24, 2008
…the rest of the world catches cold. And when America catches cold, the rest of the world catches pneumonia. The Irish economy has been having siezures. The Irish government has initiated some drastic changes: students are protesting having to pay for college; the elderly are protesting having to pay for medical care. Every day, there are news reports indicating thousands of jobs that are disappearing.
In one respect this doesn’t bother me too much–if you have nothing, you have nothing to lose, right? As an outsider, I could see that the Celtic tiger had created an extraordinarily unhealthy situation. In the space of about ten years, Ireland went from being one of the poorest to one of the richest nations in Europe. American companies were outsourcing work here; the EU was pumping money in; jobs were created, and people came from everywhere to get them. Suddenly the demand for housing went crazy, and the cost of home ownership followed suit. I know of one person who bought his home for 50 thousand Euros; it is worth half a million today. Many young couples with a family wouldn’t have a hope of owning a home in this situation; as in America, shaky mortgages were offerered to people who couldn’t afford them.
Then did the bubble burst. It got too expensive to outsource labor here. Banks got shaky. Jobs went away. Demand for housing slowed down. Foreign workers started to go home. Some people who had locked themselves into mortgages at the top of the market suddenly found the value of their home had fallen well below what they were going to have to pay back on it. The government went into spasms, raised taxes and started cutting health care and education budgets.
All in all, this didn’t bother me too much. It is a market correction–a much needed one. I doubt that we’ve reached the bottom of what this crisis is going to mean for everyone. But to me, letting the vine grow wild has produced some very sour grapes–pruning is needed, for the common good. Ireland needs a reality check.
The reality check hit close to home this morning. There is a small grocery store around the corner from where I live. I often trot over there in the morning to get a gallon of milk. This morning when I walked in, the dairy case was nearly empty. I didn’t notice at first, because the milkman was right behind me with his delivery, but when I looked around the shop, most of the shelves were empty too. The produce aisle had almost nothing in it. I remarked to the shopkeeper, ‘It looks like they’ve cleaned you out!’ ‘We’re closing tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘Closing? For good?’ I asked. ‘Yes, for good. The post office will stay open…Signs of the times.’
Unfortunately, word has it that Boyles Sports–a betting agency–will be moving into the space presently occupied by the grocery store. Just when the wild vine was undergoing a pruning, a noxious weed appears. Hopefully, the correction of the Celtic tiger economy will not be replaced by the un-reality of a gambling economy.
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October 24th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Though the bursting bubble causes me to scratch my head sometimes wondering how the parish is going to make ends meet, there’s a subtle freedom that goes with it. “Now we have to be totally dependent on you Lord, not on ourselves!” Most of the time we have to be forced to return to the most important things in life. Two things are sure to make it happen - financial collapse & war (big wars).
Come Lord Jesus.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Thank you for the story. It’s an eye-opener.