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It’s the least of his problems
Read more about: Economy
But Brian Lenihan is ranked 18th out of 19 European finance ministers covered in the Financial Times’ latest ranking of their job performance (his predecessor was 4th last year). Of course Lenihan is mainly being penalised by things that happened before him, but the “political ranking” will tend to reflect the recent impressions of the economists who voted on that component and clearly he didn’t make much of an impression over the last few months. Note the counterexample of Alistair Darling who although faced with bleak economic statistics, has managed to seem like a man of action on the political side.
One can only feel sorry for Brian Lenihan - and indeed for Brian Cowen.
Neither are to blame for the mess they inherited from Bertie Ahern, who bullied Cowen into a wasteful social spending Budget, instead of putting the surpluses aside for the well flagged rainy day.
Ahern totally disregarded all the evidence that was in the public domain, that the USA was going to drop everyone in the ordure.
The appalling greed of the Wall Street Userers, playing Shylock with sub-prime lending, was bound to end in tears.
Our tears - as it happened - as we, more than any other European State. were in serious hock to Uncle Sam.
Ahern should be impeached for gross negligence.
And, if Fianna Fail have not got the balls to bring him down to where he should be - in chokey - then, at least, Ahern should apologise to Cowen & Lenihan & admit that his cosying up to Begg; O’Connor & CORI was a huge error of judgement.
The recent TV programme shows, clearly, how much time he wasted on matters unconnected with the management of Ireland’s economy.
He was, as Sean Doherty once memorably said, …” a f***ing disgrace”.
It seems to me that we are a nation in denial. It is no good blaming Brtie Ahern. We elected Bertie because we wanted to keep the gravy-train running and pospone the inevitable evil day for as long as possible.
The evil day was inevitable because for the past ten years at least we fell into the trap of an unsustainable economy based on high cost/debt/spending and a race to the bottom in incomes/wages. The rich trying to hold on to their medical cards while workers in poor pay and conditions, many with crippling mortgages, were losing their jobs is an example of how greedy and selfish some have become.
We are now a nation with nothing of our own buying foreign goods from foreign shops with foreign staff. The self-sufficiency advocated by DeValera which was laughed at by the media is long gone.
Perhaps we should make some attempt to learn from history especially ancient Jewish history with which we seem to have a lot in common.