Dump the cost on the next generation and go back to business

[provost]

I came across this article by acident but found it interesting. Some I knew. Some I didn’t.

crikey.com.au/2009/11/05/wer … wont-last/

We’re kidding if we think the GFC scars won’t last
by Simon Nasht - Thursday, 5 November 2009

It has been the great global economic crisis farewell tour; 30 cities, 10 countries and more than 50 interviews with pointy heads and punters — from a newly unemployed Chinese day labourer to the New York day trader who managed to lose a billion dollars of his client’s easily won money — in a singe day. Though separated by continents and cultures, both had the same look of shock in their eyes, as if to say, “this can’t really be happening”. But it was.

(later)

David McWilliams and I stared at such scenes with a mixture horror and disbelief. It was if the world had opened up and swallowed the global economy

McWilliams is a “recovering” investment banker and made a name for himself in Ireland by being one of the few economists willing to call the bluff on Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economy. Sadly, he was only too right, and Ireland is currently living through the greatest contraction of any advanced economy since World War Two.

(later)

Professor Elizabeth Warren, chair of the oversight committee investigating what happened to America’s bail-out money, told us, “we’re now in a permanent hostage situation”. The surviving global financial institutions are in control and out of control at the same time, too big to fail and too powerful to be restrained.

(later)

Our response to the current crisis seems to support his case — dump the cost on the next generation and go back to business as usual. It’s hard to be sanguine then about our prospects given the scale and complexity of what’s coming.

(finally)

Simon Nasht is writer/director of the new TV series Addicted to Money. Irish economist David McWilliams is his co presenter.

Addicted To Money is on ABC 8.35pm Thursdays from tonight.