Slowly, then all at once
That's how Ernest Hemingway described going broke and Timothy Egan reminds us of this fact in The Orphans of Ireland, in the New York Times. "If the rush to riches was very un-Irish, this country is now back to something more familiar — a state of misery. It was that greatest of Irish poets, William Butler Yeats, who described the indigenous character trait as an abiding sense of tragedy that sustained people through temporary periods of joy."
Shaun Connolly, Political Correspondent of the Irish Examiner, presents the contemporary face of the tragedy in Queuing for food. "In scenes reminiscent of a failed state, more than 700 people queued from early morning amid fears they would miss the free food parcels to be distributed — and they were right to worry as demand overwhelmed the friars and basic items like bread, tea, sugar and canned foods all ran out."
Yes, when it rains, it pours. And a very heavy squall hit the Emerald Isle on Tuesday when credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's lowered Ireland's rating from AAA to AA+. According to the Irish Times: "The ratings agency said the total gross fiscal cost to the Government of supporting the banks could reach €15-€20 billion, or as much as 11 per cent of gross domestic product, partly as a result of future writedowns in the value of the banks' assets. The cost of insuring Irish Government debt against default increased sharply yesterday on the credit-default swaps market."
Slowly, then all at once, now.
