"... Googling things, [Morgan] Kelly learned that more than a fifth of the Irish workforce was employed building houses. The Irish construction industry had swollen to become nearly a quarter of the country's G.D.P.—compared with less than 10 percent in a normal economy—and Ireland was building half as many new houses a year as the United Kingdom, which had almost 15 times as many people to house. He learned that since 1994 the average price for a Dublin home had risen more than 500 percent...
... Since 2000, Irish exports had stalled, and the economy had been consumed with building houses and offices and hotels. "Competitiveness didn't matter," says Kelly. "From now on we were going to get rich building houses for each other."...
... The Irish had discovered optimism...
... Their real-estate boom had the flavor of a family lie: it was sustainable so long as it went unquestioned, and it went unquestioned so long as it appeared sustainable...
... A banking system is an act of faith: it survives only for as long as people believe it will..."
Wednesday 16 February 2011
When Irish Eyes Are Crying
Some snippets from an article by Michael Lewis entitled 'When Irish Eyes Are Crying' found in the March 2011 issue of Vanity Fair on the economic crisis that hit Ireland:
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2 comments:
Its amazing how houses and mortgages are able to bring whole economy down.
Watching Wall Street 2 as I write this comment. It's a slow film and I'm forwarding through it but some nice snippets in there about greed.
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