The Quiet Road

Just a short one this, the representatives from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB) – collectively known as “the troika” – completed their latest quarterly review of the Irish austerity programme today. As I mentioned in a recent post, they were in Dublin to check up on the Irish government… making sure our elected representatives are doing as they’re told.

And it turns out the review was a positive one. We’re being good little girls and boys here in Ireland. We’re pouring the wealth of the nation into the European banking system as per instruction. We’re doing this because a small number of private investors and banks made stupid decisions a few years ago. It makes absolutely no sense unless you view it as grand larceny. Inevitably there’ll be someone (as we’ll see in the video) who will defend this process by babbling about “stability” and the costs of not acting outweighing the benefits.

But this response is ultimately self-defeating – well, it is when it comes from a top official at the ECB. Because inherent in that response is an admission that the international financial system is required to engage in grand larceny in order to maintain stability. Which makes the system completely unfit for purpose.

Anyway, having carried out the latest review, spokesmen for each member of the troika held a press conference in Dublin today. Istvan Szekely of the EC, Klaus Masuch of the ECB and Craig Beaumont of the IMF sat down and faced the Irish media. It’s the kind of event that generally gets forgotten as soon as it’s over because it tends to be little more than a prepared statement followed by a handful of safe questions, lobbed softly at the participants and deftly dismissed with bland sound-bites. Today’s press conference was slightly different though, thanks to the presence of Vincent Browne; perhaps the only voice of righteous outrage we have left in Irish public life. He’s truly a national treasure; though not in the safe, comfortable manner that phrase is often used. The years have not diminished his passion and he remains a genuine firebrand.

Anyway, he didn’t get a satisfactory response to his question; merely the aforementioned vague babbling about stability and costs versus benefits. But he nonetheless made his point, and I’m bloody glad that he did.

The video I’ve included here only offers an edited version of the press conference (the entire thing can be viewed on the RTÉ website – in which case, the Vincent Browne question begins at 18mins) so I should add a little context… the previous question asked the troika representatives how they perceived the Irish attitude towards them and the “bail-out” process. Klaus Masuch of the ECB jokingly commented on how well-informed his taxi-driver seemed to be on complex economic matters (we were left to guess at the kind of ear-bashing he received during his trip from the airport to the Merrion Hotel). Browne, as you will see if you jump to 6:25 in the embedded video, followed up on this:

Almost the entire exchange between Browne and Masuch can be viewed in that edit, though a few seconds of exasperation from Vincent does get cut from the end of the segment.