Maybe, Maybe, Maybe.
The reason we are where we are, is because a total systemic failure of vision,ability and managerial competence at executive level - period.
As regards the developers - I don't love them or hate them - they were just another sector of society that took full advantage of the fact that our government was composed of economic illiterates with the vision of rural county councillors circa 1870. They didn't understand regulation or the need for regulation, they didn't understand planning or the need for planning, they didnt understand banking and finance and most importantly they showed the cojones of an earthworm when it came to making tough decisions. ( tough decisions are made when there is a multiple of options of varying, paradoxical and contrary outcomes in front of you - thus its a "tough" decision - the current gov are taking no "tough" decisions currently - because there is only the bitter and unpalatable A and maybe B now - due to their inability of take "tough"decisions when they were in possession of a plurality of options - Gobsh^tes!)
As regards tales and breathless gossip of the comings and goings of our "celebrity developer" class - I personally have no interest - but, I guess, you can understand the underlying anger from the Hoi Polloi - given they really had their faces shoved in it by the sheer vulgarity on display by some of them in the Bubble heyday- well, what goes around - comes around - I guess - you play with the media in this country at your peril - they'll build you up and you love it - when they start tearing you down - well don't come crying to me - paper has never refused ink and the mob love nothing more than to see the fall of those who claimed to be God to be revealed as just as mortal as the rest of us - this has been going on for thousands of years.
But, on the face of it - they, like all business people - saw an opportunity and took it - thats the joy and essence of the capitalist society that we live in - but I keep using the analogy of capitalism with the reactions that take place within an internal combustion engine - its pure energy production mix - fuel and air - that if left to itself -will exist only for its good and will ultimately turn in and destroy itself - thats what happened in our asset bubble and thats what happens in all asset bubbles.
The reason our car doesn't explode is that we engineered control into the equation - we control the amount of fuel going into the engine - which determines the amount of energy let off in a controlled space a growing proportion of which we harness to power and propel the vehicle in a direction of our choosing - but its the driver - not the engine - which is in control - Ireland,under Ahern, became the Toyota of the economic world - foot to the floor , but the controls (regulator) were a bit dodgy and badly formed and the accelerator got stuck and we spent the last 4 years out of control going faster and faster until we flew past the point of no return at 150 miles an hour, the driver bailed (ahern) and it was questionable who was really in control of the car until we hit the wall. The developers ( the engine) cant be blamed - the fuel (banks) can't be blamed - but controls and ultimately the designer of the controls and purchaser of the parts is at fault (The Government) - pity none of them had ever taken a driving test,proved such terrible learners or read the rules of the road before getting behind the drivers seat - now the car is on the back of the breakdown truck (EU)being taken to the scrapyard with the 7 year old (Lenihan) at the controls pretending to be driving the car while the rest of the passengers are still coming to terms with being catapulted into the boot at high speed and are in varying states of dishevellment and shock and are slowly peeling their faces off the back windscreen and pulling their heads out of the posterior of the labrador and in general are too dazed to realise what is after happening.
Another transportation analogy that could be used is that of a train - the developers are the locomotive of the train - very powerful - but the train can only go where the tracks lead it - thus those who control the tracks and the signals control the train. I think , despite Eurocitizans well known sympathies - that it is very convenient for Fianna Fail to have the public going nuts about the developers and the bankers -and try and portray themselves as wide eye innocents who had
no idea what was going on..poor critturs........but the people elected
FF to drive the bus....not sit down the back giving out sweets and having the craic - very convenient indeed.
When you stand back and look at it - you get the same resonance and thoughts going thru your brain looking at the current gov travails and excuses over the economy as you do looking at Bertie Aherns monologues re his difficulties with the tribunals. When all is said and done - you can only come to 2 conclusions regarding Bertie and the queer goings on in his personal financial life - either he is either the most devious brass-necked liar going, was fully aware of what was going on , profited from it personally and is trying to pull the wool over our eyes, or he is telling the truth, and is quite simply the most incompetent, financially illiterate,scatter brained,absentminded,disorganised and managerially challenged gobsh^te ever to become Minister of Finance -let alone Taoiseach of this country - neither of which is a very comforting conclusion regardless of how you see it -and probably says more about why "we are where we are" than anything else I can think of.
Getting back to the Developers -
All that really happened in the property bubble was that our banks borrowed money on the international markets, lent to the developers to build their apartment blocks and the like , lent more to home purchasers to buy these apartments - who paid their VAT and stamp duty to the government who used it to increase inflation and buy off the public thru tax decreases,pay rises, a massive and unfocused expansion of the public sector and social and corporate welfare in the last budgets before an election, and to give more tax-breaks to developers to build more apartments and shopping centres , to generate more taxes to keep the Government in a position to keep bribing the public and turning every election into a Dutch auction - it all depended on continued borrowing by the entrants to the Celtic ponzi scheme to keep the show on the road. House prices peaked in May 2006 and both volume and price were falling away well before the international credit crunch hit in the fall of 2007 - as quite simply most potential entrants to the market had been priced out of it and we were starting to seriously lose jobs as our competitveness had gone to the dogs and the cracks were beginning to appear - this crash was coming - with or without the global recession.
All the Developers really did was use borrowed foreign money to pay outrageously overvalued prices to landowners, pay for construction of developments, the materials for which which as time passed were being imported in greater and greater quantities as Irish suppliers stopped being competitive - even before 2004 - more and more of the labour jobs were going to more cost effective imported labour aswell - seeing as many of these jobs were quite lowing paying as regards tax - and the fact that tax evasion was widespread in the sector - apart from the VAT paid on jumbo breakfast rolls, excise paid on the copious amounts of alcohol consumed, and stamp duty paid on one-off housing and buy to let investments - it is questionable what kind of return was made by the state - given its expenditure and borrowing for the services and salaries paid out and reduction in the tax net. same applies to the all the jobs generated in the retail outlets that sprung up to service the housing boom - virtually all furnishing and gadgets for the home - from decking to the taps in the en-suite bathrooms to the new cars to the playstation consules were designed,engineering and manufactured abroad - again all paid for utimately by foreign money which we borrowed - again what did we really gain? - now that most of them are now unemployed, overmortgaged and on the welfare for which we are borrowing 2 billion a month to pay for eh! - given that most of the really rich, with the honourable exception of Michael O'Leary - are tax exiles due to the most lax and generous rulebook in the western world - what taxes were ever made on the profits that they generated? - and given that a fair % of the profits went into property speculation from China to Chile - paying the full Paddy price - overseas commitments that we'll now be taking
over via NAMA - what did we really gain from the developers activities , taken as a whole - over the last decade?
Meh - well - lets take a look at what was built - leaving aside the fact that the recent development splurge resulted in some of the most gawd-awful looking erections this side of Pre 1989 Communist central and Eastern Europe- we might have the gift of the gab - but our sense of the visual is, lets say, challenged, to be polite about it (Not that I entirely blame the developers - our architecural schools and engineering software programmes have a lot to answer for IMHO) . The sheer glut of bady designed,built and sited oompaloompa kennels right across this country is something to behold - many are derelict,empty and will be knocked in the next 10 years - tho many will stay on - standing like follies in memorium to the age in which they were born and built - I wonder will the phrase "Celtic-tigeresque" be used to describe the loud, OTT, vulgar mismash of US/UK second rate suburbia and Mexican drug dealer hyciendas that now skirt the approach roads like cow parsley in summer time to every urban connurbation and rural pub in the country, in history of art and culture studies decades hence? - maybe a conversation for another thread and day.
Well - thanks to the motorway - I can now get to Dublin in my car faster than my emails can via the most inconsistent sh^tty excuse of a broadband network this side of Eastern Albania - that progress I suppose - it would be great if we were about to enter the 1960's - not the teens of the 21st century and that is what strikes at the heart of it all - when we finally had the money to do something here - we had no vision of our own - instead of looking to Europe and how comparative small economies on the same latitude dealt with modernity and how they were getting ready for the next century - Im thinking Finland,Denmark and Austria here - we decided to take Dallas Texas circa 1979 as our model where sprawling suburbia,low taxes, high rises where every you want,cheap petrol and displays of ostentatious personal wealth were everything. Some fecking model eh? -who did we think we were? even without having to point out the obvious difference - the texans had oil money - we borrowed the lot - so even when oil prices collapsed about the time somebody shot JR - at least the texans didn't have to go cap in hand to the feds to get bailed out for as much as we did and they did have the US military and NASA to fall back on - are we going to call for an EU military and the EPA to set up here? - even if we did we'd be a long time waiting!
I suppose the most pointed thing I can think about the Celebrity Developers - was their stinginess to their own people . Back in Ancient Rome - the richest of them all - Crassus, of course - spent most of his fortune on benefactions to Rome and their colonies in the form of great public buildings , baths, libraries, education and research and the such before turning to politics and meeting his end against Caesar - but a mans greatness was measured by the great public works and good deeds and discoveries that he left behind - Im seriously struggling to think of one example of the above that was done by any of our developer friends - Mellons PR stunt in South Africa is a load of patronising nonsense ,with questionable racial overtones to boot.
In fact - with their accumulation of grand estates and their constant aping and need for the approval and envy of the British ( a very Fianna Fail trait it must be said) - the private golf courses, the helicopters and the building of humoungus houses with large walls all around - I think we got 19th Century Anglo Irish Landlords and their 19th century dickensian view of the world, rather than benevolent Roman Patricians - we definitely didn't get anybody with a vision of where to take this country in the 21st century. No Andrew Carnagie - but plenty of Alonzo Hawkes - the crazy developer in "Herbie rides again".
the developers at the end of the day - did all that they did - because the people who were elected to run the country and take care of our long term interests - failed miserably -and allowed them , in conjunction with the entire collapse of any morality or competence within our regulatory authorities - there is no other way of looking at this. How long it will take for the penny to drop with the plebs in regard to this - is another question completely.
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Originally Posted by Edo
Maybe, Maybe, Maybe.
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- man you're a sucker for punishment!
