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How many times can a messenger be shot?
David Dillon, a partner at Dillon Eustace solicitors, in today's Irish Times is jumping up and down about the 'hysteria' of the media in its response to the economic crisis. Just like the defenders of the Catholic Church in Ireland, he complains that people are not distinguishing between the goodies and the baddies. And just like many of the religious his focus is on his and his colleagues self-pity rather than on the victims of the abuses of the financial services sector.
He thinks calls for better and more rigorous regulation go too far. He says hedge funds have been unfairly demonised. He laments the loss of the IFSCs reputation in international markets. He's angered by German and French schandenfreude at the spectacle of the US's 'free' market mayhem. Considering how disgustingly and aggressively unconcerned about the consequences of their economic religion the US was, a little bit of 'I told you so' is more than in order, surely. As with the religious and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, there were no more zealous and ruthless adherents to the neo-con faith anywhere in the world than in Ireland. Even in the midst of the crisis, they are clinging like the terrified and disgraced clerics to the only thing they know - brazenly defiant about bonuses and salaries and disgracefully low levels of corporation tax - and massive handouts for foreign companies. The abuses heaped on us all are everywhere in evidence - its victims unmentioned let alone lamented by Dillon. Dillon even goes so far as to suggest that the bonus culture need not be tampered with to any great extent and worries about 'sectarian' interventions planned by Barak Obama. Just as with the Christain Brothers, the wrongs being done were as bad in other countries as they were in Ireland. By some strange logic that I can't yet fathom people like Dillon seem genuinely to believe that because financial services people in other countries were behaving just as badly their own culpability is somehow lessened. And just as certain priests and religious have tried to claim that the abuse of children has to be considered in the context of the culture of the time, so he would have us regard the disaster that was created in Ireland. Everyone was doing it, guv'nor.
These people truly live on another psychological, moral and economic planet to the rest of us.
Stop bashing financial and bank sectors - The Irish Times - Thu, May 28, 2009
The fact is that the Irish media, as in most other western countries, has if anything been in a thrall to the financial services sector and from which they have scarcely begun to emerge. The media have dismally failed us. We still don't know who most of the culprits were or how they did what they did in specific cases. We don't know how all of our bailout money is being spent - who's getting how much and for what. The media has completely failed to go after and properly investigate the politicians who are compromised. The list of its failures is long and getting longer.
Dillon's column is a shriek of anger and annoyance from a highly interested party whose fee levels have almost certainly diminished somewhat of late, and who is fed up that the party has ended so messily. Too many people got too drunk and did too many stupid, abusive things. Get over it and learn from your mistakes Mr Dillon. And what's the betting that despite the economic crisis, you are still earning a take home pay that is several times that of the average industrial wage earner?
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