Spot on Thiftcriminal. But I realize that many people who read stuff online or write blogs are aware of the manipulation in the media and how a paper like the Irish Times, for example, shares the same values and interests as big business and indeed a Fianna Fail government. If you relied on Fintan O’Toole’s opinion, expressed in the interview in Media Bite, which I linked to before, you would see nothing sinister in the way that certain powerful organizations have greater access and influence over the media than other lesser beings. That’s just how things work, and in terms of getting expert opinion there are advantages to this. Of course, the average newspaper reader doesn’t really get this and, as I pointed out above, generally trust the media to be telling us the unvarnished truth.

Thanks for the link KevanB, it’s a really good blog, and one of its posts has given me an idea for another post on that most ordinary group of commodities known collectively as food. However, if they’re even half right about the situation we’re f**ked.

I think when the dust settles on the whole property thing a lot of questions will be asked of the banks. Globally and locally they have driven the property bubble by lending to both the builders on the short term and converting that to long term loans to the purchasers. In Ireland they have been behind some of the appalling developments that we are stuck with.

On a final point Charlie Fell’s “Serious Money” piece in the Times usually has the most coherent and sensible information in the whole business section, and it is no different today. He cautions people not to swallow the spin that everything is going to fine and back to normal (i.e. bubble conditions) in a couple of months. He says there is a lot more stuff to hit the fan. He says “Most commentators on this island believe that ‘it is safe to go back in the water’ but in shark-infested waters there’s no need to be a hero-those who manage your money are in denial and continue to argue otherwise.”