Now that impotence is on clear display and it is spreading alarm around the world. For people desperately want someone to get a grip. The left has been warning for years that corporations now enjoy more power than nation states, but never has it been clearer than it is now. The realisation is dawning that this is not just a financial or economic crisis, but a democratic crisis - the people and their representatives have little or no control over what affects them directly.
The solution is surely for governments to realise that if they are weak, the high priests of high finance are even weaker. The politicians should provide the help the banks need, but with the tightest of strings attached, regulating finance so closely that it can never again gorge itself the way it has these past few years.
Democracy has to assert itself once more - and tame this beast.
Jonathon Freeland in today’s Guardian
For the reality is the legislative branch of government is a failure. It is entirely the creature of the executive branch. Far from there being a separation of powers, there is complete capitulation of the legislative branch to the executive. There, therefore, can be no meaningful accountability, no independent exercise of authority - no chance, for instance, that any of the amendments proposed in the Dáil by the Opposition parties would get support, irrespective of their merits, unless the Minister was of a mood to be expansive.
And we call it democracy.
Vincent Browne in today’s Irish Times
Ireland’s action too, though admirably decisive and vigorous in implementation (albeit problematic in design), is likely to need supplementing with specific equity injections. The banks will be reluctant to sell equity to the Government even at a sizeable premium to current historically low market prices, and the liquidity pressure to do so has been removed by the guarantee. Yet in the long-run the prosperity of the banks and of us all depends on their having adequate capitalisation.
Patrick Honohan in today’s Irish Times
Will we see, after next week’s budget is announced, the heads of the various Irish banks being shown around the Dail? Maybe the CEO of the Bank of Ireland will bounce a couple of times on the seat where Brian Cowen sits in the Dail chamber. Slightly embarrassed perhaps he might be reassured by Cowen to make himself at home, ‘it’s your now, after all’.