Dublin Opinion

The video below is of a twenty-three minute talk by Nomi Prins, where she reiterates the structural flaws which led to the current international banking crisis, as well as outlining possible future directions.

Prins is a fellow at DEMOS, which is,

a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization founded in 2000. Headquartered in New York City, Demos works with advocates and policymakers around the country in pursuit of four overarching goals:

* a more equitable economy with widely shared prosperity and opportunity;

* a vibrant and inclusive democracy with high levels of voting and civic engagement;

* an empowered public sector that works for the common good;

* and responsible U.S. engagement in an interdependent world.

It may seems a bit, well, retro, to be talking about the origins of the banking crisis, but, as Ed Walsh of the Irish Socialist Network pointed out recently in a post for the Irish Left Review:

When the world financial system looked as if it might collapse in the autumn of 2008, many people assumed that there would have to be drastic changes in the wake of the crisis. Nothing would ever be the same again: the neoliberal philosophy which had spawned the financial meltdown was now irreparably damaged, and a shift to the Left in western politics would be sure to follow.

Barely a year later, things appear in a very different light. The political and media establishment in Ireland have managed to shift the focus of public debate away from the bankers and property developers who gave us the recession: instead of asking whether we should be forking out billions to cover the gambling losses of a wealthy elite, we spend our time discussing ways to reduce public spending, while the option of raising taxes on wealth is not even mentioned.

Prins’ talk is quite relevant to the Irish economy when one considers the €4 billion received by Anglo Irish Bank last year from the Irish taxpayer, while the real economy continued on a government-approved degradation.

I came across Prin’s video when visiting the web-page of the Union for Radical Political Economics.

Enjoy.