Ship of Fools
How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Between 1995 and 2007, the Republic of Ireland was the worldwide model of successful adaptation to economic globalisation. The success story was phenomenal: a doubling of the workforce; a massive growth in exports; a GDP that was substantially above the EU average. Ireland became the world's largest exporter of software and manufactured the world's supply of Viagra.
The factors that made it possible for Ireland to become prosperous - progressive social change, solidarity, major State investment in education, and the critical role of the EU - were largely ignored as too sharply at odds with the dominant free market ideology. The Irish boom was shaped instead into a simplistic moral tale of the little country that discovered low taxes and small government and prospered as a result. There were two big problems. Ireland acquired a hyper-capitalist economy on the back of a corrupt, dysfunctional political system. And the business class saw the influx of wealth as an opportunity to make money out of property. Aided by corrupt planning and funded by poorly regulated banks, an unsustainable property-led boom gradually consumed the Celtic Tiger.
This is, as Fintan O'Toole writes, 'a good old-fashioned jeremiad about the bastards who got us into this mess'. It is an entertaining, passionate story of one of the most ignominious economic reversals in recent history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A fascinating and deeply shocking account of the recent financial collapse of Ireland s economy. Writing in stridently polemical tones, prominent Irish journalist O Toole (White Savage) blends strong reportage with perceptive cultural analysis to produce a disturbing account of how politicians, property developers, and business elite, through a mixture of corruption, feckless deregulation, and plain incompetence, reaped enormous financial gain at a cost of billions to the Irish taxpayer. Tracing Ireland s indulgent attitude toward political corruption and sleaze from the 1970s to the present, the author outlines various financial scandals, including institutionalized tax evasion and the role of unscrupulous and unethical businessmen in the creation of an unsustainable property bubble, the bursting of which has inflicted serious damage on the economy. Occasionally, the author s rhetorical excesses irritate, and the book s focus on analysis rather than any chronological development of events may leave some readers confused. The book s conclusions are highly provocative, however, such as the remarkable suggestion that Catholic Ireland s obsession with the body as the locus of sin hindered the development of any genuine sense of social morality. An absorbing indictment of unregulated, free-market capitalism.
