Q&A: Michael Lewis on the Politicians That Sank Ireland | Hacker News Reader

Q&A: Michael Lewis on the Politicians That Sank Ireland

vanityfair.com

61 pointstptacek19 comments

The actual VF piece for this was posted weeks ago, but languishes; we'd rather yell at each other about Apple than read about the collapse of the economy in one of the world's major technical centers.

for the lazy

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2179268

Languishing? I think its HN at its best.

"It may be that 20 years from now we’re all laughing about what fools we were for thinking China was such a threat. I don’t believe that the Chinese political system can sustain a really successful economy. There’s going to have to be a political revolution there before they’re competitive with us. But what do I know?"

I think Lewis nails this.

That's an excellent piece of writing. Hopefully wide dissemination of pieces like this will start to put paid to the idea of 'too big to fail' and the idea that a government should underwrite a banks losses. That sort of thing kills long term growth and endenders moral hazard the next time a boom comes around.

New rule: governments shouldn't ask for advice about what to do in a banking crisis from a company who owns a ton of bonds in those banks. The conflict of interest and lack of accountability is astounding. Politics suck: you're in charge of a system you don't understand and the only people you can ask for advice who do understand it are sitting at the same poker table. When you go bust the public blames you as they suffer through austerity.

I also loved this quote from the story:

And then they saw him and said, Who the fuck was that??? Is that the fucking guy who is in charge of the money??? That’s when everyone panicked.

Funny headline given the opening paragraphs point the blame at the bankers. Really it was a small group of bankers, politicians and regulators that crashed the country - backed up by a dis-interested electorate (until it was too late).

backed up by a dis-interested electorate

An uninterested electorate. They are discovering now that they were never disinterested.

And they erred by being uninterested. I hope a lot of potentates will lose their jobs and influence when the situation is rectified.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fianna_Fáil

At first I thought that name was some sort of joke.

The 'Fáil' part is pronounced as 'fall'.

Fall is hardly a better ending than fail. Neither are particularly inspiring!

Edit : I read the article. Apparently the pronunciation is 'foil'. Slightly better.

It's Irish for 'Soldiers of Destiny'

A closer approximation would be "Faw-ill", emphasis on first "syllable", but as a diphthong sound that almost ends up sounding like a shortened "eel". In other words, the "a" sound starts out sounding like it does in "fall", but ends up a hair away from "e" in "eel".

That's how I'd say it with a Gaeltacht accent in Galway. People who learned Irish from a non-native speaker or a different area of the country will probably disagree.

I live in Ireland and passed around Michael Lewis' original Vanity Fair piece (link below) to friends and family, the majority of whom were in awe of the depth and breadth of insight in this article. There was a consensus of disbelief that someone who was not Irish could, in such a short space of time, grasp so many subtleties about the Irish situation, not just economically but culturally, and with insights about figures in Irish politics that were extremely revealing (e.g. Brian Lenihan). I feel this is a remarkable piece of writing that far exceeds anything that has been written about the crisis by Irish journalists themselves:

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/03/michael-...

Sometimes it takes an outsider's perspective.

It's a great article and brings a lot of clarity to the events. He squarely lays the blame with Brian Lenihan - ("A single decision sank Ireland") - but I can't imagine the decision to guarantee the bondholders was his alone.

Also the bus was already in the ditch at that point - that decision helped make matter worse, but there was no soft landing possible at that point.

This might be the best thing that ever happened to Ireland.

Since independance it has operated like a corrupt african regime. There were elections but the same party was always in power. The politician's job was to go off to Dublin and get money for their local area. This used to be european handouts when Ireland was the poor relative - all over Ireland there are huge freeway projects that go from nowhere to nowhere just because one county got a grant.

Then it managed to attract a few US corporations to HQ there to avoid paying tax in the UK or Germany - it then managed to convince itself that this made it a celtic tiger. Rather like Liberia deciding it's a great naval power because of the number of oil tankers registered there.

With a bit of luck we will now get real elections, a real economy and a chance to become a real european country

You have a point - there was a large minority in the country ~30% that would always vote Fianna Fail, no matter how corrupt they were revealed to be. That's changed in the past year or two, so they are down to ~12% now and expected to get wiped out in the forthcoming election. Ireland may have learnt that it can't continue to elect corrupt representatives.

I read the Big Short. Awesome book. Michael Lewis is a great author.

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