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TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

From Elaine Byrne in today’s Guardian:

So, is default the answer?

The repayment on the 5.8% interest of the €85bn bailout alone will amount to 20% of annual tax revenues. The severe fiscal austerity measures, including the contentious €1 reduction in the minimum wage, will never be enough within a framework of a fixed exchange rate.

This method of internal devaluation, or the attempt to “buy more time” has merely kicked the issue of default down the road. As Paul Krugman suggested: “It’s hard to escape the sense European policymakers are just completely out of their depth.”

The problems caused by an incredible transfer of privately accumulated debt into public hands is most acute in Ireland, but it is now a European concern. Yet, when the Irish delegation negotiating with the EU-IMF raised this issue, “the Europeans went completely mad”, according to a senior government source quoted by the Sunday Independent. Sovereign default is not been considered by government as a policy option. The reputational damage from such an event, as in the case of Argentina, may last for decades in the international markets.

On RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland, Ajai Chopra, the head of the IMF mission to Ireland, left the door open to senior bondholders taking a significant hit. “We have to see how this programme evolves. Various options will need to be kept on the table and we just have to see how things go.”

Irish people have a deep and traditional sense of moral duty when it comes to repaying debts. That sense of obligation may not hold, however, when the responsibility for prolonged austerity is due to poor policy decisions, such as the Irish government’s September 2008 blanket guarantee, the straitjacket of euro membership and a political unwillingness to burn senior bondholders.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/29/ireland-economic-crisis-bailout

Two solid arguments in favour of default:

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/11/ireland-the-default-solution/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/opinion/26krugman.html?_r=1&WT.mc_id=OP-SM-E-FB-SM-LIN-ETI-112610-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

Luke Kelly :

“For What Died the Sons of Róisín, was it greed?
For What Died the Sons of Róisín, was it greed?
Was it greed that drove Wolfe Tone to a paupers death in a cell of cold wet stone?
Will German, French or Dutch inscribe the epitaph of Emmet?
When we have sold enough of Ireland to be but strangers in it.
For What Died the Sons of Róisín, was it greed?

To whom do we owe our allegiance today?
To whom do we owe our allegiance today?
To those brave men who fought and died that Róisín live again with pride?
Her sons at home to work and sing,
Her youth to dance and make her valleys ring,
Or the faceless men who for Mark and Dollar,
Betray her to the highest bidder,
To whom do we owe our allegiance today?”

http://www.ted.com/talks/taryn_simon_photographs_secret_sites.

Malcolm Gladwell on the limits of Twitter.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell

Enjoyed this lecture by David McWilliams, which began the Points of View lecture series hosted by Cork City Council’s arts office.

The lecture covered the role of culture in society, the comparisons between artists and entrepreneurs and challenged the arts world to collaborate more with business. McWilliams is ubiquitous, and can be populist, but his comments on the priorities of a society that allows over 400,000 to sit on the unemployment register, another 60,000 or so to emigrate, but will not allow a bank to fail, were right on the money.

http://www.vimeo.com/14830878

Interesting piece on the cultural relevance or otherwise of fiction in the New York Observer