The Irish are not such a resilient type of people after all

Those with the reins of power will tell us not to worry; everything is going to be all right because the Irish are a resilient people.They are wrong on both counts: plodding along as we are doing, this Fair Isle is heading for greater disaster. It simply will not work.I am far from being an economist but I learned simple mathematics in Johnstown National School and unless things have since been turned upside down, you cannot service a debt by increasing it and you cannot pay out more than you are taking in.The rule of commerce is that if a repayment becomes impossible to meet, then both sides negotiate and a fair compromise is reached.We shall come back to the economics problem in a moment - after we ask why we think we are a resilient people.We are far from being resilient. We do not make things happen; instead our history shows that we only react to acts inflicted upon us.Then we write songs about our misfortune. The Jews, Japanese and Germans are resilient peoples. Think back to the utter devastation caused to those people by WW2 - and look at what they have achieved for themselves since then.Now they control half the wealth of the world. Germany only made the last payment of a crippling debt of reparation imposed on her after WW1 as recently as 2010 - but it got paid.Halfway through the payments Germany got levelled for a second time (albeit through her own doing) and lost seven and a half million of its people.Now Germany is ruling us; not with jackboots, but when you control a country's economy, you are in control of its people.At this point in time our country is allowing itself to be used as fodder by the bullies in the EU in its attempt to save the euro and to give more power to Germany and France. However, if this depends on any referendum being passed here, the message from Bracklyn Bog to Ms Merkel and Mr Sarkozy is, no way José.Japan recovered from the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to lead the world in industrial and technological expansion. Then this year they had to deal with the earthquake devastation in Fukushima and the subsequent nuclear fallout.You won't be hearing a lot more about it because once again the Japs knuckled down and stoically went about rebuilding their country. That is resilience.Now God forbid, but if a meteor had fallen from the heavens and hit Poolbeg Power Station, the rubble would remain as a monument to our misfortune and Christy Moore would have had two platinum discs by now.So those other countries can be resilient because they are wealthy and powerfully endowed regimes, I hear you ask?Well then, here's one more: the Icelanders are a resilient people. Two years ago the two Brians were sneering, 'This isn't Iceland', because the Icelandic economy had collapsed for the same reasons as ours; greed, gambling and dishonesty.Look at how Iceland has come back from there now. And Iceland hasn't got much more to export than cod… and that's not the same sort of cod we deal with in Ireland.And while we are on about fish - why is it that we, an island nation, with its waters teaming with fish, had not built up the greatest fishing fleet in the world, before we joined the EEC? Because we are not a resilient people, that's why.Now we are being told we are not Greece. You mark my words, the Greeks will come out of this recession in a smarter manner than we will. That is unless we smarten up and become really resilient.We have to look at simple solutions. I remember a Castlepollard bank manager, the late Val Kennedy, once saying to me that he would put far more cognisance on what a man with a yard of a counter told him about the country than what all the economists and intellectuals had to preach.The simple fact is that this country cannot continue to fund the gambling debts of bond holders - and why should we?The bank bailout was an unmitigated disaster. The casino banks should have been allowed to go wallop and an honest bank founded from the wreckage to get the country working again.Irish people should come before foreign gamblers and the only bailout should have been to safeguard and secure the deposits of ordinary people and to provide working capital for Irish businesses.Praise from Angela Merkel, the IMF or the ECB is phoney, condescending and worthless in this crisis.And sooner or later it will be proven that the people of this country cannot afford to pay the crippling debt - allegedly owed in our people's name.Trillions of euro have and will be fed into a black hole. It will not work and it is better to face up to that fact - better late than never. This is what the Icelanders did and the people backed their leaders because they had faith in them to deliver on a radical path to recovery.Keep it simple. But is there a simple solution? Not really, not one without pain. But if we were to show our pride and some gumption there is a way.The great depression of the 1930s was ended through price reductions and currency devaluation. We should leave the eurozone immediately and go back to the punt.The punt would find its own level. It wouldn't be easy and the thunderous bellowing from Brussels and Frankfurt would be deafening.Aid and grants would be withdrawn at first, but things would work in our favour soon thereafter. It would not be in Europe's interest for Ireland to go bankrupt - and even less so for our neighbours Britain, who would trade with us, as would other countries.The weaker punt would mean that our exports would bring in large quantities of foreign exchange, which would be used to pay our legitimate debts - not those of the gambling bond holders.America would be friendly and support our independence again because, make no mistake, it is independence we are talking about at this stage. Structural damage has already been done to our democracy.To win a battle sometimes you have to attempt the outrageously unexpected. This is one of those times.Ireland cannot survive as we are today.The problem was not caused by the population - or indeed its present government. But this government did promise something different.The time for talk has long since passed: Don't tell us… show us!Don't ForgetAn intellectual is so smart he doesn't understand the obvious.