Well, it was great. I could even say that Donegal seems to have returned to something closer to how it used to be. The aggressive developers and their ‘more money than sense’ clients have departed as if they have never been – leaving only the debts and the finished, half finished and not-yet-started development sites. The idea that housing in Donegal and elsewhere could be treated like an investment in a Bolivian tin mine seems ever more extraordinary.
Poppy’s reading of the Irish Times financial pages leaves her with a number of unanswered questions. The most alarming article was by a group of eminent economics academics who raised concerns that, in creating a holding place for so-called toxic debts, the government is at serious risk of wildly overpaying for what it is taking on. There is an air of ‘hoping for the best’ which does not inspire confidence.
And while Poppy was reading the Irish Times, I tackled the ‘must read’ religious book of the moment ‘The Shack’ which somebody had lent me. Worth a read, I would say. It deals with many of the difficult issues – like forgiveness. In the end, I think I collided with my irritation that God speaks in the tones of an undergraduate theology essay. I think that s/he speaks much more simply than that.
There is, of course, a simple way to determine the market value of assets – sell them. However, such a flood would cause a complete collapse of what market is left, wipe out the last trace of confidence and leave us with a last case worse than the first. The ‘bad guys’ are going to be bailed out because it is the only practical option. Perhaps it will give some in this jurisdiction a small sense of the pain felt in the North when those who caused such pain there were forgiven.