Reports from Japan and the US continue to highlight bad news on the economic front. The US stands a whisker away from a second successive quarterly return of nil growth, the point at which its economy could be said to be in recession.
British and US correspondents in Tokyo fill the air with ominous accounts of conditions in Japanese financial institutions, which seem to have been on the verge of collapse for months.
Listening to our colleague, Conor O'Clery, on RTE radio the other day I was reminded of a conversation we had when he dropped in on his way between Moscow, Beijing and New York. He'd made it to Russia in time for the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union and carried on to the Far East where the economies of Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea soon crumbled. Now he was off to New York.
Thoughtlessly, I told him Claud Cockburn liked to remember how the Times (of London) had frowned on the life he was leading in Berlin, where society hummed and fascism threatened, so packed him off to New York - just in time for the Wall Street crash.
Of course, there was no comparison between the ways of the two correspondents. They were worlds - and 70 years - apart. But Conor blessed himself all the same and said something about lightning striking in the same place, not twice but three times in a row.
These days the superstitious politician picks the cliche and warns about "talking ourselves into a crisis". Which is a bit rich, coming from the likes of Mary Harney and Charlie McCreevy, who find it hard to admit there are many for whom crisis has never been far away.
Bertie Ahern had just returned from Brazil when the social partners met in plenary session at Dublin Castle at the end of July. Ms Harney couldn't let the occasion pass without a reminder as to how much worse things were out there.
Mr Ahern had spent a few days, she said, in a country "which really has a twotiered society, where some people don't have access to water, basic food or any kind of reasonable standard of living".
(Sean Healy of CORI and David Beggs of ICTU didn't need the lesson. Sean Healy lived in Nigeria for years. David Beggs was, until yesterday, chief executive of Concern.) Ms Harney admitted: "We don't have a perfect society, but things are much, much better now economically than they were". So she looked to the future: "The focus has to be now on what I'd call quality-of-life issues, putting in place a good public transport system, a health service that delivers healthcare to those that need it, when they need it, and not just to people that have private health insurance or the means to access a good standard of healthcare".
What is this? A senior member of a government elected in June 1997, promising to do something about the public transport and public health systems, at the start of its fifth year in office. Most other governments would have been looking back on their achievements, not looking forward to them - if the money holds out.
Already there are warnings, from Ministers and their allies in industry, finance and journalism, about the need for restraint. So far no one has had the brass neck to claim we're living beyond our means and talk about belt-tightening.
But if conditions worsen, you'll hear it soon enough and from unlikely sources, such as the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste and the Minister for Finance. If they were to take Ms Harney at her word, there is still time - and money - to set about qualityof-life issues. But even in the last three weeks we've had dispiriting evidence of promises made and needlessly broken.
The protests of building workers at dangerous conditions and practices in their industry have become regular events. Thirteen have died this year, 200 since the start of a boom that has made so many rich. But Eric Fleming and his fellow trade union organisers say on-site safety training and inspections are pitifully inadequate. Pat Kelliher, whose brother, Tim, was buried the other day, adds that fines imposed for breaches of regulations are "just petty cash".
The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, meanwhile, is overwhelmed by the volume of complaints and inquiries it receives on workers' employment rights and the enforcement of regulations. Almost one-third of the complaints remain unresolved after five years, one in 10 after 10 years, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, quoted in this newspaper by John McManus.
The accountants found that, while the volume of calls had doubled since 1997, the number of staff had increased by 20 per cent. The section dealing with immigrants from outside the EU was swamped.
But the story of the week was about Charles Haughey's mansion and other reminders of dirty deeds at the top. Now, who'll buy that raimeis about ours not being a two-tiered society?
dwalsh@irish-times.ie