OPINION:Don't panic, but a friend of a friend says it's time to invest in something safe – like a €21 million Modernist chair, writes ORNA MULCAHY
TALK ABOUT panic stations. A friend calls on Wednesday morning to say “Pull all your money out of the banks now!” She’s frazzled in the extreme, having been up since dawn making online transfers and sending faxes, after a contact in London told her to move funds fast. Ireland, he said, is over. It’s the laughing stock of Europe. The Paddy jokes are back with a vengeance. Of all the swimmers caught without trunks, we’re the biggest and the ugliest, he said.
It was good of her to think of us, but we’d already had a red alert from a relative who advised switching “the lot” into German government bonds. Others have been tipped off too, weeks or even months ago, typically by friends and in-laws in the banks and stockbroking firms in London, New York or Sydney. The diaspora isn’t doing the Irish economy any favours just now.
The intriguing thing about all this is that people one assumed were just as broke as oneself actually have funds to move. While flaunting their Lidl shopping bags and attempting to let out the holiday chalet, they apparently have big sums of money to worry about. Or maybe not so big. One woman told me that she had been advised to move her cash and yes, she was putting all €4,000 of it into advance payment of school fees. Another contact admitted he’d moved a chunk of money from an inheritance offshore, because he was afraid the bank would nab it to offset against his substantial business loan and he’d hate that to happen.
In this new game of money-go-round, it’s no longer a case of letting slip that you have an apartment in Nice or a villa in Fuertaventura, The new must-have is a banker in Basle or Bahrain.
The bush telegraph is bristling with friends advising each other on financial matters, wondering whether An Post or prize bonds mightn’t be safer, or inquiring how one gets into gold, like the Merill Lynch customers who have been investing in boxes of Krugerrands rather than anything on paper.
I’ve heard of bank employees advising their pals to withdraw money from their own Government-backed institutions and put it into Rabobank. The advice, naturally given in the strictest of confidence, gets around like wildfire.
Meanwhile, I’m guessing that the Revenue is getting plenty of calls from newly-redundant workers dobbing in former employers for assorted misdemeanours – anything from cooking the books to overspending on the boardroom furniture. Are we, as one exasperated businessman put it, “a nation of informers,” with far too much downtime on our hands? Could our national obsession with talking bring down Ireland Inc?
While Brian Lenihan insists that the outflow of funds from Irish banks is not something to be concerned about, middle-class folk are getting edgy about their savings, and doing something about it. A wall of worry has come crashing down on them. They are worried that there is no one in charge in this country, they are worried about their children’s potentially jobless futures; they are worried about their elderly parents’ dwindling incomes and they are worried that their lifestyle is going to go down, and stay down. They may be ready to pay more taxes, and take a pay cut, but by God, if their savings aren’t safe – well, patriotism be damned and where do I sign?
Those who have cash want to put it out of harm’s way, in case the day arrives when the ATM won’t spit out money and bank deposits are locked down for, who knows, years. Or that in some nightmarish scenario their cash might be viewed as profits unfairly earned in the boom and therefore up for confiscation. Anything is possible when you see guards and teachers on the march, when Wynn’s Hotel has become a hot new centre of discontent, and when business journalists start quoting Karl Marx among themselves.
Amid all this angst, it was heartening to see that one of the most valuable trades of the week was a chair designed by Eileen Gray, the Irish-born Modernist designer who was neglected for most of her career – especially in Ireland – and is now considered one of the most important figures of the 20th century. Her Dragons chair – a round comfy affair in slightly battered leather (re-upholstered), made €21.9 million in the Yves Saint Laurent sale in Paris on Wednesday, making it one of the most expensive pieces of furniture ever sold.
It is possibly too late now to start investing in Eileen Gray originals but instead one could consider a very accommodating mattress. As global finances teeter on the brink, one Israeli company is doing well out of its Safe-T-Beds. You’ve guessed it, there’s a safe built in. Opt for the de luxe model at €40,000 and you get a retractable TV, DVD and CD, as well as a massage system – perfect for those whose response to all this scary stuff is to take to the bed.