Sir, – “ Irish households are now, on paper at least, wealthier than they were during the boom thanks to the rapid recovery in house prices” (“Irish households now officially wealthier than during boom”, News, September 11th).
The same certified paper wealth, audited by the masters of financial probity in our accounting consultancy corporates, flared like toilet-tissue when the spark hit Lehman Brothers in 2008. Quantitative easing has quenched the blaze but has only allowed the same “too big to fail’” outfits to slide a clean sheet over the still hot ashes. One irony is that 300 years ago Jonathan Swift’s printers were being prosecuted, and their presses wrecked, as he anonymously campaigned against the hog-tying of Ireland’s economic future to permanent debt to finance the military expansion of the British Empire. Write your own forecasts – on the nearest roll. – Yours, etc,
D FLINTER,
Headford, Co Galway.