The Westmeath Examiner editorial on Saturday 30 March says that “our deal with the banks was simple: it is our money.” If only it were that simple!
Under banking regulations once the depositor hands over his or her money the money belongs to the bank. But the situation in Cyprus – where bank deposits are being tapped to cover the debt – has set a precedent.
A fact acknowledged extensively in the media, and concentrated upon in the German newspaper Handelsblatt, in an article that voices concern about the possibility of further raids on bank accounts in other countries.
“What happens in Cyprus”, says Handelsblatt, “can also happen elsewhere.” It goes on to note that bank bailouts in Spain and Ireland have allowed the national debt to “explode to an unsustainable level” and that the eurozone could soon turn our way to start tapping into bank accounts.
“In principle,” it continues, “no European depositor can remain assured that their bank balance will remain untouched – even in Germany.”
In Ireland there is a propensity towards an insularity of thinking of the ‘ourselves alone’ disposition, which fails to comprehend the broader picture – as in the international picture, and its various complexities.
The results of various opinion polls published regularly in Ireland suggest that one of the major parties is narrowly in the lead of the other major party dismissed in disgrace not so long ago, that another party has gone into free fall and independents are coming up the straight, and one leader is favoured over another – and none of this, it has to be said, amounts to a hill of beans overall.
What if the various political parties are radically constrained in their policies, which may to all intents and purposes be dictated to them from abroad? The Cyprus bailout, like those for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, has been conditional on the launching of a vast austerity programme, including privatisations that will lead to the elimination of jobs in the public sector and the destruction of social services.
The plain truth is that austerity – a loaded word if ever there was one – is being imposed on millions of people worldwide actually to the great benefit of a relatively small number of individuals whose names may never be known to the general public.
As such, this is not a time for indulgence in party politics. It is a time to restore to its proper place the consideration of what is right and what is wrong. Everything is headed off in one direction: the wrong direction.
Even local councillors, reported to have been booing protestors who had taken their campaign to the doors of the Westmeath County Council, should seriously reflect on whether infantile retorts are the correct response to protests raised out of a deeply felt and proper concern for an increasing number of men, women and children facing poverty, with all of its deprivations and out and out despair in the face of an implacable resistance to their plight.
John Kelly
Mullingar, Co Westmeath
