From the New York Times, a perspective on the Irish economy and the impact the global economic crisis is having on the model once held aloft alongside that other now-crumbled relic, Iceland.
Ireland’s policy makers, like their counterparts in the United States and Britain, were seduced by record tax inflows and a full-employment economy. They paid little heed to the lonely voices that warned of the crash that finally came over the summer, when interest rates in Europe began to rise. Banks that had steered more than 60 percent of their loans toward property stopped lending, and asset values plummeted.
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