THE STORM STILL BLOWS

Over the week-end the Irish government has had to concede the fact that it is bankrupt and that it needs bailing out to the tune of something like 100 billion Euros. As a member of the Euro Zone it is making arrangements for this bail out with the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank. One analyst immediately wrote, “Even as the details of the Irish package are being resolved, investors and economists are asking: “Who’s next?” The focus is on Portugal, Spain and even Italy. Then the questions arise of how far Europe will be able to keep on bailing out its members and what is the limit to debt. Thus the destructive financial storm rages on some two years after it began, and yet another nation is massively saddled with enormous debt.

Once upon a time a person in debt was considered the most unfortunate of creatures. Now not only are vast numbers of people in that unenviable position individually but nations are struggling desperately to find the interest payments on their vast debts. Debts are easily acquired, but are extremely difficult to get rid of. Debt is always a long term matter, and it is always a matter of very painful “doing without”. Once in debt there is never anything left for a “rainy day” and for individuals and nations alike, such days have a habit of turning up. Another “rainy day” in the current situation would wreak untold chaos, and the outlook for rainy days is distinctly unfavourable.

A leading article in a more reputable newspaper was devoted to telling the Irish that they would have fared better if they had not joined the Euro Zone. It said how much better Britain had fared because it remained independent. We had not been obliged to go cap in hand to foreign institutions for help; we apparently had been able to print out own money, and to bail ourselves out by creating our own enormous national debt. I do not see that the net result in terms of debt is really any better, and it’s hardly sensible to tell another he’s drowning quicker than you are!

I wonder if the sheer enormity of the current situation has fully registered in the western world. I doubt it. Britain’s national debt is astronomical, the very commercial and industrial recovery by which alone it will be reduced is in doubt, government attempts to cut expenditure will certainly cause social unrest and all the while the extraordinary culture of unregulated financial greed which brought all this about remains largely untouched. To add insult to injury we are told this week that house prices in Kensington and Chelsea still rise because the fabulously rich of other nations are buying up our most desirable property. Moreover, for the first time in our history more than fifty percent of offers to buy up British corporations (like Cadbury!) are coming from abroad. We are being bought up and bought out!

So the chastisement continues. It is a chastisement. We have sown to the wind and are reaping the whirlwind. Even as I write that sentence I can hear a great din of contempt and condemnation at such retrograde, obscurantist, ridiculous and even abhorrent thinking. But that is precisely the point that needs addressing – the refusal to come terms with, and the absolute rejection of anything to do with God, his standards and his judgement.

Lord, in wrath remember mercy!



Bob

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