Money and Europe dominate headlines

COMMENT

The curtains are being drawn on the year 2011. The date in itself is a strange one to look at as for many of us it still appears almost futuristic. In anyone’s terms, however, this year, which is coming to an end, has been an extraordinary one.
As is always the case at this time of year, there are many events that will have slipped our minds. At the time they were occurring they dominated the headlines and felt momentous but by now they have faded into the irrelevant corners of our memories. This is not to say that they were not important, it most probably means that they didn’t affect our daily lives in a tangible way. A review of the year, if it is to be kept to a size and scale which will can be easily read without setting apart much of the day, pertains only to the lives of those within a given area.
In the case of this year, however, this distinction bears scrutiny. In fact, in a year where Ireland elected not only a new government but also a new president, the real stories which must dominate any review of the last 12 months relate to Europe and the world money markets.
In the case of the Eurozone there is a reasonable enough excuse to include stories in any given year because Ireland has thrown its lot in with the rest of Europe and embarked on a project. This fact merely widens the scope of the “us” aspect of story selection.
In relation to the money markets, however, they question of who “they” are is a cause for pause. The spread, scale and amorphous nature of these entities makes them difficult to pin down in a look back at the year.
The efforts of the Eurozone nations to improve liquidity have been met on a number of occasions with stiff resistance from “the markets,” which fell in value as a result of the collective efforts of the nations. This ambiguity with regard to where to categorize some of the major players in Ireland’s 2011 extends also to the rating agencies.
These private companies, who were themselves massively implicated in the financial crash of the late 2000’s, have been wielding their wands and downgrading the financial ratings of entire nations, much to the horror of the markets. There is also a powerful temporal element to this incongruity. This time last year these same ghosts were haunting the Irish year and yet, one year on, we are really no closer to knowing exactly who or what they are.
The economic strangulation of Ireland has been a slow burning news story all year but has not provided the headlines, which might usually be noted at a time such as this. Instead, we have had a slow drip of toxicity leaking out daily, sometimes unnoticed. The effect has been no less debilitating for this.
All around the world dictators have been toppled, the world’s most wanted man has been found and murdered, Japan has been devastated by a massive earthquake and Britain found itself on fire in the midst of an outpouring of rage. In Greece, the austerity which was imposed was rejected in the streets and in Norway a man carried out a deadly plan hatched in a miasma of hate and misguided ideology.  
While all these events rightly garnered headlines all over the world, a slower catastrophe glooped its way through Ireland’s homes. No cameraman or journalist will cover a person being sucked into quicksand as a potential headline. If they are human they will help and here in lies the distinction between the headline grabbing catastrophe and those taking place in Ireland and in many countries all over the world.
The treacle-like momentum of poverty, hunger, deprivation and inequality make them easy to miss. Humans love a cataclysm and Hollywood knows it, so most of our movies give us events beyond imagination, represented for our entertainment. If we cannot make the cinema then TV news coverage gives us the real thing, without the glitz and with the gore all but removed. It is more difficult to portray the everyday suffering behind the headlines in headline form.
A headline is a headline because it stands out as something different. When many thousands of people are going through the same thing simultaneously their collective suffering is unlikely to make the front of any paper or top of the hour news bulletin. This can make such truths easy to forget for both the public and politicians with all the dangers this can present. In the case of Ireland’s politicians 2011 will be one year they will want to forget in many cases.
Fianna Fáil will lament the year for obvious reasons but even Labour and Fine Gael can’t have enjoyed the experience all that much. Certainly they finally got their hands on the reigns of power but they have only realised that now all power resides outside of Ireland in the hands of others and with their interests at heart rather than those of the population.
When we look forward to 2012 it is difficult to see how things will be any different for the majority of people in Ireland or the politicians that serves them, in theory. There will be many momentous events all over the globe in the coming year but they will be viewed in Ireland through the lens of continued austerity and cut backs. These realities will be a fact of people’s lives for many years to come I fear.