If you are anything like me you probably enjoyed watching the great and the good of the Irish press corps squirming in front of the Oireachtas’ Joint Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis as they desperately tried to excuse their part in the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger economy of the early and mid-2000s. It was frankly hilarious stuff with former and current (right-wing) newspaper editors and journalists blaming everyone and anyone in order to mitigate their enthusiastic complicity in Ireland’s decade of decadence. Their ire in particular was directed towards the academics Julien Mercille and Harry Browne who had earlier argued the news media’s guilt to a fairly receptive audience of TDanna and Seanadóirí. Now Mercille makes a response to those who accuse him of being a “conspiracy theorist”.
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
Excellent – Go raibh agat Séamus.
I vividly recall David McWilliams on “Morning Ireland” back in 2003 being ridiculed by Marian for his very blunt warnings live on that programme (and repeated ad infinitum over the next few years) that now (2003) is absolutely NOT the time to buy a house. He backed this up with very clear, plain and sensible economic argumentation in which clearly demonstrated that we were in the midst of an almighty Bubble.
Maria had wheeled in several financial “experts” – al from the Big Banks and Building Societies – to challenge David Mc – but he wiped the floor with every single one of them – with not even a peep out of Marian who must certainly have also understood the sense of what David Mc was pointing out.
As the saying goes “If you want a Free Press – go and buy one” – and that’s exactly what has happened both in Ireland and indeed throughout the entire Western world.
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Totally agree.
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