Thoughts About These Recessionary Times

Yesterday I wrote in my other blog  www.willisweaver1.wordpress.com  about economy measures of years ago, particularly with regard to knitting.  The entry is titled Thrifty Knitting.  In today’s Irish Times there is an article by Kate Holmquist, one of my favourite journalists.   Her article is titled The Great Property Famine and it compares the time of the famine in Ireland with the recession now when the property bubble has burst.  At the time of the famine the population was dependent on only one crop – the potato,  and when that crop failed in successive years, catastropic famine resulted.  Many people were forced to emigrate, many people starved to death.  In the 21st century the collective wisdom was to invest in property – this was the Celtic Tiger – our current version of the reliance upon one crop.  Of course there is no comparison between the Great Famine of the 1840’s and the Great Property Famine of the year 2009.  In the Great Famine, a million people starved to death and another million emigrated.  But Kate Holmquist says spare a thought for those in 2009 who have lost their pensions and whose children and grandchildren are emigrating.  When will the Irish people learn – what is the next potato crop?, she asks.