One big irony

Lawrence Summers gives us an ironic twist to our current crisis today in the FT: “It is the central irony of the financial crisis – caused by too much confidence, borrowing, and lending and spending – that it cannot be resolved without more confidence, more borrowing, and lending and more spending”.

The financial crisis isn’t the only place we can find irony though; isn’t the whole stinking system, after all, one of the most ironic creations ever designed by man?  Isn’t it ironic that if we spent less yesterday and therefore avoided today’s crisis, we would have been quagmired in a crisis then?  Imagine the state of the world over the past two decades if we didn’t have the dot.com and real estate bubbles to give us brief respites from stagnation.  How ironic that the only way to prevent crises is to lay the very ground for them.

How ironic that basic security for the average person is completely dependent on the inherant insecurity of a never ending expansion of private investment.  Or that living standards today are completely tied to the confidence that standards tomorrow will yield profitable returns.  How ironic that so many people in democratic societies accept that the only way to security and prosperity is through never ending insecurity and austerity.

It’s one big irony.