It looks like we've got to the stage where economists are vying with each other to be the one with the gloomiest forecast. Nobody (with the exception of my ex-colleagues in NCB, who always look on the bright side and who can be relied upon to find a silver lining) can say a good word about the future of Ireland Inc - even without the possibility that we'll all keel over from radiation poisoning before the economy goes down the tubes.

The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) came out on top last week, with growth predictions down to 1.5 per cent, unemployment doubling and house prices plunging by 15 per cent. If you weren't feeling a little beaten by the market already, you certainly would be after a report like that.

Part of its despondency comes from the fact that they're forecasting a fairly sharp fall in the value of the dollar. People have been expecting the dollar to fall sharply ever since 1999 and the arrival of the euro but the greenback has stubbornly defied all warnings of a downward move. And even now it's hanging around the $0.90 level against the euro - not exactly a currency in crisis, despite all it has had to contend with recently.

However, if that changes and the dollar does commence a downward spiral, maybe the ESRI is right to be uncomfortable. It's been the strength of the dollar that has helped the Republic to become so competitive in the international marketplace.

If the ESRI is right in its dollar forecast, it might also be right in its sterling one - weaker sterling is certainly not what our economy wants right now. In fact, in the past few years, industry has been extremely fortunate that the euro has been such a sickly currency - it has helped even uncompetitive firms to do well.

Of course, it hasn't been so great for anyone who's had to travel to the United States or Britain.

Nor has it done much for the prices of imported goods in the supermarket. My latest benchmark pricing is a tube of Pringles crisps, which first came onto the market at £1.25 (€1.59). Last Saturday they were £1.64. The first things you cut back on when times are tough are the luxury items. Incredibly expensive crisps and tiny bags of tortilla chips will lose out when people start to feel the pinch!

Those of us who lived through the 1980s can look at this with a touch of equanimity, of course, having already gone through a period when you were lucky to be working at all (and when smokey bacon Tayto were at the cutting edge of snack foods).

Then, Temple Bar was a down-at-heel collection of dangerous buildings, pubs were dark and dreary, and a slap-up meal meant a quarter pounder with cheese at McDonald's in Grafton Street.

And - surprising at it may seem when we look at house prices today - nobody could afford anything more than £25,000 because interest rates were in double figures and the repayments were horrendous. Oh, and the banks didn't actually want to lend you money in the first place.

What I'm afraid of now, however, is that every two-bit company that has managed to stay in business during the boom times will start to complain that their businesses are being squeezed because things have got rougher and it's not their fault.

The boom times are the times when you're supposed to set down good foundations for the future, but a year ago no economist wanted to be the one to call time on the party and most businesses ploughed money into projects that may or may not ever have had any hope of turning a profit.

Airlines and tourism do have a particular set of problems but the awful thing about singling out industries for some kind of assistance is we get back to the begging-bowl mentality that I had hoped was gone forever.

Once the State starts giving help to one sector of the economy, everyone else pops up with an outstretched hand and a request for cash on the basis that they're also suffering.

I know that good businesses do suffer from events outside their control - but really good businesses do not go under because of them. If they do, it's because there were inherent weaknesses there from the start - and it's about time some overpaid executives realised that.

As far as the stock markets are concerned, even rallies are something to be cautious of. Nobody will deny that there are hugely undervalued stocks (just as there were once hugely overvalued stocks) but nothing can stop them from becoming even more undervalued - just as nothing stopped overvalued stocks from becoming even more overvalued either.

Good companies will deliver, but they may not deliver this year or even next. It's interesting to see that investors - for so long totally unconcerned about profitability as they ploughed their money into hopeless dotcoms - are now looking for profits, and quickly.

As for the traders - well, a lot of my ex-colleagues and friends are still in a state of shock.

It's not that they're going around thinking of what happened last month all the time but it's there in the back of their minds and they haven't quite come to terms with it yet. Like I said a couple of weeks ago, for many of them, trading bonds and equities have taken a back seat to dealing with the closeness of their own mortality.

At lunch with a friend during the week, I heard that one dealer was on the phone to another in the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald when there was a sudden shout and the connection was broken.

It's not easy to put something like that out of your mind, which is why I think that it will be a long time before the confident swagger returns to the market and why the merchants of gloom mightn't be entirely wrong this time.