Madam, - The world financial system is in turmoil, largely as a result of imprudent lending by financial institutions, but a more significant cause is the use of opaque instruments such as derivatives which served to conceal the risky nature of many transactions. Our own economy is in meltdown, largely due to our over-reliance on the construction sector in good times and the reckless lending that underpinned it.
The media, growing fat on advertising revenue, ceased to be objective about the economy and instead became a cheerleader for the pursuit of property, at home and abroad. In your own property supplement, vast amounts of advertising were interspersed with puff-pieces for this or that development masquerading as editorial. In the words of the immortal John Healy - who must surely be spinning in his grave to see the once-great paper he wrote for become the whore of the property speculator - "Nobody shouted stop!"
However, Madam, clearly you and your colleagues are totally unrepentant. Now that all these chickens have come home to roost, you might be at least expected to hang your head in shame and keep silent; but what does The Irish Timesdo?
It publishes what it calls a "Special Report" on spread betting (November 14th). In reality this is a six-page advertisement for a company called www.worldspreads.com, whose main business is running precisely the type of complicated forms of gambling with other peoples' money that got us into this mess in the first place.
Shameless does not begin to describe it. - Yours, etc,