OPINION:The galloping inflation of fearful analogies for the economic crisis could be the thing that finally finishes us off, writes Sarah Carey
ONE ENTERTAINING aspect of the financial crisis is the competitive use of frightening analogies by politicians and commentators.
We're being whipped into a state of high anxiety by dire warnings of a return to the unemployment of the 1980s, the shocks of the 1970s or the miserable poverty of the 1950s.
When the experience of living memory has been fully exploited, it's been outbid by references to the Great Depression. Joking about the escalating effort to terrify the masses, a friend of mine predicted: "They'll be telling us it'll be back to Famine times soon." A few days later Taoiseach Brian Cowen claimed we were facing the worst financial conditions for 100 years. That Famine threat may not be far off after all.
When I need talking down I ring my mother. "Oh don't worry," she says. "When we were poor before we had inherited generations of poverty and we were cold and miserable. Now we've got warm houses, nice clothes and good cars. If the money dries up, we'll be grand."
She's right of course. There is no going back to the 1980s, the 1950s or anywhere else. While the country's balance sheet might deteriorate, the quality of life will never sink so low. The Dublin county sheriff attended evictions daily in the 1980s and not one so far this year.
Today, poor nutrition manifests itself as obesity not hunger. Emigration is an adventure not exile. Unemployment is not the end when people are accustomed to shifting careers three times in 10 years.
I've got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach for months now, and for what? Even the perennially miserable and paradoxically amusing George Lee has said this is the first recession where we'll be drinking lattes.
A few months ago, we were being crushed by the problems of prosperity and downshifting was an aspiration, not a calamity. We have problems and while there are no easy answers, we do not face as the victims of the Great Depression did "the grim problem of existence".
There are solutions like an unemployed parent minding their own children instead of working to pay for childcare. Not everyone is overleveraged and negative equity is not necessarily disastrous. So much money has been spent on so much rubbish surely we can take a hit and stay standing?
So why is the Government hell bent on scaring the bejaysus out of us on a daily basis? Just a year ago, Government Ministers would turn their wrath upon anyone who dared to suggest the good times might end.
Now that Cowen is making his "Worst in 100 Years" speeches, he clearly feels the people aren't sufficiently terrified. They warn us not to panic about the banks and spend the rest of the week persuading us to panic about the deficit.
The purpose, of course, is consensus building. The Government has decided to achieve savings through public service cutbacks and is obliged to conduct this intense campaign to persuade us to accept them.
Leaving aside the issue of whether or not the cutbacks as proposed are actually necessary, I'm afraid they haven't fully considered the consequences of conducting psychological warfare on the people.
The references to the Great Depression create an effective imagery of mass misery but reading back about that time I'm struck by the differences.
One of the enduring memories of that time are the "Fireside Chats" broadcast by FDR on national radio. He did not threaten, but comforted the people, famously telling them: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."
Now fear is the Government's principal tool to coerce us into accepting the remedy. It's probably necessary given our consistent failure to grasp the concept of solidarity in good times or bad, a tendency actively encouraged by the FF/PD axis of individualism. The only way the Government will persuade us to part with the goody bags of past budget surpluses is by slapping us around a bit.
The result is that while the overleveraged are the minority, even the financially secure are afraid to spend money in case they don't have any next year - which is precisely the problem.
Some commentators have compared our property bubble and burst to the experience of Japan. The comparison doesn't end there because Japan also suffered from the Paradox of Thrift. If we all individually cut our spending in an attempt to save, then our collective savings will fall because one person's spending is another's income. The Japanese had significant savings but they were so spooked they stopped spending which contributed to their "Lost Decade". If we sit on that SSIA money, we'll have one too.
A year ago the Government understood this, which is why they got so angry with people who were "talking down the economy". With the necessity to push through unpopular cuts, now they're the ones talking us through the floor.
As we stare into an abyss of escalating recession clichés, my friends and family are turning off the radio and turning to each other for reassurance. Not everyone has a 100 per cent mortgage and not everyone borrowed to consume.
There is more than one story in this country but we're only hearing one. There will be casualties but we survived worse and we will survive this. If this is a war, we're fighting it on several different fronts. The Government needs to be careful that fear, their weapon of choice, isn't the one that finishes us off.