Irish economist and author David McWilliams has said that the recent bankruptcy of former Anglo Irish Bank Chief Sean Fitzpatrick represents the bankruptcy of a nation.

Earlier this week the High Court declared the former top chief executive bankrupt. This according to Williams is an all too familiar process in Irish life where by your average person suffers as a result of corporate misdemeanors.

In his latest piece in the Irish Independent McWilliams said “The bankruptcy of Seanie and yet the saving of Anglo with your money reveals a pattern in Irish public life -- where the institution is saved no matter how rotten, but the individual is sacrificed no matter that he is simply a small version of the corrupted institution.”
The economist describes it as “shackling the prospects of the next generation to the mistakes of the last one.”

Due to the economic downturn, Irish people have witnessed increased taxation and severe cutbacks over the past two years.  While the government attempts to plug the hole in the public finances, unemployment & immigration levels continue to rise.

A product of rising taxes and the difficulty in small businesses attaining credit will fuel a black economy according to Williams. We could expect to see that cash businesses under-reporting turnover as a method of dealing with the increased taxation.

McWilliams added that Ireland’s recovery is not going to happen overnight. “One of the most striking things about the boom in Ireland -- which made it different to, let's say, the boom in the US -- was that wages rose dramatically as well as employment rising dramatically. Now this process will go into reverse. We are entering into a period of many years that will be precisely the opposite of what we experienced in the boom. “

The commentator reiterated that Ireland’s economic recovery is going to be a slow process. He insists that Ireland cannot expect to rely on the global recovery to drag it out of the recession.