On the Irish (peripheral) stage, the likes of Pat Cox, ex-president of the Parliament, are promulgating the argument that there was no fault in the European institutions structures and protocols and that Ireland needs now more than ever to turn to Europe. He says we were not good Europeans during the boom years and now sentiment is against us so what can we expect. We mis-spent our opportunity. This is being referred to as the “we all partied” line of argument, as that was ex-Finance Minister Brian Lenihan’s unfortunate way of putting it. Now we must reform and recommit.

On the German (core) stage Habermas and Fischer round on Germany and Merkel for their current behaviour and their lack of collegiality, that they are acting too self-interestedly and have forgotten their European vocation they claim. They say that at the very point at which they could realise that calling they are instead myopically acting in their own limited interest. To which the German man on the street who reads Bild, might say why not; when do we get to become a normal nation like the Finns who are also in favour of punishing the periphery?

The stresses are still mounting. The ECB’s interest rate rises are worrying. Wages in the Eurozone are unlikely to follow the inflation in price of oil which is what the rate rise nominally seeks to counter. If they do to any extent it will be in the core. In the periphery wages and salaries have dropped like stones. In the Irish case average income has dropped from being top in the EU15 in 2007 relative to the average income of the group to 2nd last in 2010. That’s some serious volatility. Now the ECB signals wage “restraint”. When incomes have already been cut to the bone, the only thing that results is redundancies. So central bank policy is now functioning to alleviate inflationary pressure on employed core workers rather than avoiding increasing the burden on struggling peripheral workers whose income has dropped, or who are suffering high unemployment. This in countries needing bailouts. The ECB are required to take this narrow view by design. And while Central Banks should be above political interference it remains that the design of the institutions is either faulty, being incapable of holistically adressing problems, or the economic integration of the Eurozone is a sham that is being slowly and painfully exposed.

Mortgages, which have already been supported by forbearance measures etc will continue to grow as a problem, and the next two ECB meetings appear to be heading for further rises. This against a backdrop of a banking crisis which everyone suspects is not over. That they did this the same day that a peripheral Eurozone member sought a bailout is nearly blackly funny. Portugal’s mortgages are virtually all variable rate. The price stability doctrine of the ECB was rigidly built in when the Germans gave up the DM. Now we are all learning just what it means to be peripheral to Germany. The very word “peripheral” is embedding itself in the discourse, in news reports and debates.

I cannot foresee any drive to deepened integration succeeding. It can only happen when, or rather if, the Eurozone can declare victory over these grinding problems. That would be when the window for integration would open. As it stands the very thing that was supposed to drive integration by knitting economies together is being destroyed by the institutions who are trying to isolate Eurozone problems in peripheral economies, and in turn is undermining the EU. May you live in interesting times indeed.

In other words with no monetary tools available to adjust the Irish economy such as inflating debt away, devaluing the currency etc, the ECB and IMF are playing a game of chicken and are relying on the economy to go through a period of internal deflation up to a point before throttling back on the price we pay for their support. The “internal deflation” policy is an explicit policy of the ECB etc, true, but I wonder just how much they have planned a step down on the “bailout’s” punitive terms after a certain period in order to encourage deflation initially before reviving the economic prospects somewhat after a period. If they have designed the package to do that then aren’t they playing chicken with the economy?

Now reading the newspapers you’ll spot several columnists warning of the situation developing like Iran post-79. These writers don’t have a positive contribution to proffer on just how Egyptians should handle their frustration and repression. Instead it’s the same reactionary, pro-”stability” canards being rolled out again. Some of these reactionary columns come dressed in the clothes of a form of Western Liberalism that fears any Arab world which does not aspire to their post-Fukuyama end of history liberal democracies and dreads a moral universe informed by Islam rather than Kant. But they do not stray too far from the more caustically realist Cassandras in their acquiescence in the crushing, humiliating reality of “stable” Arab states dominated by aging autocrats.

The true dark possibility that I fear, however, more resembles Algeria post-92 which is a far far worse spectre. There the regime reaction to the FIS’s clear course towards power following their dominance of the first round of the general election led to the second round being cancelled and a nightmarish civil war matched only by Lebanon’s in the region. But of course Algeria was never substantially on the radar of the US so that nightmare isn’t a part of the idiot columnists’ mental universe and they don’t consider the horrors of a military regime holding on as happened in Algeria. Luckily Egypt doesn’t have the equivalent of the GIA. At least not yet. Just Hamas on it’s border and a peace process killed by Israel. But then the GIA didn’t begin it’s campaign of carnage until the FIS had been outlawed and repression made the order of the day. The sooner Mubarak’s gone the better for everyone. Even the US.

The pataphysician Alfred Jarry was so excited by the close-fitting kit that, before the First War, he took to dressing in the uniform of a cycle racer. He caused a scandal by following Mallarmé’s funeral cortège on his bicycle.

FROM: The Raging Peloton by Iain Sinclair in the London Review of Bikes Books, an article available at:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n02/iain-sinclair/the-raging-peloton?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3302

When Seanie put paid to that approach, Cowen has acted as though he has no reason to engage with the flurry of consternation because the very premise that there could be any wrongdoing ascibed to the conversation was simply impossible. The “I cannot tell a lie” response is clearly no use when no one trusts you. You cannot trade on credit(ability) you do not have. Nor can your party. Quite apart from that it is illogical, a case of begging the question. “I act in the best interests of the country, therefore I could not have done anything wrong” is no argument.

The real problem for Cowen is that is he so far behind the curve on where the conversation is that he has no possible way of shaping the narrative.

The Irish people clearly believe that what has occurred to the country is a crime of historic proportions, so why not look at the breach that has opened between Cowen and the country in the terms of a crime. Look at this way:

When trying to convince a jury it is popular to sum up the allegation against a defendant (in the US at least) under the headings: means, motive, and opportunity.

Cowen clearly had the means: his Cabinet’s bank guaranteee, continued shoring up and bailing out illustrate the powers they can exercise from the pinnacle of power. Cowen & Co repeatedly insist on the neccesity of those decisions, that their hand was forced and so on. They will cling to that piece of wreckage til their dying day.

Now trying to summon a motive is clearly problematic. Who could possibly want this? But then they didn’t expect any of the outcomes that have flowed from their decisions. They never thought they’d have to nationalise Anglo, they never saw the markets coming, they never thought they’d have the ECB breathing down their neck or the IMF flying in. They never thought Seanie Fitz would open his mouth about golf dates either, partly because they never imagined the Sun King of Irish banks could ever be disposed in such disgrace. So the popular imagination trying to make sense of it all decides that the motive must have been to save their pals. Their pals became too big to fail in their own minds.

But as Seanie Fitz clearly exemplifies, they could not seperate the men (and the stray woman) from their roles and institutions. The interests of Cowen are those of Fianna Fail which is the national movement, and thus are those of the State and people. That’s why the first reaction of Cowen to opposition and media criticism is exasperated dismissal couched in the horrible vernacular of civil service administrators. To Cowen it is the critics who don’t get it and appreciate all that is being done on their behalf. This mindset isn’t helped by a media atmosphere that allows such obsessions to fester. The current obssession with Cowen’s leadership would leave you believing that his presence or absence at the head of Fianna Fail would change anything between now and a general election.

Similarly Sean Fitzpatrick was Chairman of Anglo was Anglo was the Irish banking system. When he loaned money he did so he says because he liked the individual, it was all about the person. Anglo let personalities take precedence. The abstract ideas of roles, institutions and so on were dead to Seanie. Once AIB and the other banks tried to remodel themselves in this new mould, the fate of the country was probably sealed, long before the night of guarantee in September 2008.

So they cannot see that they were helping out their buddies because they could distinguish between their pals and the positions and institutions that they inhabited. Motive was couched in confusion; a misdirected and myopic attempt to genuinely intervene in the circus of destruction and save the misbegotten system they had shaped was not an underhand move to save their pals because they couldn’t tell the one from the other. Their motive was born more in ignorance than conspiracy.

Which brings us to the fairways of disgrace. We know two men played golf, we know who they were and that they had dinner and beyond that it is the circumstances that give hours of strolling the fairways its charge. Collectively we are ready to metaphorically hang Cowen & Co from the town clock, but before we do that we want to convince ourselves of our own righteous idignation. So what if they played golf, says Cowen, golf is golf is golf is golf and nothing more we’re told. That phone call was re-directed to the Central Bank they tell us. Nothing “untoward” to see here. And there were no other contacts that Cowen has “in his knowledge”. It borders on the “money was resting in my account” defense: as long as you remove the before and after, the causes and consequences, the thing itself is innocent.

The national imagination however, testing the rope, sees opportunity. That is: oppurtunity to collude, to conspire, to prepare. Cowen could never even attempt to claim they innocently compared notes and no more, because the sheer monumentality of the collapse that Anglo has infected the State with renders all Anglo’s actions as criminal to the public’s mind.

And Cowen knew that there was no way he could publicly present these interactions with Seanie at all because he knows that they regarded themselves as identical with their roles and institutions. Cowen was the Country, Seanie was the Banks. Those fairways and links, clubhouses and dinners, golf club villages and bars were the territory where those with power entertained the petitions and plans of other brokers of power. In Sean Fitzpatrick’s words, this was the “19th hole”. The crowning fetishisation and moment of glory to the elite of Celtic Tiger Ireland was the Ryder Cup at the K Club.

So whatever might have been said or not said on the fairways we should aknowledge the real nub of those controversy of Cowen’s golfing break: that the fairways and back rooms replaced our instituions and civil society, that we allowed the decisions of our society to be made by an elite of egomaniacs who couldn’t distinguish themselves from their roles or institutions and who have escaped the framework of responsibility and account that a democratic and open society requires. The public don’t need a smoking gun or stained blue dress anymore, its enough that they trod the fairway together.

If you really want to reform the Dail and make it the centre of Irish decision making, you might first consider ploughing those fairways of disgrace.

America is the world’s leading exporter of both regular and irregular verbs.

FROM: Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books, a research paper availabe here  http://www.librarian.net/wp-content/uploads/science-googlelabs.pdf [PDF]

Daft Punk have signed on to write the score to Joseph Kosinski’s new Tron movie. Excellent.

Story is at /Film.

Unsurprisingly Jamaica does best of all. Here’s the table as cooked up by the number crunchers at Crooked Timber:

Here’s the Crooked Timber post.

They are now straight linking to other people’s content at the Ideas blog. Basically like an old style blog they’re pointing you to the good stuff. The link economy is bedding in at the Grey Lady.

I’d love to see the Irish Times editors do something similar. What does Madam’s eyes scan as she sips her tea and stops thinking of new ways to fill August’s silly season pages I wonder. Do you think she reads xkcd?

Via the creative review blog.

Nice Alexander McQueen suit there Wallace