An Irishman, a Politician and an Economist walk into a bar

I don’t want to comment too much on the Irish problems, so collected a variety of the best news from around the world to share here.

First, some background on the issue: 

Q: Why is the Irish economy in such a crisis?

A: Because they always think their capital should be Dublin.

And some solutions?  

First, merge with Australia as they “have lots of mineral wealth but no water and no culture, whilst Ireland has no mineral wealth but lots of water and lots of culture.”

Second, even better, get the Corrs to save Ireland.

This is because Ireland has no prenuptial laws, so all that needs to happen is that Corrs sisters Andrea, Sharon and Caroline marry a few folks like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and the world's wealthiest investor Warren Buffett.

They then immediately divorce them and take half their net worth, which would bring in about $US50 billion.

That's just about enough to bail out the banks.

Both of the solutions above are obviously far better than the Irish government’s best plan, which is to give all of their citizens free cheese.

This created a very negative reaction from some Irish folks, who were heard to say: “Cheese us Christ. They say that cheese can give you nightmares, and now the nightmares are giving us cheese. They’ve all gone em’mental.”

Worse, this week's the Week makes the point strongly with their front cover:

This is reinforced by some folks who believe Ireland should rest in peace, with this obituary notice placed in the local news rag:

Ireland, 1922-2010, after a terminal illness bravely borne.  Predeceased by founding fathers Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins. Survived by 4.3 million grieving children. Removal from Cowen and Lenihan’s funeral home to the Church of the IMF.

But it’s not that bad. Ireland’s purely been downgraded from AAA+ to AA.

“What does that mean? Before, we were a battery for the remote control, but now we're only good for a Walkman?”

If you appreciate the humour, most of the above was spawned by the Kilkenny Kilkenomics Festival.

As they say, it must be bad when economics becomes interesting, although economics is far too important to be left to the economists!