Published: November 23rd 2010 - at 2:19 pmIrish bankers: a modest proposal
It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through Dublin, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with hedge fund managers, followed by three, four, or six forex dealers, all in rags, and importuning every passing European Union bureaucrat and International Monetary Fund official for an alms.
Bank bosses instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in stroling to beg sustenance for their helpless recent recruits who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight for the ever-diminishing number of job openings in the UK’s ailing financial services sector, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes or other various offshore tax havens in the West Indies.
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young financial consultant well nursed, is, at 30 years old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that he will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.
I do therefore humbly offer it to publick consideration, that of those working in the International Financial Services Centre in D1, some 200 or so may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine, and my reason is, that these people are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore, one male will be sufficient to serve four females.
That the remaining bankers, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising local upmarket restaurateurs to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump, and fat for a good table.
A sell-side analyst will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.
[With apologies to Jonathan Swift]
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Dave Osler is a regular contributor. He is a British journalist and author, ex-punk and ex-Trot. Also at: Dave's Part
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Story Filed Under: Blog ,Economy
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Reader comments
Can we add politicians to the menu?
Bravo! Although it’s not hedgies and forex dealers that are stuffed, it’s domestic bank managers and real estate lenders – it was their fault after all.
Hedge funds are actually doing
pretty well out of the recession…
Excellent. Although someone with no sense of humour is going to assume this is serious. This is the internet after all…
I suppose we have been blind to the plight of Irish bankers.
@3
Well don’t forget when Swift published his own – with no internet! – some folk still took him seriously! Fools abide in all times.
[Puts down his haunch of Irish banker and wipes his mouth with the napkin, noting the worrying resemblance to an Irish promissary note...]
S. Pill,
I can sort of justify fools believing it in Swift’s day (there was a lower credibility threshold, and satire was not widespread). It is the idiot (probably small c-conservative website) that holds this up as an example of left-wing idiocy that worries me. Although this being the internet, someone will probably do that ironcially as well…
Delicious piece. A terrible beauty is brawn.
“Can we add politicians to the menu?”
Indeed! Can we please also add right-wing libertarians who supported the deregulation of the banking system which caused the crisis in the first place?
It wasn’t banking deregulation that caused the Irish crisis. That was good old-fashioned bank lending to politicians’ cronies who stole the money (or at least, invested it in dodgy property development schemes that failed, whilst paying themselves huge salaries). No amount of regulation would’ve made a blind bit of difference, given the political connections of both the bankers and the developers.
Love the left’s revisionism…..
No problem with Bankers when they were paying all that tax to fund the left’s ideological spending sprees…..but now there has been a crash and that funding isn’t there, it’s all the bankers’ fault.
11
Love the Tories missng the point…….
Plenty of people had a problem with it; probably apologists like you and all the crypto-Tories in New Labour just had their heads so deep in the trough that your ears were covered? Most people would accept that there is plenty of blame to go around….but funny that it’s always those who can least afford it who come out worst.
You don’t have to be a right wing ideologue to have no sense of humour – but it obviously helps!
Galen10,
perhaps Tyler was being satirical too? No-one could really be that up themselves, surely?
13
Read some of his other posts…I somehow think not 
The comment just doesn’t quite gel as an ironic rejoinder to the OP does it? Just another Tory banging on about hard done by bankers are… same old, same old.
great minds think alike?
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