Do you remember back in school how the smart lads in the top class looked down their noses at the other lads in the streams below them? I have distinct memories of the fellas in the top stream at my school, many of whom went on to be doctors and lawyers – and who are now at the top of their professions, having a lofty view of their own abilities.
Why wouldn’t they? They were mainly decent enough fellas, and they were lucky because the entire Leaving Cert system was designed to bolster their egos, tell them how clever they were and usher them on a professional southside Dublin path to prosperity. They were very much the type of lads that the system was designed to foster and produce – the six straight A merchants.
After school, they flew through college and joined big accountancy or law firms, while the doctors went to the US to work like dogs, climbing up the greasy medical pole. They all sought the financial nirvana of a consultant’s position back home, knowing that it guaranteed a huge income and buckets of status in an increasingly status-obsessed society.
In the meantime, the lads in the streams below got on okay in the Leaving Cert, and many went into business, buying and selling, ducking and diving. As is the way of things in a big rugby-playing school, the two tribes – many of whom knew each other, but never really hung out together – would meet up at internationals and the like, swapping stories as their paths went on different tangents.
Over the years, many of the lads who were academically ‘average or below average’ moved into property and finance.
Some initially sold insurance or worked in the banks. Others might have moved into the building trade and graduated from site managers to having their own small companies.
By the 1990s, these lads, if they were still here, were starting to get a few breaks.
Others who had emigrated and got into business abroad thought about coming home to an Ireland that looked as if it was finally changing.
The top-stream boys carried on at the law firms, gaining status as they moved upward, becoming more and more respectable as they grew in seniority. In the big accountancy practices, they were being bumped up to partners and, although they worked outrageously long hours, the prize was in sight. The doctors, by their mid-30s,were on their way home with consultant positions up for grabs.
Most of them were also getting very rich.
The smart boys had joined companies which were benefiting enormously from the boom. The law firms, the consultancy outfits and the accountancy firms – not to mention the banks – were making a fortune, and they were all taking their cut. A small bit of a huge and growing pie becomes significant very easily.
The Dublin professional classes had become very wealthy in the boom. And the extraordinary thing about all this was that, in the main, they didn’t take any risks. They just worked hard, charged huge fees and, with both eyes firmly set on leafy suburbs, moved up the ladder. They had huge status and, in some cases, egos to match.
In the meantime, the lads who had done pass maths in the Leaving Cert were also on the make, but they were in business and property. They were making even more money than the straight-A boys. They were buying and selling, wheeling and dealing and, most of all, flipping.
They had seemed to be able to make money out of nothing, buying property and then selling the stuff on in a few months – making an enormous and seemingly effortless twist.The ‘stupid’ lads, at least in the eyes of the straight-A students, were achieving far above their abilities – and it all seemed so easy.
This is not what the system and the doting mothers had predicted. They, the professional class, should be on top – after all, hadn’t they done honours Latin, Irish, French and maths – not to mention the sciences – for the Leaving Cert? The ‘stupid’ lads just kept buying and selling, and now they had this new thing called leverage, which made the gains astronomical.
So, around 2005, just as the market was peaking, the smart lads decided to get into the game. They were invited by the ‘stupid’ lads they knew in school to get into what were termed ‘syndicates’. The less academic fellas were putting these things together all day, promising riches beyond their smart lads’ wives dreams. They all knew each other, after all, so everything would be grand.
Because the smart fellas had never taken a risk in their life, they had no idea how to access risk. They thought it was easy to become a Dermot Desmond.
They thought that the type of calculations someone like him was doing on a minute by minute basis couldn’t be that difficult, particularly as lads four streams below them in school could figure it out. And so, about four years ago, the complexion of the property market changed.
It became a free-for-all for the lads who’d done well in their Leaving Cert, but wouldn’t know how to ‘take their profits’ in a month of Sundays.
The people they used to look down on – the pass maths students – saw them coming and began to sell property syndicates to them, pretending that the clever lads were getting the deal of the decade.
So the professional classes, having been told from their childhood onwards that they were geniuses, were too arrogant and hubristic to know they were being had. After all, why would they not think they were smarter than the lads who had sold them the deals? They were smarter, and they had the UCD parchment on their mammies’ living-room wall to prove it.
But, in truth, the smart boys knew nothing about commerce, and had just bought a pig in a poke. Then the crash happened, and the chill could be felt in the equity partner offices of our top law and accountancy firms. These guys are now bankrupt, with enormous cash calls being made to finance the syndicates that are now under water. The top barristers and bankers were equally hammered, because they didn’t understand the rudiments of commerce. They thought it was easy. We are now left with the destruction of Dublin’s – and other cities’ – professional classes.
But the professional classes aren’t giving up that easily. They need to protect themselves, and what better way to do it than with Nama, a construction so devoid of commercial common sense – and so complex and legalistically elegant – that it could only have been constructed by a swot, a straight-A student whose mammy always thought commerce was vulgar and not for her boy.
Nama can be seen as a ‘class rescue scheme’ for Ireland’s professional elite. It has all the hallmarks of something that was constructed by the clever lads. The same ones who destroyed themselves and the property market at the end of the boom are now, via Nama, destroying the property market in the bust.
They didn’t understand commerce on the way up, which is why so many of them are bust; and they don’t understand the basics on the way down, which is why they have come up with Nama.
And who is going to gain from it? They are – because a floor has been put on their investment portfolios and, more to the point, they will make a fortune from the legal and accounting fees which will come with the bureaucracy of Nama.
The pass maths lads can see that the thing won’t work, which is why hardly any business people support it – but, then again, the sense of entitlement of the straight-A fellas is so strong that even a national catastrophe could not dent it.
Seems like we are heading into a Bourgeoisie/Proletariate narrative. I wonder where that will lead us?
Back -to- Basics
Class Room Politics –
back of the class versus the front of the class ; and
Jesuits versus Christian Brothers ; and
How to make money out of sweat and tears and how to make your money work for you; and
Rugby versus GAA ; and
D4 & D Rest of the Provence ; and
Merrion Square & D ELite -versus- All D Workers ; and
Good v Bad ; and
Honesty -v- Deception ; and
Sailing Boat racing a Curragh ; and
Packet & Tripe v Foie Gras
just endless .
This government are living on another planet… If you or I went to a bank looking for a new business loan using the same lucky dip financial predictions as Lenihan, we’d be laughed out of the place.
I believe theNAMA’s financial projections are all flawed and I also believe that we really do not know the whole TRUTH yet and that Anglo is a Pot of Worms that are known by a few and we all will know after the enactment of NAMA but then it will be too late .
Absolutely David ……………. this helps explain to anyone why there is very little public opposition to NAMA…
A lot of people think or hope they are part of the elite and are keeping quiet.
but by definition, the elite cant be too big, so thats why I reckon were in for some shock and awe in 2010…..
David – this article makes an simple storey for the general populace to understand easily and your efforts should continue in that language to deliver the real facts .
They thought they were the elite, the arrogance and snobbishness of the last fifteen odd years was amazing. I had seen this before in London, but they even out snobbed the Londoners, it was truly breath taking. But, they were not the real elite, they were just given a taste, and then it was taken back. Our plastic elite have now been put back in their place, and they do not like it. That is where NAMA is coming into play.
David , a couple of more articles like that and we will have to offer you asylum on the Northside .
the fish will never cross to the other side of the liffey
David, would you care to predict where the economy will be in 3 years time?.rte.ie/theweekinpolitics contains footage of the spat between Morgan Kelly and Pat Mc Ardle-priceless.
Once again a bunch of mean caricatures. What is most offensive is the sneering manner in which David refers to the straight A students. I think 6 straight A’s is an amazing achievement. Allow me to illustrate my abhorrence to the above by my own circumstances. I went to a private secondary school. Not one person from my year of 90 became a doctor or a lawyer to my knowledge, there was one architect. My fiancee went to a public school and is a doctor. She worked really hard to get where she is and I would not demean the… Read more »
Well I had a very interesting experience on Sunday in which I aged about 20 years . I was driving through Melbourne and I managed to end up with ‘ Chopper ‘ Read on my bonnet . Having Australias most craziest criminal with no ears and prison tattoos rolling over your bonnet is an interesting feeling . Afer a few strong drinks to steady the nerves it got me thinking to something that happened here last year . The ‘ elite ‘ in Oz were not involved in property but there involved in the stock market in a very big… Read more »
Our mafia leader went straight too! Went into the ‘buke’ writin business! He also used to try to make ‘problems’ disappea. By publicly recommending they commit suicide…..
Excellent article. It is all about saving the elite. Just look at Prof. Drumm and Harney praising his efforts. It is obvious that neither of them have ever had to wait on a trolley at Monaghan General or Waterford Regional. Which brings me to our Bush like Taoiseach. Like Bush Biffo has a history of a love affair with the booze. Unlike Bush, Biffo never got successfully dried out. Biffo has the accent the mannerisms, and the exterior of being one of us PAYE workers. But like Bertosconi, he is selling the PAYE workers out to the elite. Biffo is… Read more »
By the way nothing wrong with somebody working hard and getting good grades. But the if a kid from a working class gets good grades, and gets into university, his background is a positive disadvantage to getting a position in an ISEQ listed company. And nobody can convince me that AIB/BOI/ANIB/ILP/INBS/EBS etc.. are meritocratic, and socially egalitarean institutions. For this reason I minimize my dealings with each of them. Let them advertise all day and night, and I will still not deal with them. Gandhi told us the necessity of withdrawing our willingness to prop up those who are doing… Read more »
The head of some minor league college claimed on Newstalk yesterday that the exorbitant salaries of college lecturers was justified by the fundamental entry requirement being a PhD in their subject. PhD stands for Doctor of Philosophy. I have known a lot of PhDs but never yet met one who had the vaguest notion of ‘Philosophy’ in the classical sense. They had been trained to use ideas constructively, not to speculate about their validity. I raise this because the government is in thrall to academic “experts”. Negotiators talk blithely about the “social contract” without specifying what form of social contract… Read more »
I actually think that the status obsession is at the root of our dysfunctional society.
Status obsession feeds the irrationality of the entire dysfunctionality, and lives off it. It is what is called ‘a feedback loop with positive reinforcement and containment’.
The crash was a threat to this. In effect it made it a non-paying proposition.
But in the long run it will collapse the entire society. And after that happens, the next thing you will hear is “welcome to the Asian century”.
subscribe.
I laughed reading this as it described my old school to a tee. We were groomed to be doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers etc. Of course everything here is a bit black and white. Intelligent people are not all so self-obsessed and arrogant that they are not capable of a little reflection when they get older. I sincerely doubt that any of my old classmates would see themselves as some part of predestined elite. Basically the school I went to taught us to play safe and that is pretty much what I have done myself. I admit that I was sometimes… Read more »
MAKING THE ELITE PAY I completed my leaving certificate in 1968 – the last year of exam marks, as opposed to grades. This was an era when the achievement of straight A1’s, ie 95-100% never happened. Even if most of your subjects had a mathematical/scientific emphasis you still would not reach 95-100% in English or Irish. My achievement in breaking 70% in Honours French with a score of 74 marks was considered miraculous. Of course, the syllabus was totally different, very literary with no Oral exam. Competition for the few County Council Scholarships to pay for a university education was… Read more »
Hi David, I realise you use a very over-simplified description of social classes within education and Ireland to deliver your point. That noted, your conclusion is correct in that NAMA is a method to save those that have “some skin” in the game/pass the parcel/our property bubbe and related items, such as AIB, BOI, AnIB shares, etc. Its why the sentence “they are too important to fail” should be rewritten as “we are too important to fail”. NAMA is a massive bailout and as Stiglitiz points out is criminal. But whether the revolution to reverse it is possible is another… Read more »
I’m from south dublin, around Dmcw’s age, educated privately at an ultra elite school, 16 students in my year and groomed for university and post graduate and onto blue chip employment doors open all the way once you had the academic results. David’s article is quite something. Strikes me the article is a bazooka going off. The target though is nebulous to a degree for what he and the rest of us i hope are seeking too dissolve is amorphous and highly deceitful cunning and utterly ruthless. David’s article takes the guided class structure of south dublin and it’s machinations… Read more »
NAMA is an effort to ‘rescue’ a couple of zeros at the end of our “elite’s” bank balances. The ‘elite’ are not just the 6A’s folk, they’re also the guys inside the tent at the Galway races, they’re the landowning farmers turned property “developers” (Developer in the Irish context often means payers of the right FF politician to get land rezoned.) they’re the intergenerational family politicians. NAMA is clearly a bad business deal. You, your children and very likely their children will end up paying for it. Emigrate. If you can’t emigrate, make sure you’re children learna foreign language. Train… Read more »
John ALLEN, this one’s for you (nothing to do with NAMA, unless you factor-in the “space-cadets” on the Board of AIB and elsewhere!):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8314581.stm
Folks, this is what will be on “The Frontline”, later tonight:
http://www.rte.ie/ie/frontline/entry/f%C3%A1s_nama_and_eamon_gilmore
Fás, NAMA and Eamon Gilmore.
Worth a skeptical look?
Folks, a really good post here, from Stephen Kinsella:
http://www.progressive-economy.ie/2009/10/guest-post-by-stephen-kinsella-nama.html
Folks, here is Kinsella’s (1st of three, he promises) report on the Kenmare conference at the weekend:
http://www.stephenkinsella.net/2009/10/19/are-economists-bad-for-the-economy/
David, Excellent Article, one of your best since it gets to the nub of the whole problem we are now faced with. Some great comments here also, well done lads and enjoying the bit of humour too – “They were smarter, and they had the UCD parchment on their mammies’ living-room wall to prove it.”, hahaha, I know so many mammies like this. Remember, Lenihan went to Cambridge, which is an over-achiever’s wet dream, so he knows all about this culture of elitism. Garry, Comment no.5 is spot on, the problem is that nearly everyone wants to be part of… Read more »
What is Brian Lenihan’s primary concern ? From what I can see Brian Lenihan’s primary concern is maintaining the social order. This social order might be responsible for the problems that we are now in. That social order might be responsible for the entire underperformance of Ireland after Independence. But Brian Lenihan’s primary policy objective is the maintaining of the status quo. That is not a conservative status quo. In fact it is the most liberal status quo that you can find in Europe. And it is obsessed with social veneer. It is all about ensuring that the various layers… Read more »
How does David McWilliams know the demographic of the winners and losers from the boom & subsequent bust?
Is there a single statistic or figure to back the class-based assertions in this article up? The evidence is anecdotal at best.
I think the spoils of the boom are more randomly distributed throughout society with the determining factor being how early people participated in the property boom ; the losers are those first time buyers who ‘got in’ too late and are left holding the baby.
Paddy
Deco and wills, these are excellent pieces. You have addressed essential issues in relation to NAMA and Irish society. Indicative of the endemic problems you both elucidate, I think, is the AIB Board of Directors’ decision to pay the national agreement wage-increase to its employees, at a time when it survives only by dint of the government’s generosity with taxpayers’ money. This is coupled with the Boards proposed appointment of another “insider” as the new CEO. It would appear that Lenihan’s earlier “tough-talk” about controlling the banks, and forcing them to bend to his will, has transmuted into “Laissez-faire” with… Read more »
Deco: Maybe we will never move ourselves to host the kind of high tech powerhouse that exists in Israel, California, Bavaria, North Carolina, etc., which you hold to be an ideal this country should aspire to. But we’ve already been there, done that, with our irascible neighbours across the border, our beach house culture, our BMWs and devout hypocrits. And look at the mess it got us into. It would be better if our collective intelligence could establish firm foundations for a just and fair society, where people come first and where every family’s achievements are honoured, whether through breeding… Read more »
I enjoyed reading wills eulogy to the unknown irishmen that seem to be sewn together under a code of omerta and still invisible in the sense of the word.His words remind me of the ancient ‘ fith fath’ whereby then men coloured themselves with a toad derivative that allowed themselves to change into various colours to hide against whatever background they find themselves in. The only visible sport I can see the NAMA cover up happening is Rugby and this transends all societal gatherings on this isle.Rugby is a common denominator for everything ‘wills’ says that cements their consciousness .It… Read more »
Hi Tim…..thanks for the link. When I read dmcw article I thought that you might add the New York slant to it and with a dosh of rural bruree .
In Limerick where I attended the only secondary school north of the city run by the Christian Brothers. We had some real achievers and none of them were elite.The most famous from my class was Pat Cox and from his early primary days he stood out a mile and extraordinary in every way.His first foray into television was on ‘The School around The Corner presented by Paddy Crosby when it was televised from Limerick on a few occassions. He continues to support both the primary and secondary schools he attended to this very day.
John ALLEN, I made a decision not to do so, as I have posted previously about the fact that I never encountered snobbery or elitism until I moved to Dublin. That may be due to my own naivety, of course, but I found that even very young teenagers in Dublin were already steeped in notions of class-distinction.
NAMA—- Need Another Million Arseholes and by god this country has no shortage of them.Just look at the ones that vote for Fianna Fail the corruption party.The fools that signed up for the property boom and now believe the in the messiah and the second coming ie NAMA.Northside, southside, eastside westside the fools are everywhere.The same fools that treated CJ as a demi god and think the venerable John O’Donoghue is some sort of hero after that rising speech.The last time I heard a speech like that the man who made it was hung, drawn and quartered.No such luck with… Read more »
wills- on your point of sadism again in the past 2000 years ago there has been a culture of ‘sile na gig’ with stone carvings everywhere it was practiced .I am not going into its process just leave it to the imagination.Nothing seems to change .
David – I think we are requesting from you a picture that you can conjure of what will happen in 2010 , 2011 etc in words and prose as in the above article – the reality is appearing now visibly for all of us and we need ‘a new light’.
The Prime Minister of Norway earns 120.000 euro approximately, the PM of Spain 90.000 euro a. The Ministers, Deputies, Judges, Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers, School Principals, Vice Principals, Teachers in secondary schools, Lecturers in Universities, etc. considerable less than in Ireland. I’ve never heard a nurse in this country complaining of “how hard they work and how little they earn”, and we all know that they really work hard and have many reasons to complaint. And they are the best in the world not because they say it, but because everybody else says they are. But come to the rest of… Read more »
Fascinating; truly, fascinating!
David, 1. The national debate is now driven by the politics of envy, begrudgery and class warfare. 2. Your piece feeds into this. The ‘Elite’ is populist construct, and its mostly nonsense. 3. Why would the FF Bogger in-bred Political classes want to bail out the very D4 professional classes they so despise? 4. Some of your observations are indeed correct, but the conclusion doesn’t hold water. 5. Entrepreneurs were looked down upon by the priests & brothers who churned out young ‘suits’ for the professions 6. Some of those entrepreneurs became dotcom millionaires. Jealously flared among the professions (and,… Read more »
Paying off debts is painful.It’s like dying.You try to put it off as long as you can.Nobody runs an open a tab forever.And just as you can’t go to heaven without dying, when its time to pay up someone is bound to suffer. Borrowers are often perfidious , crisis are usually insidious , and bankers are morans. So whats ahead in the wild seas before us is as good as ‘your look out sailor ‘ who usually wears an ear ring around the lobe of his ear to give him better eyesight. My prediction is : The Government dont know… Read more »
John Allen’s apocalyptic vision is now possible. Latvia – in the EU remember, but not the Euro – are threatening to default – which could trigger the collapse of 3 huge Swedish banks. Their public sector have already taken 40% cuts (note to our spoiled lot!).
California (famously touted as world’s 7th largest economy, is already paying teachers & other public servants with IOUs …. But the Irish media are SO myopic they cant see past the local phoney wars here to look around what’s happening elsewhere
Tim- the wobble is real .Yesterday I had a running nose like a tap all day and I wobbled a lot.
If the underlying problem is a class issue, then dont we need to begin psychological treatment before any economical / life chancging actions can take place… I’m not an expert (yet) but addicts need to want to change before there’s a real chance for them. Right now FF are talking about changing their ways like an addict who’s still high.
What David has presented in this article is the theory. Here is the practice to the theory. The Anglo Loan to Seanie. The Permo Loan to Anglo. The Enst and Dung Audit that missed the Anglo loan to Seanie. (Officially, it was an oversight, not a coverup). The manner in which the board of directors in Permo staged the act in which the Permo CEO resigned, and board refused to accept his resignation. (effectively sticking their two fingers up at the former shareholders of Anglo, the taxpayers, and the citizens as the new shareholder of Anglo). The government handling of… Read more »
I don’t know whether my experience was unique but having completed the leving cert, I found that finding a half decent job depended entirely on how much leverage one’s parents had.Whether a person obtained 6 A or 6 D grades was irrelevant-the cushy jobs in financial services trade apprenticeships, local govt etc were obtained via the back door.Little wonder the banks etc are in such a mess.Why have the credit committees not been fired?.
NAMA is but a symptom of Ireland’s lack of morality and its mere existance challenges our right to exist as a nation. I think John Allen’s vision is inevitable unless something momentous happens in the coming weeks. NAMA is non-viable and indeed it is starting to look that EU as a concept could do a wobbly very soon. I expect to see the bank collapse chain reaction happening soon. Why? Simply becasue I do not see where the wealth is being generated. Logistics, Manufacturing across the EU, Purchasing Manager’s indices are all floundering. Stimulation is not working. Today I read… Read more »
Lets look for HOPE: Thinking positively hope might begin as follows: Euro is devalued by 30% early next year.This is a realistic possibility to prevent the Baltics and Spain and Ireland causing a domino roll along distroying everything in it’s wake; and Should NAMA be carried through the value of land and buildings will then rise due to devaluation .This could ironically give a positive result to it’s financial performance ;and Jobs might recover and exports rise again. Hyperinflation would be a sticky issue for all workers and would need to be planned properly. Reform of the Irish Political and… Read more »