The greatest danger of recession
The greatest dangers of recession and depression are not unemployment and foreclosure. The greatest dangers of recession are strife, killing and war. World War II was a direct result of the Great Depression. People with jobs and a future are less likely to want to kill other people. Compelling evidence comes from Northern Ireland, whose booming economy of the last decade has supported, finally, a diminishing of the Troubles. Now we hear this, from the NYT:
BELFAST (Reuters) - Political leaders and former foes said on Sunday the killing of two British soldiers by gunmen in Northern Ireland would not be allowed to throw the province back into a new cycle of violence.Gunmen shot the soldiers as they picked up pizzas at the gates of an army base near Antrim on Saturday night. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack but it was widely suspected to be the work of a republican splinter group.
Which may be related to this, from Bloomberg:
Unemployment in Northern Ireland is rising at the fastest pace in 38 years as house prices plunged 34 percent last year. The downturn that began with the end of a property boom has been amplified by cooling demand for exports.
Comments
Fascinating...and to think I thought World War II had something to do with the Holocaust, fascist aggression and military expansion in Europe and a little to-do on the island of Oahu. Thanks Jay for setting me straight.
And thanks for connecting the dots between the cooling demand for Irish exports and the murder of British soldiers by a gang of thugs.
Please keep the connection between economic troubles and violence in its proper perspective. You risk gravely over-simplifying (or perhaps over-complicating) the causes of a craven act of violence. The possible causes may be economic, political, religious, psychological and moral, and probably some combination of them all. In the Irish incident, I suspect that economics is well down the list of root causes and psychological and moral sickness is much more at play here.
Capture and punish the killers, that's all. Don't grant them the excuse of victimhood, economic or otherwise.
Posted by: FS | March 9, 2009 12:28 PM