The market led reforms ideology which you so elegantly critique in your Anglo disease series conveniently edits out these other factors and concentrates on the tax cuts - one factor amongst many.  However France could also learn a lot about the mechanisms and institutions which Ireland has evolved to resolve conflicts of interest.  Your ideas of conflict resolution seem still to revolve around burning cars at barricades 1968 style...   That should get you going!

As for communists, no we only have the pinko smoked salmon socialist variety here, some farmed, and some wild.  Arguing that the state has a duty to act in the interests of its citizens is hardly communism, is it?  It is politics 101.

As a business manager throughout the 1980's and 1990's I was always amused to hear my more Thatcherite colleagues extol the virtues of self-interest and "greed is good".  But woe betide a Union leader who sought to do the same for his members!  That sort of idiocy has long passed out of mainstream business thinking in Ireland, and I would hope out of Europe as well.

What I have advocated above is quite simply that the State has no business in under-writing the profits of the rich.  If the public interest requires that certain risks be covered off and insured, the state has a duty to ensure its taxpayers will also reap the benefits when taking those risks pays off.  That is simple business logic that any business person would apply to the same process if s/he were taking on certain risks.

The notion that only the private sector can make profits, and only the state should bear the losses is so infantile, it beggars belief.  It is the ultimate nanny state ideology - for capitalists.  Who's state is it anyway?  Since when was a democracy not of and for the people?

The triumph of the neo-liberal agenda is that it has persuaded people it is in their own interests, moral and otherwise, to carry the risks of economic activity, whereas capital is entitled to a virtually guaranteed rate of return.  Real business isn't like that, and doesn't require military interventions around the globe to make profits possible.  You should ask the Irish!

"It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."