With the euphoria of the American elections past and the world struggling to come to grips with the financial panic that seemed about to overwhelm it, Pat O’Connelly returned to Dublin. The contrast between the city’s bleak landscape and the bright skies of Miami could not have been more unwelcoming. As his taxi made its way through city centre, the Christmas lights, which still decorated the streets, gave off a strange glare in the early evening fog. The driver sniffed and mumbled that they ‘would do little feckin good for the working man with jobs melting away like good Irish butter on toast’.
The millions of twinkling stars that decorated O’Connell Street made a sad contrast to the gloomy atmosphere that had descended on the city, dampening its usual festive spirit. After two decades of prosperity Dubliners had forgotten what an economic crisis was and were desperately trying to come to terms with calamity that had hit them.
It was reported Christmas sales had dropped almost ten percent. The years of Asian style growth were a rapidly fading memory of a happier past. O’Connelly suspected fewer Irish shoppers had made what had almost become a tradition: a trip to New York to buy Christmas gifts or ring-in the New Year. A good many Irish men and women would have been too worried thinking about their jobs and mortgage repayments to frivolously indulge in a costly year end getaway. At the bottom of the scale, the less fortunate could even end up like those elderly workers O’Connelly had watched filling shoppers’ bags at Wal-Mart checkouts in San Francisco, or even worse.
The next morning he headed into the city centre to settle a few outstanding details at his Dublin bank, the Irish Netherlands, situated on College Green. Once taken care of he set off for a stroll through Trinity College, wandering across the hushed cobblestoned quad, where the scholarly atmosphere of the venerable institution never failed to remind him of how history created and changed nations. Trinity College had been a bastion of Protestant power in Ireland for centuries, refusing the entry of Catholics into the university until the late 18th century, though when the change came it was viewed with deep suspicion by the Catholic Church. As recently as 1970, Catholics wanting to attend the college had, at least in theory, been obliged to obtain permission from their bishop.
What attracted O’Connelly to the college was its long history and of course its priceless treasures. Amongst them was the vast and ancient Long Room of the old Library Building, filled with countless thousands of books, including the Book of Kells, an Irish treasure, written in the 8th century by monks at the Abbey of Kells in County Meath, a work of extraordinary beauty.
O’Connelly felt at home in Dublin, a city of writers: Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, Jonathan Swift, William Butler Yeats and many more. Perhaps it was that which had attracted him to the city, it seemed to give him some kind of legitimacy, a certain sense of belonging.
Though O’Connelly had been born in London, his staunch Catholic Irish family background had not prevented him from growing up more English than Irish. On the death of his grandfather, his parents had returned to County Wexford to take over the prosperous family owned dairy farm and Pat was dispatched to University College in Dublin to study agricultural science in the hope that he would follow in the family tradition.
A year in Dublin changed that and Pat turned to Trinity College, where he enrolled to study journalism and writing. Two years later he moved on to London where he could more profitably pursue his studies with the addition of modern European languages. Then followed three years in California where he obtained an MBA at the UCLA International Institute and found his first job as an editorial assistant at the LA Times.
With this initial experience, a masters in his pocket and an international background, he was hired by The New York Times and after a promising start was packed off to the newspaper’s Paris agency to learn the art of becoming an international correspondent. Guided by a veteran reporter he discovered the good life, mixing with prominent personalities, both French and international, wining and dining on a generous expense account, attending film festivals, reporting on political summits and of course the usual French scandals.
In Paris O’Connelly met Angela Steiner, a literary agent, and with her help persuaded David Hertzfeld of Bernstein Press, a leading New York publisher, to accept his first book. The book, a political novel set in the French capital, was a success and remained several weeks on the Times Book Review’s bestsellers list. It was the first step to establishing himself as an independent writer. Though he continued to write for the press, he fixed a goal: that of making a name for himself, an ambition that required a new and original novel every eighteen months or two years. To the satisfaction of his literary agent and publisher, his books received good reviews from the critics and regularly made the bestsellers lists.
Eager to commence work on his new book, O’Connelly found Dublin eerily subdued, which suited him fine, far from the distractions of Paris. The month spent back in the US had given him a mountain of information and ideas for his novel, which he had momentarily entitled ‘Armageddon in the City’, not very original, but that was a question to be decided by his publisher.
Not only would the subject make a great story, but each and every passing day added to the gore and drama as economic giants struggled in an astonishing battle for survival as the world looked on in awe and fear. All the right ingredients were present: the rich, the powerful, the heroes, the fools and the gangsters, strutting or stumbling across the stage as the drama was played out, day after day, with its endless rebounds and surprises. Hollywood’s role actors: Tom Cruise and Michael Douglas were mere bit players compared to the real life protagonists, who juggled countless billions of dollars and held the future of entire nations in their hands.
All the elements for an MGM block buster were present: including a hero, in the form of Barack Obama, standing in the wings, waiting for his cue to appear and save the planet. But as every movie goer knew, before Batman could save the planet, there would be many twists and turns in a fast moving plot with special effects and nerve racking sequences.
‘What Hertzfeld wants is a seven hundred page saga, you know like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.’
‘Harry Potter?’ Laura asked incredulously.
‘Yes,’ replied O’Connelly. ‘Because, like in Harry Potter, it will take a magician to solve the problems created by the crisis.’
Thinking back to one of his best-sellers, a story of the search for the Temple of the Jews, set in modern Israel, he smiled to himself. He had read and re-read the Biblical story with its promises of vengeance and retribution to those who deviated from the straight and narrow. It now looked as if Britain was about to suffer hell fire and brimstone, divine retribution for its excesses, and there was no escape, especially as few righteous men could be found in the City’s banks to spare the nation from the ordeal. The day of reckoning was at hand after the New Labour’s wild feast of unwanton hedonistic pleasure: drinking, dancing and extravagance in adoration of the City’s financial services. Few leaders, if any, had given thought to redemption, that is to say the redemption of debt.
The twist at the end of the tale would not be too difficult to imagine ― not a happy Hollywood ending. O’Connelly feared it would be more like The Fall of the Roman Empire, with decadence and ruin, and perhaps the rise of a new empire, to the east, the Far East, but even that was uncertain.
The press, TV news channels and Internet provided him with more than enough material to spin his plot, some stories were wild, fewer were serious. The Daily Express announced a secret plot to admit fifty million African workers into the EU ― ammunition for the BNP, to excite the imaginations of its readers who already lived in fear of losing their jobs and for the future. The Times reported Obama would resort to protectionism to save America’s automobile industry.
The choices were rich and the scams abundant, commencing with the bonus system, a scam that allowed the baddies: bankers, to stuff their pockets with enormous rewards without the least responsibility for their decisions. What provided an even more fascinatingly complex source of raw material was the arcane Wall Street system, which was undisputedly responsible for contaminating the world of finance with its mortgage derived products and other derivatives.
Mark Twain’s words: If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed, came to O’Connelly’s mind. In his own experience, as a journalist and a writer, he had learnt that reality was subjective, with both writers and readers interpreting events to suit their own narrow vision of happenings in the world around them.
He had to admit his own perception of what was to come was vague, even as to how his own personal finances would fare. As he watched the world’s financiers and politicians milling around like a flock of terrified sheep pursued by a pack of feral dogs, he feared that the whole house of cards could come tumbling down.
O’Connelly reconciled his fears with the thought that his properties, whatever happened, were all paid up and would still be there after the crisis finally ran its course. His bank accounts were another matter. The future of the dollar looked uncertain. It would be wise to spread his bets, buying euros and investing in a little gold as there were unavoidable expenses to be covered: taxes and the upkeep of his homes. As to his future income nothing was less certain. To all intents the world was heading for a huge slump.
If unemployment hit Great Depression levels, would there be a market for his books? What would happen if the dreaded spectre of hyperinflation appeared and people realized their money was worthless? Panic would certainly ensue. Manufacturers and service providers would be unable to pay their suppliers. Chaos would create strife and governments would resort to force to maintain law and order if riots got out of control, just as they had in the twenties during the Weimar Republic, when a barrow load of Reich marks was needed to buy a loaf of bread.
He wondered whether his imagination was running away with itself. Could things really get that bad? Would the world’s economic system break down? Would there be a collapse of trade and communications? The long period of peace and prosperity that spanned the 19th and the early part of the 20th centuries had ended in a terrible war that had led to the collapse of the monarchistic dynasties that had ruled Europe for centuries, giving rise to Communism, Fascism and depression. Economic conflict and disorder had been the root cause of those tragic times and it was not totally meaningless to see a parallel between those already distant events and the ongoing economic turmoil
For confirmation of his sombre thoughts he had only to look at the City of London, the epicentre of the world financial crisis. Business had come to a brutal standstill and God only knew what would happen next.