Agreed. Journalists and opinion makers, and opinion makers opinion makers, get your skates on... Theory has done nothing but mask this perpetual spiral. Everybody is having a bit of fun with Ireland right now - those sly little men with their green hats and their funny shaped walking sticks - but why do I feel, and have felt for many years, that we're the model neo-liberal economy? Oh yeah, its because that's what the international powers told us. Were they then lying? Or, perhaps more importantly: are they now still lying?