Predicting the next crash

Madam, – In your Four Year Plan supplement (November 25th) Frank Barry, Professor of International Business at Trinity College…

Madam, – In your Four Year Plan supplement (November 25th) Frank Barry, Professor of International Business at Trinity College in an article entitled “We will emerge sooner or later from this crisis” argues that we had similar crisis in global capitalism in the 1930s, 1950s and 1980s and that we will emerge “sooner or later from this crisis”.

However, what is striking from his article is that he never attempts to address what is so systematically dysfunctional about this ideology, that it periodically implodes leaving misery and social dislocation in its wake.

In all the articles which I have read by economists, in both your own paper and others, I have never seen this phenomenon addressed.

However, if one looks at the dates which Prof Barry provides, 1930, 1956, 1982 and 2008, they are all exactly 26 years apart. Does that mean that we can expect the next crisis in 2034?

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Maybe one of the economists working for your paper might give us an opinion on this pattern, so we can be better prepared for the next crash. – Yours, etc,

SEÁN WHELAN,

Ormond Keep,

Nenagh,

Co Tipperary.