Irish President: Ireland's Product Must be Culture of New Ideas

The President of Ireland, fondly known as Michael D, was awarded a Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the National University of Ireland, where he had spent much of his life, as student and then university teacher.

In his acceptance speech, he gave a grand tour of history and pointed out, as he had during his campaign, that the destruction of FDR's Glass-Steagall law led to speculative bubbles in many countries, including Ireland.

"In recent times," President Higgins said, "we have paid a heavy price for unfettered speculative accumulation, for light regulation for the global consequences of what followed acceptance of amendments to the Glass-Steagall Act in the US, an act that had its origins in responding to the crash of 1929 that sought to ensure it would never happen again. The amendments released a flood of virtual financial products across the world. To that, many countries, including our own, added their own speculative bubble."

Michael D proposed that the greatest product that Ireland can provide civilization is a culture of new ideas to address the failure of the march of technocratic hegemony and economic disintegration.

As Ireland now faces a fight for a referendum on the nation's future with or without euro, this President's focus on these questions takes on increasing importance. In a recent paper, "Preparing for the Referendum," the LaRouche Irish Brigade insisted that Ireland's future lay in a science-driver economy and called for an adoption of the Glass-Steagall law and a Hamiltonian credit system.