Nicole Foss

Yesterday I went to hear Nicole Foss speak in Skibbereen. Her clear thinking on finance and energy, and the way they are affecting Ireland at the moment was fascinating. Amongst many other things she pointed out that Ireland will have to default on its debt sooner or later. We have been told endlessly that this country cannot function without its banks although no one has every said why this is so. If we don't agree to the terms of the bailout, we are told the banks will fail and no money will come out of the ATM machines.

So what if that happens? One day without warning someone goes to an ATM and it doesn't work. Very quickly the word goes around. What would you do? What would we all do? PANIC SHOP. That is what we would do. We would say to ourselves OMG I have no cash/coffee/petrol/bread/toilet paper/wine/batteries...........and we would rush into town and buy stuff for as long as we could, until the cash and plastic money had run out and we had what we thought would be the most useful stuff to have on the short term.

What would happen next? Would we opt out of the euro and bring back the punt, or join sterling? Would we have riots in the streets or would we just carry on as normal as in the 1970's bank strike. I don't remember any panic back then, although I was rather young at the time.

Because it seems likely to happen, and to happen without warning, it seems sensible to plan for it. I don't want to be the queuing for coffee or bread or toilet paper so I think I am going to have my little panic now and stock up on a few essentials. Presumably after some initial chaos something like normality would resume, so I am not going to build a bunker or buy a shotgun, just have a small savings account in coffee and sardines and toilet paper. What do you think?