Billion Euro House

In fall of 1997 I rented a converted schoolhouse in Ballyconeelly from Lord Guinness of the Guinness Beer fortune. The monthly rent for the autumn was 600 Irish pounds or almost $1000. I was splitting the cost with my friend Ty Spaulding, but upon arriving at the desolate dwelling in the coastal bogs I discovered that there was no heat in the drafty building fraught with mildew. "We've been had," Ty wailed upon seeing the shambling edifice. And that was before the ghosts made their appearance. "Tisn't such a bad price," the locals at the pub assured us. "This is a very desirable area." Ty and I surveyed the bleak landscape with bewilderment. "There are houses selling here for a half-million pounds and not new houses either." The publician was the cow town's realtor. "So drink your beers and be happy. Won't be this cheap next year." The pub owner was correct. The price of property in Ireland skyrocketed during the decade of the Celtic Tiger. The banks gave money to everyone wanting a house without credit checks or down payments. The country went house crazy with the nation convinced that they were all millionaires. The recession sucking a third of the value from property restored tragic sanity to owners with devastating consequences. A million ghost houses are planted around the Emerald Isle. No one will ever live in them. Bankruptcy became a national pastime along with divorce for married couples and suicides for young men. Worst was the government's accepting a bail-out plan by the German banks which will impoverish Ireland for generations. A better plan was to over-insure the overstock of housing and have arsonists torch the lot of them, but it's too late for that plan. Ireland is fucked for life and last year a Dublin artist decided to build a billion-Euro house with bricks of decommissioned Euro banknotes, 1.4 billion Euros to be exact. Frank Buckley is another victim of the disaster and according to Huffington Post called his project, "a reflection of the whole madness that gripped us. Everything is centered on the euro, but euros are only pieces of paper. It’s what people do with the euros, the value we put on them, that changes their meaning, but whatever you say about the euro, it's a great insulator." At present the 50 year-old Mr. Buckley lives on the public dole. $250/week. His credit card debt is in the thousands. The man is broke and he is not alone. “I’m one of many, many people. I wouldn’t be on the same level as people in business, who owe millions. But the money I owe is the same as owing millions. If you don’t have it, you don’t have it.” Welcome to the ranks of the Fucked. We are only one of many. And cutting up your credit card is the only strategy left to us. Fuck the banks, but first whack out your credit line to the max. It will hurt them more than it will hurt you and in the end the banks will write it off. They will have no other choice, but International Write-Off Day It can't come too soon.