Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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I have one last question. Mr. Nyberg speaks of an assumption by many that the financial markets would be stable and efficient by virtue of their own workings. When the drive for profit maximisation and what could be cut-throat competition between financial capitalists happen in the financial markets, how could it be rational to think there could be stability in that system?

With regard to the markets, Mr. Nyberg said that when the Irish Government was put under pressure to guarantee the banks, it could have been useful to access available temporary funding to gain time but that there were concerns that the market would not have acted positively to such a delay at the time, which is to assume that, the next morning or the morning after, there would have been pandemonium in the markets. Mr. Nyberg has been around a long time and has been in the European Union, including Finland. He has seen a lot in respect of how these markets work. Can financial markets hold governments to ransom? Did that happen in the lead-up to the guarantee and, indeed, the bailout? Does Mr. Nyberg believe it is democratic that private institutions have such massive power over elected governments?