As the global economy teeters on the edge of the abyss, world leaders will be tuning in to Davos to discover how a humble teacher from Mayo can turn 7 billion frowns upside down.
The panel discussion at the World Economic Forum will be on the theme: How To Reboot The Global Economy and features an economist and a handful of cowboys.
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize winner, is the man who came in from the cold, twice. He’s recently taken up residence as an economics advisor to Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.
With decades of work on his CV as the guy inside the tent pissing against it, from the World Bank to the Clinton Administration, he continues in the same vein today – in 2012 he called the European Austerity project “a suicide-pact”.
Alongside Stiglitz will be Zhang Xin, China’s billionaire real estate magnate. China’s real estate crisis will make Ireland’s nose dive look like a speed bump.
She’s vaguely pro-democracy, which mightn’t sit well with Eyebrows McGoo if he’s sentient on the day.
To his right, figuratively, is Turkey’s Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek. While Turkey has set about crushing civil rights demonstrations, killing journalists and ethnically cleansing Kurdish areas Simsek has been the target of ridicule for claiming to have eradicated poverty in the country.
Critics asked if his Twitter account had been hacked. He met revelations about his government’s corruption by banning Twitter.
To his left is Brazil’s Minister for Finance who is currently overseeing an economy tanking as dramatically as a Joan Burton canoe.
Fuelled by corruption (if only they had a Moriarty Tribunal to sort all that out) in Petrobras the economy is on fire, and not in a good way. Ah sure the Olympics will see them right.
Then to Enda himself.
Ireland’s hero managed to turn around the economy without imposing any new taxes (IBEC economist Fergal O’Brien said there was €7bn in extra taxes imposed during the bailout.)
His long-term strategies are famously devised over chats with men he bumps into in bars.
They’ll be building statues of men with pints in their hands from Beijing to Rio within the year.