There are reasons for optimism. We can get out of this without crushing the poor, without sacrificing the sick or selling our children to the highest bidder. There are solid proposals emerging.

And on Friday, analysts at JP Morgan Chase issued a research note to their clients in which they described the Irish economy as "remarkably strong". No need to curl up and die -- as long as we ditch the old certainties.

We need, first of all, to recognise that we're not "all in this together". There are powerful people, greedy people who helped get us into this fix, and who haven't stopped being greedy. They want others to pick up the bill. And Brian Cowen listens to them.

There are also non-greedy people, many of them politicians, who are wedded to the outmoded right-wing mantras that got us into trouble.

There are three linked fronts in this battle: the paralysis of the banks; mass unemployment leading from the collapse of the economy; and imbalance in the public finances.

On the banks, the Government does what the bankers say. On unemployment, it moans in despair. The Government is fixated with balancing the books. And that means, "doing as we did in the 1980s" -- slashing health and education, cutting services. As Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman keeps pointing out, this isn't your father's recession. It won't be solved with the kneejerk responses of the 1980s.

Some people don't get it. For instance, Eugene Sheehy, head honcho at AIB, last week proudly noted that salary cuts reduced him to a mere €690,000 a year. Eugene, old chap, if we're going to get out of this without blood on the streets there won't be anyone pulling down anything like €690,000. We face a generation of poverty, perhaps economic and social collapse. Or we change our direction.

Ah, say the Golden Ones, we'll chop a few bus routes, savage the schools and close some hospital wards, "like they did in the 1980s".

Now they also want to tax the low paid and attack social welfare. Government ministers step out of their helicopters for a moment to tell us that a third of the workforce don't pay tax at all -- and that has to change.

Here's what they're talking about. There are almost 400,000 people in the workforce earning an average of €4,700 a year. Or €89 a week. Another 375,000 on an average of €15,000 a year. That's €290 a week. Another 400,000 on an average of €25,000 a year. And these are the people they want to drag into the tax net.

They want to attack unemployment benefits. When it seeks to balance the books, this is where this Government starts.

They could start at the other end of the scale. Colm Keena assembled the statistics in The Irish Times -- 1,447 people earn an average of €2.3m. That is, a handful of people pulling in three and a half billion between them. And another 28,000 on up to a million each a year. This is not accumulated wealth, it's income.

The difference between bottom and top is staggering -- and the people at the top have far more to lose if we go under. Many of them helped create the bubble. So, they -- as the wonderful patriots they are -- will no doubt accept the greater part of the burden of solving this crisis. I mean, would it hurt that badly if everyone got along for five years on a maximum 100 grand a year? Or should we attack the unemployed?

It's not by chance that the Government seeks to protect the wealthy. This is a right-wing team that has governed by right-wing principles. It's backed up by a strong right-wing establishment. And they're far from shy.

Last week, Fintan O'Toole suggested abolishing tax relief on additional payments to private pensions. He thinks it would save the state two or three billion -- I'm a bit shaky on the concept, but it certainly sounds like it's worth a look. The reaction? You'd think O'Toole suggested killing our first-born.

On Pat Kenny's radio show, economist Moore McDowell responded with the fury of a Muslim fundamentalist encountering an offensive cartoon of Mohammed. The previous evening, on Prime Time, a former Department of Finance mandarin, Cathal O'Loghlin, warned that "if we go down the tax route" we face "a tax burden which is way above European levels". With consequences for competitiveness.

The "tax route" the former Finance mandarin rejected was not the notion of increased taxes. It was in the context of Fintan O'Toole's specific suggestion for abolishing a tax relief that primarily benefits the well off.

Next day, on a blog called the Irish Economy (www.irisheconomy.ie), Karl Whelan, professor of economics at UCD, respectfully questioned Mr O'Loghlin's figures. Whelan's calculations suggested that if the entire €16.5bn adjustment was done through tax increases (he's not suggesting that it should be) we'd still be below the EU average.

Kevin O'Rourke, professor of economics at TCD, commented that he watched the former Finance mandarin and "found the comments depressing. This is really not a time for ideology".

We got to where we are because of a sincerely held belief at government and senior civil service levels that "freeing" banks and speculators from the "red tape" of State interference is the route to economic heaven. That quasi-religious belief led to the foolish tax breaks for speculators in housing and private medicine, and the rejection of effective regulation.

And it's that sincerely held belief that prompts the current Government stance -- attack the poor, set private worker against public, fiercely attack any alternative.

Well, the alternatives are here. Fintan O'Toole's suggestion as to how the State might save a couple of billion is just one. Other suggestions might include: don't cut bankers' pay. The banks should be allowed to pay Mr Sheehy and his ilk whatever they like. And the Government should tax every cent above €100,000, at 100 per cent.

Likewise, stop arguing about which Oireachtas committees could be cut -- keep them all, but abolish the 20 grand these idiots get for chairing the committees. Let them do it as part of their work, for which they get a more than sufficient 100 grand.

If such sacrifices are too much -- in a fight to save the very economic existence of this State -- then those politicians should just bugger off and stop being a burden on the rest of us.

Metro North can go -- it's supposed to cost €3.7bn, or €6bn, no one seems sure. My guess is €8bn, which is the way these things go. And there's bound to be a lot of fat in the €184bn of the National Development Plan -- stuff that can be cut without hurting productive employment.

The books ain't that bad -- if we ditch the ideological hang-ups.

The banks? JP Morgan Chase suggests the banks' bad loans may total €26.9bn, which economist Alan Ahearne calls "not trivial, but certainly manageable".

Patrick Honohan says, "if correct, clearly affordable". The Government needs to stop messing, face the true debts, take over the banks, clean them out and operate them as State banks (my option). Or sell them back to the private sector (just about everyone else's).

As to unemployment -- against the tide, Michael Taft, at the excellent blog Notes on the Front (http://notesonthefront.typepad.com) suggests a stimulus plan that seems to these innocent eyes to be doable. In passing, he notes that the Central Bank holds €16bn in spare cash.

I've no idea what they keep that money for -- perhaps they're waiting for a rainy day (hey, lads, it's pissing).

Politically, we're in trouble. We badly need new thinking. Otherwise, panic, incompetence and the old right-wing certainties will do us in.

- Gene Kerrigan