Indeed, just as a warm winter allows insects and disease to survive into spring, the prolonged period of stability itself had lulled many into a sense of false security, creating an environment that provided no warnings to those with growing risk appetite.
In particular, the combination of stability and hubris lured Ireland into a disastrous extreme – exceeded only by Iceland – in this dimension. One casualty of the crash should be the idea of inevitable convergence of national economic models. Some of the countries which most conformed to the conventional view of bestpractice, and which had been held out as exemplars, have stumbled more heavily.