Zombie bank pushes Ireland to brink

“Anglo claims €25bn is total cost,” headlines the Irish Times, one day after the bank reported losses of €8.2 billion for the first half of 2010 – “the worst ever half-year results in Irish corporate history.” Saving the zombie bank, whose profligacy has come to symbolise the nation’s economic fall from grace, has so far cost the Irish state, via the taxpayer, €22.88 billion. Over at the Irish Independent, economist David McWilliams writes that “The Irish bank reparations are financial lunacy and they are politically unacceptable… Is there any way that social peace and cohesion can be maintained when the average worker -- who is entirely blameless -- is being asked to cough up €26,315, while every foreign creditor, who is (in large part) to blame, is being subsidised by the average worker?”