Irish Banks: To TARP or Not To TARP is Not the Question

This will bring the total cost to the taxpayer of fixing the banking system to a massive €70bn. If that sounds like an awful lot of money it's because it is.

For that kind of money we could fund the health service for almost five years or pay all social welfare benefits for next three-and-a-half years.

Unfortunately there was no alternative.

The banking system, the lifeblood of any advanced economy, has completely seized up. With new loans virtually impossible to obtain and existing lines of credit being pulled as soon as they fall due for renewal, the Irish economy is being slowly asphyxiated.

(Irish Independent)

When you read stuff like this happening elsewhere, you marvel at the local (in the U.S.) animosity for our own TARP bank bailout. People imagine, in populist fashion, that you can let large institutions fail without experiencing the type of blow-back that would far outstrip any concerns about moral hazard or the worthiness of banks.

Woman on the train track. When saving you won't necessarily stop to ask her if she is tied to the track because she might be a whore, or a thief, or in middle of some vaguely disreputable caper. Yes women everywhere might get the impression that when tied to the tracks, they will automatically get rescued by swarthy bearded noblemen, but that hope of theoretically implied rescue does not undue the necessity of rescue.