Ireland

"When the rescue package of Ireland—or was it of the British and German banks?—was announced, the headline in one of Ireland's main newspapers was "Declaration of Dependence."

...Angela Merkel has in effect become the new ruler of Ireland, a kind of 21st-century Henry II, using clout of the financial rather than the medieval kind.

...Assuming a zero rate of interest and no population growth, every man, woman, child and baby in Ireland would have to pay back $250 a year for 2,000 years to clear the debt...

...What, for example, is one to say of the role played by the leading British banks? The Royal Bank of Scotland, by itself, extended loans in Ireland amounting to $12,000 for every man, woman and child in the country: loans that would have amounted to $3,600,000,000,000 if applied to the United States?"

Theodore Dalrymple