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?”
As Greece pimps its ancient monuments to bring in the tourists, lovers of cultural heritage are up in arms. But the country is only doing openly what the whole of Europe is: looting historic sites to drum up more ready cash. 
Asserting national values is central to the political project of the Hungarian PM. Since the start of the year, fifteen paintings, specially commissioned for an exhibition in the Castle of Buda, have been putting this ambition on show. 
The game has gone on for nearly two years: Athens pretends to comply with the demands of its creditors and partners, and they pretend to believe in Greece’s commitments. As the spectre of default comes nearer, however, the Greek bluff cannot go on much longer, writes an El Mundo editorialist.