Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze

On March 30 the markets were rocked by news not from Greece but from Ireland. The bill for recapitalizing Ireland’s bankrupt banks was soaring. For Anglo Irish Bank alone, Dublin was now budgeting 34 billion euros, more than Ireland’s tax revenue in 2010. Soon Ireland’s deficit would be worse than that of Greece’s.38 In Ireland it was the banks pulling the sovereign down. In Greece the mechanism worked the other way around. Canny depositors in Greek banks were aware that their savings were invested in the government bonds that Athens was struggling to service. In the early months of 2010, 14 billion euros were withdrawn from Greek banks and shifted elsewhere in the eurozone. The first to move were the oligarchs moving huge sums by way of Cyprus, but they were soon followed by middle-class depositors pulling out a few thousand euros at a time.

Christ