Tapes from executives of the Irish Anglo Bank show just how much control and contempt bankers have for the system.  The bank’s former director of capital markets, John Bowe, that he picked the initial bailout sum of €7bn “out of my arse”.  In one excrutiating exchange on the tapes, an executive giggles as a colleague recites “Deutschland über Alles” to mark the fact that an Irish guarantee of bank deposits had lured German savings to Dublin.

The tapes “show the contempt and the arrogance and the insolence of senior personnel working in that bank towards everybody, towards government, towards citizens, the impact on every company, every community, every family in our country. They shine a bright light on the vulgarity of what went on there.”  Merkel Criticizes Bankers