The end result of all this activity was a full guarantee of the assets of the entire banking system: a total bailout. NAMA bought the assets at above book value with taxpayer money, sold shares of NAMA back to the banks, and they, in turn, used these shares as collateral to get liquidity from the ECB. In short, creative accounting and a helpful government enabled the banks to walk away scot-free from the carnage they had caused. Ireland was now shut out of international markets and placed at the mercy of the IMF-ECB-EC troika. Since then, over 70 billion euros have been injected into its banking system—divided by a population of some 4.5 million. Some 47 billion euros disappeared into Anglo-Irish alone, never to be seen again. The “assets” the taxpayer purchased via NAMA are not coming back anytime soon. The cost of bailing out the banks amounts to 45 percent of GDP, and that figure does not include the cost of the NAMA program, which is over 70 billion euros.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 632