The biggest gamble of Brian’s life

HOW ironic that the state tries to put a floor under a crisis caused by dodgy loans with the ruse of writing banks a blank cheque for three times more than the country is actually worth.

That is the crux of the complex trade off between perception and reality now unfolding as the roulette wheel of casino capitalism spins and we await to see whether the ball lands where Brian Cowen has gambled his reputation — and our money — that it will.

Of course, the sum of €400 billion pledged to underpin Irish banking could never be paid out — we just do not have it — but the perception that it is there eases the reality of the two-thirds collapse in the stock market value of the six bank anchors of our economy that Mr Cowen is desperately seeking to prop up.