If Noonan called this one wrong, then his number will be up

THE senior bondholders were left unburned, but Michael Noonan knows his reputation will soon go up in flames if it turns out he has failed the stress test.

The last Government left us living on borrowed money from the IMF, but the new administration is living on borrowed time from an electorate desperate to see evidence of an end to the downward spiral of slump and shovelling good money after bad into our bankrupt banks.

Rather than just hope for fifth time lucky after Brian Lenihan’s four previous “definitive” announcements of the “final” costs of the banking crisis, Mr Noonan ordered an archly conservative forecasting system to be used to ensure there are no more nasty surprises in the night.