The Bankers

the long version

Two years ago, the Irish economy was still booming; now, it faces an unprecedented crisis. There is, of course, an international context for these developments, but the Irish story – a story of extraordinary collusion between banks, regulators and the government – is perhaps unique in its tawdriness.This is the story Shane Ross – journalist, independent Senator, and long-time champion of citizens against misbehaving corporations – tells in The Bankers, going behind the scenes and the headlines to explain what happened, how it happened, and who made it happen. They're all here: Sean Fitzpatrick and the other bank bosses; Patrick Neary and the other members of Ireland's failed regulatory apparatus; the property developers, who dominated the banks' lending to a ruinous degree; and the politicians, who inflated the property bubble and haveallowed the banks to dictate the terms of their bailout to an astonishing degree. Shane Ross knows the stories of these people and what they got up to better than anyone, and in The Bankers he makes sense of a scandal that will haunt Ireland for years to come.