The economist Colm McCarthy wrote in The Sunday Independent in December 2012 that the cost of bailing out Irish Nationwide, if laid out in one-dollar bills laid out end to end, would stretch to the moon and back one-and-a-half times.  Yet, as McCarthy observed, there was still little explanation of how such staggering losses had been allowed to accumulate in Irish banks.  “Let’s call it Irish no-fault capitalism,” McCarthy concluded.  Three months later, Fingers: The man who brought down Irish Nationwide and cost us €5.4 billion was published. The book, which I wrote with the journalist Richard Curran, looked at…

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