Ireland's meltdown

What's valuable about this article by Theodore Darlyrmple on Ireland's financial collapse, is the similarity to our very own collapse.  While there is an obvious scale difference of major proportions going on here, the abdication of banks in the matter of risk management is one common cause.  Another similarity is the political one: the democrat party in the US fulfilling the same role as the Fianna Fáil party in Ireland and for similar reasons, e.g., Fianna Fáil kept itself in office through an alliance with the government unions by both permitting overstaffing and overpaying workers.  The great unravelling thus begins in Ireland where government jobs and wages and benefits are cut, just like we're starting to see witness Wisconsin, in the US.  A big difference between us an Ireland is scale, a fact that perhaps allows us to absorb the excesses in housing/financial sectors with less permanent damage.  Ireland, on the other hand, will probably have to declare bankruptcy and default on all the debt accumulated over the past decade or two.