2 SEP 2010

By Shawn Pogatchnik | Bloomberg Businessweek

It's the world's biggest banking black hole -- and it's in Ireland, one of Europe's most troubled economies.

The debt disaster at Anglo Irish Bank means that Ireland is tasked with carrying out the continent's most ambitious bank-bailout program at a time of surging deficits and welfare lines. The unrelenting tide of red ink has analysts and Dubliners alike asking: How on earth will Ireland keep paying its bills?

"Every man, woman and child walking down that street out there has been put in a deep, dark hole by the bankers. We've all been given a bill we can't pay for a hundred years," said John Doyle, a car mechanic patching a flat tire at his backstreet Dublin garage.

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