ECB's treatment of Ireland and Italy is a constitutional scandal, yet nobody held to account

``The EU/IMF Troika -- actually the ECB -- compelled the Irish state to take on the vast liabilities of Anglo-Irish and other banks in the white heat of the financial crisis. It threatened to pull the plug on ECB support for the Irish banking system, in breach of its own core duty to act as a lender-of-last resort, unless the Irish taxpayer took the full losses.''