Not that it needs a one, but some in Ireland are starting to ask the question.   The European Central Bank exposure in Ireland is above €130 BN, a quarter of its book, and now wants its money back.  In the article,  The ECB May Not Be The Friend It Seems, in Monday’s  Irish Times, John McMananus writes,

Suggestions that [the] bailout may in fact be to protect European interests may not be too wide of mark

WHEN THE history of Ireland’s banking and fiscal collapse comes to be written, the role of the European Central Bank may well turn out to be the most controversial..

…the role of the ECB in how we came to this sorry pass is worthy of some scrutiny. A more critical analysis might conclude that its policies over the last two years added greatly to our problems and ultimately its own. And it is the ECB’s problems as much as ours that brought things to a head last week.One of the main differences between how the two-year-old crisis has played out in Europe and America has been the refusal of the ECB to allow any significant bank fail.

It is worth noting in this regard that Jean Claude Trichet rang Brian Lenihan over that fateful weekend in September 2008 to impress on him the importance of not letting any Irish bank fail. The obvious inference was that the ECB would play its part.

Trichet was, of course, pushing at an open door given the other factors at play in Ireland: profound regulatory failure combined with the inability of the administration or the banks to comprehend the scope of the problem.

But the fact remains that the Government could not have gone down the road it did without the support of the ECB. Frankfurt has provided the liquidity needed to make the National Asset Management Agency function and was committed to a similar facility for the winding up of Anglo.

Above all it has provided liquidity to the Irish system to such an extent that Irish banks account for something like one in every four euro it makes available through its emergency measures. We kept our end of the bargain. No Irish bank has failed although two are to be closed, but crucially their secured creditors are to be paid…

Instead a situation arose whereby the problems in the Irish banks were not dealt with as they should have been – through letting them fail or some sort of debt for equity swap – and the ECB found its own balance sheet contaminated by the amount of support it had to extend to Ireland as a consequence. Meanwhile, the Irish exchequer is left with a bill it cannot afford.

Now, in order to extract itself from this mess, the ECB has in effect withdrawn its support and said that the Irish taxpayer must now borrow even more money and try – for a third time – to fix the knackered banks so the ECB can get its money back.

There you have it.  The beginnings of a debate that sounds vaguely familiar to the one ongoing in the U.S. for the past few years.  And with some Germans now declaring the Euro “equivalent to US’ Subprime Securities’” the financial crisis has officially entered the political stage of the second phase.   The success or failure of the rescue programs and, utimately,  the integrity of the Eurozone itself,  will be determined largely by how the politics plays out.  Stay tuned!