In the short but eventful history of the credit crisis, there has never been anything quite like the Irish government's promise to guarantee all saving deposits at its six retail banks.
The implications of the move have stunned City analysts, even those battle-hardened by the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the nationalisation of two UK banks.
Banking expert Alex Potter, of Collins Stewart, who hasn't exactly been short of work in the last 12 months, has chewed through the numbers and reckons the plan exposes every man, woman and child in Ireland to €92,000 (£72,000) of losses.
"In extremis, Irish taxpayers could be paying for this for a generation," he warned.
After years of success, Ireland just won the race to become the first eurozone member to fall into recession. In fact, the country's GDP of €190bn is less than its new combined liabilities through the banking protection scheme.
So has the Celtic Tiger blundered into an elephant trap that makes the US Congress's cackhanded performance over the $700bn Wall Street bailout look like a minor indiscretion?
Probably not. The upside of betting the national economy is that Ireland's high street banks just became an extremely safe place to put your cash.
And in a classic case of unintended consequences, so is the Post Office, whose accounts are run by Bank of Ireland.
Its rivals must be seething – as this comes on top of having to stump up to cover the cost of rescuing Bradford & Bingley and its tatty collection of buy-to-let and self-certification mortgages. Is this any way to reward safer banking?
