To be sure, the fiscal crisis has been brought on by the bank-driven boom and bust.
But I hope it is some comfort to be reminded that only something of the order of one-eighth of the fiscal adjustment over the coming years is attributable to the additional debt servicing costs resulting from the additional borrowing to fill the banking hole; the remainder is to claw the budget back to where it would have been if the structure of tax and the level of spending had not veered out of what could be sustained during the bank-driven property boom.