We have got painfully acquainted with the significance of horrendous numbers, such as the clean-up bill for the banks and their effects on rising unemployment, higher taxes and renewed emigration. The €50bn final estimate for the bill a small group of bankers and property developers dumped into the laps of their fellow citizens amounts to about a third of the diminishing wealth of the annual economy. It's usually more difficult to decipher the significance of sovereign interest rates such as 5.15% and 6.65%, respectively the annual cost the markets demand the Irish government pay on the money borrowed for the next four- and 10-year periods.

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