Irish Tycoon Commits Suicide

The Great Recession’s death toll is mounting: The latest victim is Irish financier Patrick Rocca, who shot himself this week as the prospect of losing his property empire loomed. Rocca, 41, was “a poster boy for Ireland’s Celtic tiger economy,” The Times of London reports, who “lent Bill Clinton his helicopter whenever he was in Ireland for a round of golf and rubbed shoulders with Tony Blair at gala dinners.” But neighbors saw the tycoon Monday wandering around the grounds of his luxury home in pyjamas; when his wife left to pick up the children from school later that day, he killed himself. Rocca, whose death has rocked Dublin society, had more than 20 million euros invested in Anglo Irish, which the Irish government is nationalizing.