Right, so for decades, Israel has been flogging government bonds to anyone keen to prop up the state.

You hand over your cash, Israel pockets it for the general budget, and in return you get a pinky promise that the state will pay you back with interest. What could go wrong?

But if Israel wants to hawk these bonds to the average European punter, it needs a shiny prospectus rubber-stamped by an EU financial regulator. This legal necessity spells out what’s on offer, the fine print, and all the ways you might get burned. Once one member state gives it the nod, Israel Bonds can peddle the same deal across most of the bloc and for the last year, that state was Luxembourg.

Luxembourg’s approval quietly expired on 31 August, and-shock horror-they didn’t bother to renew it and as of today, still not a single EU country had leapt at the ...