Fer Bretland sömu leið og Ísland. Hér er grein eftir Ambrose Evans Pritchard úr The Daily Telegraph. Hann talar um að Bretar geti ekki gert eins og Íslendingar og skilið skuldir eftir í gömlum bönkum. Það er reyndar merkilegt að Royal Bank of Scotland sem þarna er talað um var uppáhaldsbanki íslensku útrásarvíkinganna í Bretlandi.

The parallels with Iceland are disturbing. The country was ruined by the antics of its three big banks. They built up foreign liabilities equal to 900pc of GDP. Operating as hedge funds, they borrowed in dollars, euros and pounds to speculate. However, the state lacked the foreign reserves to match this leverage.
But Iceland at least had the luxury of letting banks default – shifting losses on to the rest of the world. It refused to honour foreign debts.

„They drew a line,“ said Jerry Rawclifffe, who tracks Iceland for Fitch Ratings. „They created new banks, parking the old losses in resolution committees. It is not easy for other governments to walk away. They have a duty of care.“

Indeed, if Britain walked away from UK banks’ $4.4 trillion of foreign liabilities – worth eight times Lehman Brothers – it would destroy the credibility of the City and take the whole world into deeper depression.
„The UK cannot go down that route because it would set off an asset price death spiral,“ said Marc Ostwald, a bond expert at Monument Securities. „The Western banking system is already on life support. That would turn it off altogether.“

So whatever the temptations, and whatever the feelings of righteousness over the follies of the RBS leadership in its debt-driven campaign of Napoleonic expansion, the Treasury is wedded to the banks and all their sins. Chancellor Alistair Darling cannot copy Iceland.