I'm not defending bankers.

I was responding to yet another classic Gusset oversimplification.

You said:

"Not so in Iceland. Rather than bailing the banks out, they arrested those responsible. Iceland invested in infrastructure and now happen to be doing rather well. No austerity there."

You're implying that if Britain followed Iceland's approach, we'd solve our deficit problem.

1. You make a comparison between Iceland (300 thousand people) and the UK (ca. 70m people). It is not a useful comparison.

2. The Icelandic government recapitalised the banks to the tune of 30% of national GDP. They increased Icelandic public debt by about 20%. How is that not a bail-out?

3. Iceland imposed capital controls. In a small economy like theirs they can get away with stuff like that. Capital controls would cripple Britain.

4. Where is your evidence that "Iceland invested in infrastructure"? What big projects does a small volcanic island with less than half a million people need? High speed rail?

5. What makes you say Iceland is "doing rather well"?

It's doing better than before but that's not difficult.

In 'the Economist' they said, "whether this strong performance will last is not clear. Household debt is still high, and the IMF worries about the effect of removing capital controls too fast. Some people also fret about a house-price bubble. Iceland is not out of the woods yet."

It seems to me you've skim-read a blog (presumably a left-wing one containing quotes from, let me guess, Joseph Stiglitz?) and copied and pasted it on here and tried to pass it off as an "argument" against austerity.

Working families tax credits about to take another massive hit. A household earning 29k a year or more won't be eligible. Used to be 35k under Labour then dropped to 32k under the coalition.

It wouldn't be so bad if rents and the cost of buying a house were not so high. Those take up so much more of income than in the past. Add other bills and the fact that schools are asking parents to pay for way more things now that used to be subsidised and it's easy to see the outcome.

A lot of families will be losing a very important part of their monthly budget and will find it much harder or impossible to make ends meet.

Still, those families are in it all together.

Gordon Brown selling off gold cost the UK around £5 billion. [Link]

George Osborne selling off RBS costs UK £7 billion. [Link]

Why aren't the Tories complaining about such wastefulness?

As someone who is not a financial genius I do find it strange that Osborne seems to be getting rid of any assets the UK may have for whatever price he can get, a bit like a boot sale.

Edited by johnno42000 (11 Jun 2015 12.18pm)

Doesn't really excuse Osborne though. It seems people are very quick to attack Brown for selling things that makes the UK a loss, less so Osborne which, to me, is unfair.