As you can see my ideas were a bit naive. Posting on this site, reading comments of others as well as reading other stuff on the internet canged my opinion about several of these things (especially about education, the political system and the economy).

Now at first sight it might look as if Icelanders are still well off, especially if you compare the first impression with a country like Lithuania where the scars of the communist past are still visible.

But the reality of most icelanders, I think , is much less rosy.

The fall of the krona has more or less halved purchasing power. And those who had loans in foreign currency (a lot of people I think), saw there debt grow enormously.

An income cut in halves and doubled debts: a grim reality.
The fact that the Icelandic economy will be crippled in the years to come by the repayment of Icesave and other debts does not help too.

Bull****! Unemployment in Iceland is much lower many European countries (eg it is roughly half that of Spain). Average income, living standards, education standards, health care, etc, etc are all still amongst the highest in Europe. Icelanders are not badly off relative to other Europeans!

Yes, that’s the main point of the current currency restrictions on outflows.

From my point of view all rage coming from depositors from Isle of man, England and the netherlands, made a big big mistake , which is all unfortunate
But, that was the risk they freely decided to take. Then why should iceland pay back for them.

That was a risk that they freely decided to take safe in the knowledge that there was a state guarantee of at least a minimum amount. A very different position from the one that you advance. It should be noted that the Icelandic state or its representatives had on numerous occasions before the collapse appeared to say that there was a state guarantee (although, when you look carefully at what was actualy said/written, it was equivocal).

The current legal reality is that there was in fact a state guarantee. Of course, that has not been tested in court, but every published legal opinion and EU/EEA/memberstate statement (ex. Iceland!) to date has supported that.

Not sure what your point is about defaulting. There’s nothing stopping Iceland from doing so, if it decides that the benefits outweigh the costs.

The only way for iceland to go up again is to say I am deeply sorry, this will not happen again, but we cannot mortgage future generations because of a major force striked the country, that is nonesense.

KSF is still operating as a nationalised bank, the supposed Icelandic promise to pay its debts don’t extend to the parental guarantee to KSFIoM. It took threats and leverage to get Iceland to honour Icesave, somthing IoM doesn’t have.

KSFIoM depositors were stupid on several levels though. Depositing more than the guaranteed amount, outside the EU and in an Icelandic bank that was within the most extended/fragile banking system in the world. It must have taken some effort to take that many risks at the same time.

Madness! This should have been the case anyway. although perhaps there’s an angle/way to beat the system that I haven’t thought of that explains why they felt it was necessary to do this.