David Martin

Iceland: When Too Big to Fail Becomes Too Big to Rescue

In this context the guarantees for unlimited amounts for depositors in Irish, and, God forfend, Greece, show themselves for what they are - desperation ploys.
The hot money which is flowing in in a desperate attempt to find security can just as easily flow out, and when realisation dawns that the tax base of neither economy is strong enough to honour the guarantees they are blithely issuing they will indeed flow out, leaving the respective economies as wreckage.