You could be right. The stupidity of the Banking industry has amazed me. However, some thoughts:
1. In the US, political pressure was no doubt put on the Banking industry to force them to make those bad loans (especially to “underserved” populations). Somewhere in there, there was a quid-pro-quo to make it worth their while, even with the potential losses.
2. Iceland is not Greece. People will give Nordics the benefit of the doubt before they would Greeks. The fact that Greece is going Commie may give even the bankers pause. But, time will tell.
3. Germany has lost a lot of $$ on the Greek experiment. If there burn their bridges by exiting the Euro, there ay well be payback.
1. True...to an extent. But the bankers NEVER COMPLAINED about being pushed into these loans - they seemed to really like the profits (and bonuses) at the time, and figured (correctly) that the government couldn’t touch them without having to explain a lot too. My point here is that the bankers had zero morals...I know that if I ran a bank that I would NEVER lend money to people that I knew could not pay it back - but then again, I’m not the type that runs banks.
2. Iceland may not be Grease (I love spelling it that way), but then Argentina is not Grease either...yet Argentina had no problems lining up a new batch of suckers after defaulting time and time again.
3. Yep, Germans may hold back for a while, but I have NO DOUBT that American bankers will step in...this would be nothing compared to what they did in the mortgage meltdown.