Absolute Rubbish.People in Greece are starving.They have 50% youth unemployment.The criminal elites have stolen $ trillions via their derivative ponzy counterfeiting scams and not a single one of them has been charged.Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan is a case in point.

Dear Samuel,

Congratulations on your first piece on OLO. Hopefully our responses might be of value. There are quite a few solid thinkers here while the rest of us tend to flap around the edges and have a peck where we can.

I did like the path Iceland took.

It was a basket case in the truest sense of the word after the GFC hit and many will remember the headlines about riots in the streets etc. In 2008 their debt to income ration was 270% while their banks defaulted on over $85 billion dollars.

Their response?

They nationalised the banks, indicted their former prime minister, arrested the CEO's of their three largest banks with one of them ending in solitary confinement. Issued over 200 criminal charges within the banking sector.

They gave relief to underwater home owners by forgiving any debt over 110% of the value of their homes. Hardly an austerity measure as it cost them 13% of GDP to do so but it gave relief to over 25% of Icelanders.

So what did that do to their economy? In 2010 it grew by 2.7% and in 2011 2.4%, well above European and OECD averages. The Fitch Ratings agency raised Iceland's rating to investment grade in February this year and house prices have now returned to within 3% of where they were before the crisis. Fitch declared Iceland's“unorthodox crisis policy response has succeeded.”.

I am of the opinion that we were served well by Rudd and Swann, especially when we acknowledge they were as blind as any other leadership group as to the extent of threat to all Australian's by the crisis. Bob Katter describes them as brave and great men.

Keeping their citizens in work and managing their debts through the crisis should be the prime motivation and role of any government. Stripping hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs like has happened in the US was not the answer. For instance whole police departments were laid off and the postal service was decimated with stories of offices only open for an hour each day.

Samuel, we all start somewhere, just some numbers of note.

Sweedens under 25 youth unemployment is 22.9% , while EU is 21.4
It was 3% in 1991

Eurostats table 2011

Australia debt to GDP, after ww11 205%
After 1929 193%

Debt is not the problem some see it as, JMK found a way, and it gave us stability and grpowth and confidence, the choice is what we have or worse, lets find the answeres! Nev