Saturday, March 06, 2010

You place your bets, you takes your chances

What a great way to start the week:

Icelanders overwhelmingly rejected a bill that would saddle each citizen with $16,400 of debt in protest at U.K. and Dutch demands that they cover losses triggered by the failure of a private bank, first results show.

Ninety-three percent voted against the so-called Icesave bill, according to preliminary results on national broadcaster RUV. Final results may be published tomorrow morning.

The bill would have obliged the island to take on $5.3 billion, or 45 percent of last year’s economic output, in loans from the U.K. and the Netherlands to compensate the two countries for depositor losses stemming from the collapse of Landsbanki Islands hf more than a year ago.
What would you do?

Forty-five percent of your country's GDP might be:

France - 1.3 trillion USD
Germany - 1.7 trillion USD
US - 6.5 trillion USD
UK - 1.2 trillion USD
Japan - 2.2 trillion USD

Ready to cough it up because others were reckless with their finances?

Next time try throwing a Nokia at someone your own size.


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