I don't think that comic is very funny, have you tried the Beano?

It isn't a case of right vs left, it's people vs corporations.

Iceland's reaction to the crash - which left them literally bankrupt as a country - was to put the bankers in jail while they bailed out the people. Pretty much every other country did the opposite. Iceland's economy has come roaring back, faster than anyone else's.

Over here in the Good Ol' U. S. of A., we did the usual thing: we gave money to the banks to ease their credit crunch, but did not do the same to the underlying debtors. So the banks (most of 'em, at least) survived, but the people - whose taxes had funded the bank bailouts - still owed the banks what they did before. The banks pursued satisfaction on those loans, leaving the people broke at best or bankrupt at worst.

This left the economy in a complete stall as most had no money. Housing prices plummeted as foreclosures flooded the market while banks stopped lending (so there were no customers). Jobs disappeared because there was no demand and all of this meant that the U.S' recovery was incredibly slow.

Had they simply bailed out the underlying debtors, it would have fixed the banks' liquidity problem because their loans would be repaid. Money would stay in the economy (a of such stimulus is worth .40 in the economy as it gets spent and re-spent), house prices would remain buoyant and demand would continue to fuel economic growth

Yes, some miscreants would have got away with not having to pay back a loan they should never had had in the first place. Maybe once the crisis was over, that sort of thing could've been looked into retroactively. But I'd rather that, than the fat-cat corporate miscreants not only getting away with running the economy off a cliff, but getting bonused out the arse for doing so - which is, of course, exactly what happened everywhere except Iceland.

Of the money the Troika has lent Greece, only 10% of it has actually gone to the public sector and the government. 90% of it has gone to private banks, so the idea that this has been caused by public sector malpractice is a total myth. As an example, the cost of the 2004 Olympics to the Greek state was around 9 billion euros: Greece's debt is nearing 400 billion, so blaming the cost of the Olympics is ludicrous.

Obviously such debt accumulation could only be tolerated by a corrupt, dynastic government, and certainly that was the case with Pasok and New Democracy. But the real causes of Greek debt levels come from the 2007 crisis, and the idiocy of the EU and private banks in supporting a nation embroiled in a suffocating singular currency with loans they were never going to be able to pay back. For them to now come back demanding repayment is not only undemocratic (as the result yesterday showed), it's a bit like feeding your kid KFC every meal of their life and then complaining that they're overweight.

The problem you have, Hoof, is you seem so blinded by your hatred for 'the left' that you are willing to defend some of the most shady, disreputable organisations in the world based on very little evidence, just to have a pop at people like myself. But look over this thread: even people like Stirling and WAGU, staunch adherents to right wing politics normally, can see how f***ed over the people of Greece have been here. It isn't a case of right vs left, it's people vs corporations.

I'm seriously thinking of rejoining labour just so I can vote for Corbyn.