These two cases provide a contrast to the Irish one in regard to the impact of bank recapitalisation on the national budget. As Mervyn King has remarked, the current crisis has shown the extent to which, no matter how global banks are in life, in death – or near death experiences – they are local; in this context imposing on the national budget.
As has been thoroughly documented by the report of the inquiry there, Iceland’s banks had made a leap for scale which was not simply based on importing funds that pumped up the local economy.