When i got to the UK, a huge pension schemes went bust from corrupt investments. HUGE - impact on tens of thousands of people. The government did not, would not step in until much much later. These people suffered huge loses having invested largely without choice in where they could put their pension money associated with their jobs. And the government has had to be taken to court to be forced to help provide some assistance.

Here, with Icesave, people have knowingly invested beyond the guarantee limit - three times or more - they did not have to invest their money here; it wasn't automatically deducted from their pay role. They made a choice to risk putting more than a guaranteed amount in a bank in order to get a higher return of interest. They took a risk, and now with the government backing up that risk, they won't have to pay for it. The rest of us who pay taxes do, however.

What does this say to folks who have played within the rules and been responsible about stewarding these limited savings? The rich get richer? That mayn't be the right conclusion entirely, but from this non-economist's view - someone just watching the logic at play - we're getting screwed.

And why shouldn't all deposits just be guaranteed? Right now, any search on google asking such a question only brings back calls to guarantee all deposits to "restore confidence." Whose confidence? As it should be clear by now, banks are not nice responsible people. They take horrible risks with our money. The sense of lower guarentee on deposits is supposed to act as some kind of break on their behaviour: that if they screw up, they won't get it back beyond a certain point. But do the banks care, since the only people that are seemingly affected by such a loss are the depositors? I dunno, but it sure seems like there is something horribly wrong at a fundamental level. Some of my colleagues have said, yes, it's called *monopoly* capitalism.