CarolC, if you knew skarpi - "the person who started this thread," as you quaintly call him - you would know that he doesn't need you to protect him or interpret his words!

It seems that Brown's comments about Iceland must have been more prominently reported in the US than in the UK, where iceland has been far from the top of the agenda. The Iceland dimension certainly does not have the legs to constitute any kind of distraction from "Brown's bluster."

And Brown's bluster turns out to have shown the US and most of Europe a way forward out of the mess. Neither Brown nor most other politicians should be taking much of the blame this time. The real problem is a failure of capitalism, or at the very least a failure of free markets. But if there was one unequivocal political error it was Hank Paulson's colossal blunder in allowing Lehman Brothers to go under.