As for its rates, Icesave topped at 7% for a 1yr savings bond, Current Halifax 1yr savings bond….7% Well look at that!! Even after the rate cut. Are their savers greedy also? Is it too high for them to be entitled to the guarantee?

Savings rates are not risk/reward investments. It is a long established prinicple of global and UK banking that retail customers deposit their cash to protect against theft and inflation and save for retirement/housing etc. Banks compete to be the ones to hold these funds by offering a variety of savings rates. This competition benefits the entire population.

These deposits are also guaranteed to secure bank liquidity and avoid “runs” on the bank in times of financial crisis. Just like the Icesave ones were.

So the Icesaver’s “reward”, as you put it, is a privilege common to EVERY SAVER IN THE UK. If you had tailored your article to the over 50k savers you may have retained a modicum of relevance - but instead you simply went after people for not knowing the Iceland FSA sanctioned “passport” guarantees would not be worth the paper they are printed on.

How very astute of you. Do you really expect the general public to be aware of this when their is no corroborating advice from the FSA/government or leading commentators who helped promote these savings schemes? I’d be delighted to read your past advice to this effect.

However I’m afraid respect for your work is still pending.

The account paid a higher rate of interest than almost all other banks operating in the UK (including other foreign banks).

Savers have benefited from those high rates and are now receiving repayment of their capital in full, giving them the upside of the high reward without suffering from the downside of the collapse.

Additionally if the icesave accounts were so risky, why were they championed by so many institutions? Did you blog about pulling out of iceland as soon as possible?

And somehow you also call these depositors “rewarded”. They will be lucky to get their cash - without interest - in time for christmas. Where is their reward?

There were many other valid criticims of the government’s actions, for instance the short and medium term consequences to the tax-payer of offering such a guarantee. But calling the depositors “rewarded” for “chasing risky rewards” is non-sensicle and reeks of jealous attention-grabbing. Please grow a brain before you put fingers to keyboard again.

But what about the Post Office Savings accounts? They are underwritten by the Bank of Ireland. If this failed and the Irish Government reneged on its promises to underwrite depositors losses, who is responsible for the moral hazard? We know Irish banks are having a tough time and that Ireland is overbanked, albeit not to the scale of Iceland.

If the chancellor had not underwritten Icesave accounts, might there be a run on the Post Office accounts? The hard line advocated in the article might encourage just such a run. Would you be relaxed about that? What effect would that have on confidence in British banks?