Part of what follows is a conjecture—the business model of investment banking may be dying. If so, all the money we spent and have lost in recession was wasted on a system that may be in terminal decline anyway. Another part is a new tale of fiscal adjustment in two small countries: Iceland and Ireland. One let its banks fail and is now doing really quite well, especially when compared to Eurozone Europe. The other bailed them out and has condemned itself to a generation of misery because of it.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 622