Iceland voters to decide re-payment of some bank debts

This third column of my blog is about the ability apparently of Iceland voters to decide by a referendum whether to permit their government to assume responsibility for the huge unpaid debts incurred within recent years to foreign creditors, by their profligate banks. Both England and the Netherlands apparently have subsidized some very large bank-type creditors through their "stimulus" packages. In turn they expected Iceland to assume responsibility to eventually repay them. Iceland's parliament , by a close vote had agreed that that should happen - that Iceland should ultimately come good for such debts.
But their president, who apparently has such power, felt that it should be up to the citizens themselves to decide this big issue. At the moment it is not clear, through local polls just which way the citizen vote will go. Many so-called foreign commentators just assumed that for the good of Iceland's future credibility that Iceland would repay these large loans. But, many citizens apparently feel that - the foreign creditors assumed a risk when granting their banks such loans, and whether reimbursed by their own government banks or not, it should not be up to Icelandic citizens to become responsible, through higher taxes, or whatever other means the government might have to pursue to obtain such reimbursement. The vote is to be within the next few weeks. - a very interesting usage of local referendums. The end result will be watched closely by the international community.