That is a fairly naive viewpoint. No business approaches loans in this way. A loan is a contract, with terms that apply in the event of default, and terms governing repayment. Defaulting on a loan has consequences, but most businesses do not view it as a moral issue. If it ever becomes advantageous to default on a loan, they will do so. If it is advantageous to take measures to hinder attempts at collection, they will do this as well. As far as they're concerned, it isn't theft - it is just the terms of the agreement the lender agreed to. Most nations have bankruptcy laws, and sovereign nations have, well, sovereignty. Lenders who agree to make loans do so with full knowledge of these laws.

So, if a person declares bankruptcy I do not believe they are committing theft - the lender understood the bankruptcy laws when they freely made the loan, and they did so at an interest rate that they considered profitable even in light of this risk. Likewise, when a bank lends to a sovereign nation, they do so knowing that they have very little recourse if the nation chooses to default on the loan.

To the extent that anybody was forced to loan money against their will, they might be able to claim that whoever forced them to lend money was a thief.

At the end? You want to say the LIBOR scandal was not real, courts were all wrong and banks paid out billions in fines just to avoid some bad PR?

Get back to reality. We have actual proof that these people are criminals and they they were engaged in a criminal conspiracy.

There is no conspiracy in the conspiracy-theory world-domination sense, but if you doubt that there was at least one conspiracy in the criminal sense, you haven't read any news for some years.

Yes, there is a part of that as well. The german government is absolutely to blame for the whole circus and far from the innocent victim they pretend to be.

Not at all. I'm very libertarian in this. The solution is to let the fucking "too big to fail" banks fail. But if they threaten to take down the whole system, bankrupt them the way you would any other essential service: By nationalising them, letting all their shareholders pay the bill, jail the top management for endangering the economy, selling all the financial market gambling money it holds and using all its assets to pay out regular peoples accounts. Then close the whole thing down and tell the other banks that if they so much as flinch, they'll be next.

Sadly, our fear of that is so overwhelming, that we've allowed the opposite to become reality. We've weakened our governments so much that banks and corporations interfere with politics (telling governments what to do) and they are using that ability not for the benefit of society, but for their own economic beenfit and the profit interests of their shareholders and investors.

Bullshit. The loans were given under austerity conditions, i.e. orders to cut this and that and that in social services.

No, I call that we let the banksters actually suffer the consequences of a high-risk investment going wrong (after all, that risk is why the interest rate is so high) and send the money to Greece not to french and german banks with Greece being just a proxy.

It's even harder to see why taxpayers should pay for the gambling debt of big banks.

Iceland was the only country that did the right thing: Jail the bankers and save regular peoples' account money, not investors profits.

Here's a crazy idea: Some private corporations made a huge profit lending money at very high interest rates. Interest on credit is your payment for taking a risk (that's why there is higher interest if the risk is higher). What if - omg! - that risk actually were a risk and they would lose their money? If taxpayers did not bail them out so they can buy a 3rd yacht?