Even US President Franklin Roosevelt jovially slapped his thigh when Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht told him that Nazi Germany would default on its external loans, including those owed to American banks, exclaiming, “Serves the Wall Street bankers right!” In Europe today, impatient Greeks have doubtless derived some encouragement from excoriations of bankers’ foolishness by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.