Who's "silly" and "stupid"?

During a discussion about enhancing Scotland's financial powers on the BBC's weekend coverage of the SNP's spring conference, MEP Alyn Smith said the economic problems being suffered by 'arc of prosperity' member Iceland were due to its banks being "allowed to make a number of silly decision, like they were under the UK management" and that such small countries could "take decisions faster and reorientate their economy quickly". Another interviewee stated that the SNP wouldn't have been so stupid to allow the domestic banks to take the ultimately reckless business decisions that they did.

Leaving aside the fact that these statements seem a tad uncomplimentary regarding the abilities of both the UK and Icelandic nations (unwittingly, presumably, in the case of Iceland) and thus the latter's ability to "quickly reorientate" bringing to mind headless chickens and bulls in china shops, it's worth recalling a couple of statements made by Alex Salmond in the last year or two regarding Scotland's financial sector:

We are pledging a light-touch regulation suitable to a Scottish financial sector with its outstanding reputation for probity, as opposed to one like that in the UK, which absorbs huge amounts of management time in ‘gold-plated’ regulation. (April 2007)

Take financial services. With RBS and HBOS - two of the world's biggest banks - Scotland has global leaders today, tomorrow and for the long-term. (March 2008)

Well it's maybe not very nice to call people "silly" and "stupid", but if that's a plausible characterisation of the Labour Government's contribution to the financial mis-regulation and consequent banking collapses, then in view of the quotes above what does this say about Alex Salmond?

"We've got what it takes"? Perhaps an independent Scotland could have weathered the global financial storm better than other countries and indeed in a superior manner to the UK, but surely "we" can't be referring to Alex Salmond and the SNP, irrespective of the former's reputation for self-regard.