Icelanders rebel, refuse to bail out distressed national banks to the tune of $6 bil

[StageLeft]

Depending on what metrics you value, Iceland is one of the best countries in the world in which to live.

Presumably no metric that includes the human need for Vitamin D.

Iceland has been meaningless and once this pans out it will again become meaningless. It's smaller in population than Newfoundland, Canada and how much does Newfoundland matter to the rest of the world?

 

[MotF Bane]

Presumably no metric that includes the human need for Vitamin D.

Iceland has been meaningless and once this pans out it will again become meaningless. It's smaller in population than Newfoundland, Canada and how much does Newfoundland matter to the rest of the world?

 

[yllus]

That doesn't mean they have financial savvy, at all. If they were, they wouldn't have gone for total deregulation of banking. Much the same can be said wrt this country, too, except that we're less vulnerable on the downside of speculation- we're too big to fail. We can extort the ROTW the same way that bankers are extorting us- we'll take 'em down with us. Iceland, otoh, could be lifted up and then slapped down with barely a blip on the world's financial radar...

The moral of the story is to beware of deregulated free-market wheeler-dealer bankers bearing gifts. They're not in it for your benefit, but rather their own, and every trap needs some bait, after all...

No, it's not a direct indicator of awareness of fiscal issues, but they're certainly not simple fishermen who've been deceived by Friedman acolytes into losing all the spare change they stashed under their mattress. Some (though not all or even the majority) fault lies with the people for letting this happen.

 

[Vic]

Stick a fork in Iceland, it is done.

 

[Zebo]

Never heard of it.

 

[CanOWorms]

Iceland had a very race-based idea on their so-called success before their collapse. I wonder if they view their failure as race-based, too.

 

[EagleKeeper]

I would hardly consider Iceland as "anti-American".

Maybe one of the Scandinavian states can annex them? or Canada can buy them out. LOL

I believe that they were once part of Denmark

 

[zephyrprime]

Bingo !!!

What's the over-under on recovery from a total collapse of a country's financial system?

A generation?
--

It's only about six years oddly enough which seems pretty short for such a big event doesn't it? That's about how long it took poland and russia to recover when they had their economic collapses at the end of communism.

 

[zephyrprime]

I should state that while I believe they're doing the right thing morally, they're probably doing the wrong thing in realistic terms

I would argue the opposite. It's the wrong thing to do morally while it's the right thing to do in realistic terms.

It's the wrong thing to do morally because the Icelanders benefitted a LOT from the good times. They made some serious money. Way more that the amount they now owe. There's no question that the icelanders came out ahead in the bottom line. Also, the Icelanders should have known that making so much money in such short order could only have come from a scam.

It's the right thing to due in machiavellian terms because having a bad credit rating going forward doesn't mean squat for Iceland. Nobody was going to lend them any money in the near term anyway. And in a few years, international investors have notoriously short memories and only care about short term returns so nobody will care about this default. Also, joining the EU was probably not going to be much of a money making move so there is little opportunity cost there.

I'm looking to buy into Iceland now.