Iceland Shows Other Europeans How to Survive Bankruptcy

Reason.com ^ | 7 Sep 2012 | Matthew Feeney

[BfloGuy]

Small Atlantic nation enjoys growth and employment gains after failing to rescue its banks. Mainland Europe remains stuck with stagnation, decline, and ruinous "rescue" packages.

[BfloGuy]

The U.S. and Europe remain mired in stagnation in part because our governments are in thrall to the bankers. The Icelanders told theirs to go pound salt, and, oh, while you're at it -- go bankrupt.

Good for them.

[Calvin Locke]

I’ve heard, from Deb Saunders, if I’m not mistaken, that Icelanders demonstrate their dissatisfaction with officials by throwing, not tomatoes, but kitchen utensils.

[BobL]

“Iceland’s largest banks held almost 10 percent of Iceland’s GDP in assets (much of it foreign) in 2008.”

People go into journalism because “math is hard”. In this case, the problem wasn’t 10% of GDP held by Iceland’s banks. If it were that low, they could have weathered it, easily - with just a blip in their debt (i.e., our deficits are 10% of GDP, every single year, at this point). Not to mention that not all of their assets were worthless...maybe half or more were still good.

No, it was 10X GDP, or 1000%. But then I learned math and pay attention to numbers, WHEN THEY ARE REPORTED initially...