Iceland enjoying progress and recovery via allowing banks to fail and not creating austerity.

[midnight]

&feature=player_embedded

Davos conference interview with Iceland's President says, Iceland enjoying recover because his country didn't follow the traditional Western approach..... Iceland put in control price controls, allow banks to go fail, took care of the poor....

The theory of bailing out banks will not be allowed by enlightened democracies.

[samsingh]

1. they are a small, fairly straightforward economy

[idwiyo]

2. Blasphemy! Don't listen to them commies, they will ruin you! All bail the banks!!!

Austerity (for 99% only, of course) rocks!!!

[frazzled]

3. Iceland has a population of 319,000

About the size of the city of St. Louis proper, which tags in at 318,069. Not the population of metropolitan St. Louis, mind you ... which is around 2,882,932 ... but just the "downtown" area of St. Louis. The 58th largest city in this vast and complex country of ours.

How can we possibly draw any conclusions from Iceland's economy as opposed to the massive and complicated US economy? Iceland's rapid adoption of free-market policies in the 1990s led to a spectacular financial crisis a decade later. "Relative to the size of its economy, Iceland’s banking collapse (wa)s the largest suffered by any country in economic history." They had to be funded by the IMF. The big international banking sector that arose there was the main cause of the country's stellar rise and equally stellar fall, and that has been all but eradicated. But we have to put things in perspective: the big unemployment that occurred there involved ... 7000 people.

Iceland tried to be a big international finance competitor; it tore them down. Now they're back to manufacturing and fishing.

[sulphurdunn]

9. You're correct to state

that exact parallels are not instructive. What is instructive is the fairly obvious conclusion that the real difference between the US and Iceland is that Iceland isn't ruled by it's banks.

[midnight]

10. I was going to try and explain away, but your honest answer is so simple and so effective.

Thanks...

[Wernothelpless]

4. I applaud them but ...

Their banks don't effect a world economy while ours will ... our banksters are gaming the entire world ... therefore, we should nationalize our banks and reform them ... Now we could EASILY prosecute and then freeze the assets of the banksters (both corporate and personal) to repay the dept to China ... I'd say the accumulated personal wealth, along with life in prison, of Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, Angelo Mozillo, Timothy Geithner, et. al. would go a long way to persuade others to think twice before playing casino again ...

Not to mention that it would definitely make a great movie ... what are we waiting for? ...

[Ian Iam]

5. DO NOT MESS WITH ICELAND!

Britain got an arse-kicking in the cod disputes of the 1970s.

[snot]

6. K&R'd!

[limpyhobbler]

7. du rec.

[The Wizard]

8. Too big to fail

is too big to exist and eventually becoming a parasitical drain on the system. Hang a banker and the rest will fall in line.