Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness.
[snip]
When their three brand-new global-size banks collapsed, last October, Iceland’s 300,000 citizens found that they bore some kind of responsibility for $100 billion of banking losses—which works out to roughly $330,000 for every Icelandic man, woman, and child. On top of that they had tens of billions of dollars in personal losses from their own bizarre private foreign-currency speculations, and even more from the 85 percent collapse in the Icelandic stock market.
(H/t cool blog)
2 comments:
Wow. I'm stunned.
Yeah.
I cannot imagine what I would do if the amount I owed on my mortgage essentially tripled.
Go bankrupt, I guess. Or march on the government and demand their resignations.
At least Iceland doesn't have debtor's prison like say, Dubai.
That is some freaky stuff.
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