Michael Lewis: "Wall Street on the Tundra; How Iceland went bust"

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.

What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

by Michael Lewis April 2009

More: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland200904

 

Thank you very much for pointing me to this article.

Obviously, Michael Lewis has shown all the "experts" that a lot can be learned by an Icelandic autopsy.

CNBC claims to be a financial news network. They have been doing special reports on high end prostitution and murder at the Mustang ranch. It seems to me that maybe CNBC could enlighten the world on the current financial crisis if it sent some reporters to Iceland and to do some reporting. Send everyone at CNBC to Iceland and see if any of those clowns can come up with half the story that Michael Lewis did.

 

Thanks Mak for posting the link. I like Michael Lewis. I have his new book, haven't started it yet. Too much financial insanity in the daily news.

Nice summary on Iceland, I knew little about it.

 

Great read. Less about the current economic conditions and rise and fall of a country than about human nature and perception.

 

"Iceland’s heat isn’t heat as we know it, but heat drawn directly from the earth. The default temperature of the water is scalding. Every year workers engaged in street repairs shut down the cold-water intake used to temper the hot water and some poor Icelander is essentially boiled alive in his shower. So powerful is the heat being released from the earth into my room that some great grinding, wheezing engine must be employed to prevent it from cooking me."

that's pretty horrifying that someone would suffer that fate, how can they not put measures in to prevent such a thing?

 

That article is so funny I almost wet myself.

On another note, how the hell did I miss Iceland??????

 

This is one of the best parts:

"After three days in Reykjavík, I receive, more or less out of the blue, [a phone call. It's] from a producer of a leading current-events TV show. All of Iceland watches her show, she says, then asks if I’d come on and be interviewed. “About what?” I ask. “We’d like you to explain our financial crisis,” she says. “I’ve only been here three days!” I say. It doesn’t matter, she says, as no one in Iceland understands what’s happened. They’d enjoy hearing someone try to explain it, even if that person didn’t have any idea what he was talking about"

LOL!!

 

Excellent, thanks.

 

LOL !!!

 

"One of the hidden causes of the current global financial crisis is that the people who saw it coming had more to gain from it by taking short positions than they did by trying to publicize the problem."



I think this quote from the article is what cause the financial crisis to go so deep and for so long. Temptation.
Very good article!