Iceland's Crisis: What Went Wrong?

Vanity Fair:

Just after October 6, 2008, when Iceland effectively went bust, I spoke to a man at the International Monetary Fund who had been flown in to Reykjavík to determine if money might responsibly be lent to such a spectacularly bankrupt nation. He'd never been to Iceland, knew nothing about the place, and said he needed a map to find it. He has spent his life dealing with famously distressed countries, usually in Africa, perpetually in one kind of financial trouble or another. Iceland was entirely new to his experience: a nation of extremely well-to-do (No. 1 in the United Nations' 2008 Human Development Index), well-educated, historically rational human beings who had organized themselves to commit one of the single greatest acts of madness in financial history. "You have to understand," he told me, "Iceland is no longer a country. It is a hedge fund."

Read the whole story: Vanity Fair

Comments

[carrieanna]

08:12 PM on 03/03/2009

Interesting. I had noticed that none of the failed US banks seemed to have any female leaders.

[lynnn]

01:58 AM on 03/04/2009

It's a good ole boys club. They learned all their failed ideas from a few business schools.