Wall Street on the Tundra....
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.

>"In 2003, Iceland’s three biggest banks had assets of only a few billion dollars, about 100 percent of its gross domestic product. Over the next three and a half years they grew to over $140 billion and were so much greater than Iceland’s G.D.P. that it made no sense to calculate the percentage of it they accounted for.
The banks were also lending Icelanders money to buy stocks and real estate, the value of Icelandic stocks and real estate went through the roof. From 2003 to 2007, while the U.S. stock market was doubling, the Icelandic stock market multiplied by NINE times.
Reykjavík real-estate prices tripled.
By 2006 the average Icelandic family was three times as wealthy as it had been in 2003, and virtually all of this new wealth was one way or another tied to the new investment-banking industry."

Gotta take a good look at this. I read Vanity Fair monthly for their excellent investgative articles. It shows us a postcard image of the rise and fall of a country embroiled in today' hedge funds. Don't think we're not on the same path. But with a much larger population. Gawd, it looks like a <headache.>