Not necessarily headlines, but something noteworthy nonetheless: the land of Bjork is collapsing. Iceland, once heralded as having the highest standard of living in all of Europe, is on the brink of financial ruin. Today the government seized control of the largest bank and still, the country faces national bankruptcy.
Sadly, none of Reykjavik's friends came to the rescue. Clearly they have their own financial messes to sort through. So it seems Iceland is turning to Russia for financial assistance. If the $5.5 billion loan goes through, the country can stabilize it's currency but will still be in the woods.
Russia? I'm not sure how I feel about that. They claim not to have any interest in the abandoned USAF base there, but...
So what happened? Well Iceland relied heavily on cheap foreign financing to boost up ambitious entrepreneurship and mortgages. As the world economy started to falter the debt piled up and the tiny Atlantic nation started it's, uh, meltdown.
Very sad. But this is just the beginning, in my opinion. The financial stability of the planet is shaking down - is it rightsizing or collapsing? Does anybody really know?
I wish our Icelandic friends good luck. Sam and I are thinking about going next year for this. Maybe it will be inching it's way back up, or the krona will be exchanging at bargain basement rate. Who knows.
No comments:
Post a Comment