Holy crapo! Iceland's doomed to near bankruptcy

A classic example of American style capitalism poisoning an otherwise stable and fundamentally sound financial system. What I mean is the American style capitalism is our propensity for heavily leveraged buying of companies,housing,etc., which is directly to blame for our current situation. Values can only be artificially inflated for so long before the inevitable downturn. And the Fed's policy of keeping interest rates artificially low only contributed to the problem by making the capital needed for these heavily financed purchases easier to acquire.

The need for our financial system to get back to a true manufacturing base should be obvious to everyone. Unfortunately our "leadership" is only interested in making more borrowing at cheap rates available to those wanting to continue our obviously broken fiat money system.

The Vikings will survive while we are crying for our grocery stores and cable TV....

well actually, developing countries wont really feel any effects, except maybe less investments etc.

does anyone understand that NOBODY KNOWS WHAT TO DO?? our so-called financial geniuses got us into this mess and they dont know how to get out. Can anyone stand up and say "ive modeled this scenario and here's what we need to do?- c'mon, some financial bright spark must have wondered about the future, and where are all those smart assed MBA's that were all the rage in the 90's who thought they knew how to run the country? any of them got a bright idea?

its time to ACT. personally I'm turning down the cash expenses and spending my time making things I want not buying them, and spending time not watching crappy tv, and trying to teach myself the survival skills I'll need next year.

So, is the US Government going to bail out Iceland, too???

SWEET! Now Canada can finally can claim what's rightfully its!

Iceland has had it bad for a while as they pretty much have to import everything. They have a tough economy and have long been one of the most expensive countries in the world to visit.

its all bjorks fault!

So where do we go from here?

If the world's most developed nation has been compromised by a bunch of greedy retards in an unchecked system then we have got a lot of social restructuring to do.

It's a domino effect.....no one country on this planet is going to go untouched by this economic party.

Iceland's open economy and perfect capital mobility make it a poster-child for countries trying to ride the capital market line of the global economy in the long run. However, it also makes Iceland particularly vulnerable to fluctuations in the global economy (such as the post-911 global slowdown and the credit slowdown today). The country’s most pressing concern appears to be its rising inflation – and how to address that. The Central Bank’s policy hitherto of interest rate manipulation to maintain its inflation target has proven to be unsustainable, and created many unfavorable side-effects. A key alternative open to the Central Bank, to diminish volatility in speculative financial and economic arbitrage opportunities, could be controlling its exchange rate via pegging to the Euro (one of its major economic trading partners).

America's going down and taking the rest of the world with it.

yay for me living in sweden ^_^

I'm glad, despite the plethora of news stories depicting the state of the US economy and the upcoming election, that Current is still sharing world news like this. Once again, it's not all about "us" (as in United States?). The whole world is experiencing negative economic impact. Everyone's trying to keep their heads above water.

It's like a chain reaction... things started getting bad here, then in Germany, Iceland... which countries are next?

our entire monetary system is in the begining stages of collapse, this is only the begining. We as humans must lose faith in money before we can achieve unconditional love and truth in our lifetime. If we can do this our grandchildren will laugh and gawk at how primitive our society is now. a joke to laugh about.
the only thing Iceland should do is become the world's largest geothermal energy producer, which is completely feasible in one generation.

its global warming, the ice melted and now they can't make any profits out of it :D

Why not host a global Dodgeball tournament with Bjork as MC? That should spur the economy!

The population of Iceland is around three hundred thousand people. Russia has already agreed to bail Iceland out.

Unfortunately this news didn't help me feel any better about my own economic situation, but for some reason I'm beginning to love the company, go figure....

They've been going down hill ever since they pulled their troop out of Iraq...

It's okay. Bjork can bail the country out with another album.

I hope this doesn't mean EVE Online is going down the tubes.

Yep, Iceland also had a similar housing bubble burst just like in the United States. Its remarkable how the same thing happened over there. Much of it was driven by American money and that same American money is bringing it down.

It seems that Iceland goes through quite extreme cycles of economic ups and downs. Just when the Icelandic economy gets strong an economic downturn somewhere else hits the fragile Icelandic economy hard, its a broken record that keeps repeating...