Top Economists: Iceland Did It Right … And Everyone Else Is
Doing It Wrong
Iceland Shows the Way
By WashingtonsBlog
August 25, 2012 "Information
Clearing House"
---- Nobel
prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz
notes:
What
Iceland did was right. It would have been wrong to burden
future generations with the mistakes of the financial
system.
Nobel
prize winning economist Paul Krugman
writes:
What
[Iceland's recovery] demonstrated was the … case for letting
creditors of private banks gone wild eat the losses.
A
funny thing happened on the way to economic Armageddon:
Iceland’s very desperation made conventional behavior
impossible, freeing the nation to break the rules.
Where everyone else bailed out the bankers and made the
public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust
and actually expanded its social safety net. Where everyone
else was fixated on trying to placate international
investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the
movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver.
Iceland told the banks to pound sand. And Iceland’s economy
is doing much better than virtually all of the countries
which have let the banks push them around.
Iceland holds some key lessons for nations trying to survive
bailouts after the island’s approach to its rescue led to a
“surprisingly” strong recovery, the International Monetary
Fund’s mission chief to the country said.
Iceland’s commitment to its program, a decision to
push losses on to bondholders instead of taxpayers
and the safeguarding of a welfare system that shielded the
unemployed from penury helped propel the nation from
collapse toward recovery, according to the Washington-based
fund.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32283.htm