Iceland's story of 'Greed and self-delusion' sounds familiar

[seabhcan]

Good article on the Icelandic elections:

Al Jazeera English - Europe - Placing the blame in Iceland

And allegations are coming to light of collusion and corruption: strange loans made by the banks to government ministers; best friends on banking boards and regulatory committees, dubious sales of assets among the banks aimed at inflating their real value.

In the end, Iceland's enormous wealth was all an illusion.

The banks had borrowed cheap money from abroad and gone on lavish international shopping sprees.

Without much experience in either banking or buying, the young bankers had bought bad assets, worth little compared to accumulated debt many times the country’s GDP

[anewbeginning]

Anywhere you have massive political and economic corruption you will always have a ticking time bomb of econnomic chaos.

It happened in Iceland. And it happened in Ireland.

The banks are worthless in both countries because of the policy of governments not to prevent an expanding property bubble and risky banking.

[MsAnneThrope]

More than familiar. Practically a carbon copy. It will be interesting to see however whether anyone found to have done anything illegal in Iceland will face any prosecution. Does anyone know if they have a history of going hard or easy on politicians/banks/businesspeople found guilty of serious fraud or corruption or theft?