Iceland

Iceland refused to be blackmailed. Iceland refused to take on the extra debt (and debt slavery) that came with the blackmail. Iceland refused to touch its social programs. Iceland has the strongest economy in the Western world.

Good Thing Debt Doesn't Matter! </sarc>

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First, Iceland jailed its crooked bankers for their direct involvement in the financial crisis of 2008. Now, every Icelander will receive a payout for the sale of one of its three largest banks, Íslandsbanki.

Perhaps it was the public shaming of Iceland's diametrically opposite approach to 'dealing' with its bankers, or perhaps Janet Yellen needs a distraction from her own 'Fed Leak' problems, or finally perhaps Carmen Segarra's 2013 whistleblowing over the cozy relationship between Goldman and The New York Fed was just too conspicuous to brush under the carpet. Despite Bill Dudley's insistence that The New York Fed is not a subsidiary of Goldman, The NY Times reports, federal prosecutors are preparing to announce a criminal case this week against a former Goldman banker suspected of taking confidential documents from a source inside the government.

Like medical chemotherapy, Iceland's economic chemotherapy was horrible, but the cancer of debt-deflation was eradicated and the system made whole.

Forget Norway. Japan. Iceland. Switzerland. Or any of the other places around the world that are notorious for being painful on the wallet. Venezuela is now the most expensive country in the world, hands down. To give you an idea, the cost of a 15-minute taxi ride to the beach yesterday afternoon totaled an eye-popping $158.

Neoliberal economics is blind to reality and serves to justify the destruction of the economic prospects of the Western World. It remains to be seen if Russia and China can develop a different economics or whether these rising superpowers will fall victim to the “junk economics” that has destroyed the West. With so many Chinese and Russian economists educated in the US tradition, the prospects of Russia and China might not be any better than ours. The entire world could go down the tubes together.

Never go full Krugman...

The Icelandic government is reconsidering its national refugee quota after a social media campaign resulted in over 11,000 Icelanders (the "most peaceful nation in the world") offering up a room in their homes to refugees. As Europe struggles to cope with unprecedented levels of those seeking shelter, residents of the sparsely populated Nordic island country resorted to direct action to pressure their leaders.

"If we accepted everyone, we would be larger than Iceland." – Liberland founder, Vit Jedlicka

What does an economy do when it no longer produces enough goods to pay its own bills? It “consumes”, meaning it cannibalizes (i.e. consumes) all of the accumulated wealth of that society. And when the “consumer economy” has cannibalized all that wealth? It turns to debt.