From Banking on Fish to Fishy Banks

• Main Author: Ornston, Darius
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Cornell University Press 2018
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501726101.003.0005

Chapter four illustrates how Icelandic policymakers used formal and informal networks to liberalize their economy even more rapidly and radically than neoliberal icons such as Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher. Institutional reform spurred movement into new industries, such as financial services, partly because of the policy innovations described above and partly because of the speed with which new ideas diffused within dense, interpersonal networks in the private sector. At the same time, public and private sector actors were slow to recognize the ensuing financial bubble, and Iceland suffered the largest banking economic crisis in human history, eclipsing not only financial powerhouses such as the UK and US, but also the Swedish and Finnish banking crises of the early 1990s.