Iceland's meltdown: the rise and fall of international banking in the North Atlantic
This paper shows how rapid privatization and liberalization of Iceland's small local banks around 2000, combined with well-developed crony relations among the elite, enabled a small group of financiers to leverage government-guaranteed deposits into a vast wave of mergers and acquisitions abroa...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Centro de Economia Política
2011
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/44541/ http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_serial&pid=0101-3157&lng=en&nrm=iso |
| Summary: | This paper shows how rapid privatization and liberalization of Iceland's small local banks around 2000, combined with well-developed crony relations among the elite, enabled a small group of financiers to leverage government-guaranteed deposits into a vast wave of mergers and acquisitions abroad, and redistribute enough of the profits back home to make the economy boom. Negative policy feedback loops were systematically undermined. The incoming left-wing government, with IMF support, has managed to protect the bulk of the population from the worst of the effects. |
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