voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2549
Imagine how easy it would be to change that ‘c’ to an ‘r’.
Reports of empty shelves and a economy that’s completely seized up.
I hope to God our oil/coal imports and medical supply system are not reliant on the Irish banking system for credit.
That is scary stuff. Could it happen here? Very possibly although I hope not.
Maybe we could entice the hundred odd thousand to immigrate here to replace the Poles? 
Oops, forgot about the crash and recession , forgive me 
The only protection we have is the euro, Ireland would look like Borat’s hometown if that was to be taken from us now.
well we need a few hundred thousand people fast and from another country just for a bit of diversity ( no offence intended to our polish friends ) . preferably the blonde women who like to party, thanks. imagine , there could be whole housing estates full of blonde icelandic women in leitrim and west mayo . might stimulate the local economy a little 
btw , im not making fun of the horrendous and rapid shafting the majority of icelanders have just experienced
It would indeed ‘stimulate the economy’ as you so succintly put it oilman !
2Pack fondly dreams of former Ghost Estates overflowing with Bjork noises by night 
The well known German Berlin Institute just analyzed and assessed the sustainability of 285 European regions. The German papers are actually making fun of the rusult of that study:
For me just another proof that you can not predict the future just by continuing trends from the past.
Or indeed by counting demographics as a positive factor. For me, both high and low population growth rates = negative, whether the growth is organic or imported.
You know what Iceland really needs ?
If there were some country with 300,000 empty houses, that could offer the ENTIRE POPULATION of Iceland a home & citizenship, & in return Iceland would sign over all its natural resources. Last one who leaves turns off the lights
Now if only there was a country so fucked up that they had enough empty houses to rehouse an entire country 
I know a few good looking Icelanders, maybe they could replace the Poles we are losing!
Guys, we are not far off a similar fate ourselves, here in Ireland. 
**Iceland after the crash **
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/c … 734190.stm
BBC4 radio program, crossing continents (starts about 1 min in)
rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk:554/radio4/1100_ … &SSO2-UID= [realplayer required]
Having very fond memories of a long week-end in Iceland about 10 years ago, I suggest we find out the destination of choice for the Icelandic women and then we can all go there aswell! Two birds, one stone! Or better still, quite a few birds!
The euro got us into this. If we had been able to set interest rates we could have put the brakes on the speculation bubble long since. The euro meant no brakes when we could plainly see the black ice ahead.
Brakes are all good and well but they arent much use if the driver is passed out drunk at the wheel.
That wasn’t the only set of brakes available to us. The central bank could have set out strict guidelines regarding what was allowed. But they didn’t - presumably because they were told not to. But you’d be mistaken to be thinking that the punt would have saved us. Brakes are only any good if there is somebody there who is willing to step on them.
There were two options in terms of interest rates available to us if we had kept the punt:
Do look around at the countries that were also given a choice and chose not the euro before you say with what we should have done.
I meant the only protection we have now is the euro as that’s what we have today and hopefully will have in the future - sidestepping any arguments about whether it would be better or not to have joined it in the past, since that’s a whole other tired debate, often involving fish and innumeracy.
That radio program is sobering. It shows how a country holds hands with its banks and apparently sleepwalks into a national crisis.
And yet, they remain so phlegmatic about things, don’t they? I really hope this is not the template for our future in Ireland.
What was that line: “bank debts were 12 times the GNP of the country”…
And at the same time, Australia had a housing bubble with interest rates much higher than the eurozone. And Britain’s housing bubble in the late 80s happened at a time of fairly high interest rates, relatively speaking.
Interest rates were not the cause. Degregulated banking with lax (or nonexistent) credit criteria, toothless regulators and a casino mentality are what caused all this mess, whether in Ireland, Iceland, Denmark, Britain, Oz or anywhere else.
Hence, IMO, whether we were part of the euro or not over the last 7 years is largely irrelevant.
Everything happening now all around the world was pretty much inevitable once the financial deregulation started in earnest with Basle II. 1986, was it?
Milton Friedman on Icelandic State Television in 1984 (72 mins)
video.google.com/videoplay?docid … 6526618897
Professor Milton Friedman came to Iceland in 1984 to give a lecture at The University of Iceland. This is an interview with him on Icelandic State Television. The setup is interesting, with Friedman are three radically left-wing scholars who criticize him each at a time for everything from monetary policy to drug policy. One of them, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, is the current president of Iceland.
*This may not interest everyone. (starts in Icelandic for a minute and then switches to English)