Meltdown Iceland

Lessons on the World Financial Crisis from a Small Bankrupt Island

by Roger Boyes

Bloomsbury USA, 2009

ISBN: 9781608190188
Pages: 256

Category: Economics & Politics

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getAbstract rating

Overall (?)

(9)

Importance	(9)
Innovation	(8)
Style	(9)
Level of Expertise (?)	(2)

In this summary you will learn

• Why the world financial crisis of 2008 hit Iceland first
• How Prime Minister David Oddsson shaped Iceland’s economic development
• How the crisis affected Iceland’s people and culture

Why you should read Meltdown Iceland

Most people aren’t very familiar with Iceland, an isolated, homogenous, near-Arctic island. Now, thanks to Roger Boyes’s wonderfully told tale of its financial collapse, readers can learn what happened to the economy, politics and culture of this unusual, mostly-frozen nation. Iceland was the unlikely first victim of the 2008 global financial collapse – the actual canary in the coal mine. Its financial excesses, cronyism and poor governance serve as a microcosm of the problems facing the largest capitalist nations. Boyes’s financial case study flows like a novel. He is unafraid to draw biting conclusions from his detailed presentation: here, villains are villains, greed is greed, names are named. This fast-moving story puts the global fiscal meltdown into perspective. getAbstract rates this as important reading for anyone who seeks insight into the 2008-2009 international economic crisis, which began in this lone, cold outpost and then burst into global flames.

About the author

Roger Boyes is an award-winning correspondent. He has written about Western and Eastern Europe for the past 30 years for the Financial Times and the Times of London. He has been reporting from Iceland since 1976, when he went there to cover on the Cold War.