A tale of three countries: recovery after banking crises

Zsolt Darvas at Bruegel compares the experiences of Iceland, Ireland and Latvia in this new paper.

18 replies on “A tale of three countries: recovery after banking crises”

“The experience with the collapse of the gigantic Icelandic banking system suggests that letting banks fail when they had a faulty business model is the right choice.”
Gee…whodhathunkit…..

Iceland isn’t out of the woods yet – due to the personal debt issue.

They got the bank collapse right but a lot of their mortgages were all reverse carry trades.

This one’s for free…

What do you call it when a country has a banking crisis à la Japan and a personal debt crisis à la Iceland?

Going Japlandic – cf. Ireland.

I must say back in 2003 / 04 I was very much struck by the Reagan Democrat views of the Baltic & Polish peoples.
Conversations I had with eastern couples on Holiday in Kerry during 2003 before the troops came had me in total shock.
I could not believe it really.
There was people out there actually thicker then we were !! – a sort of extreme Naive eastern PDism filled the air about them.
The cultural shock the next summer down at the work coalface was something else Boy.
And the subsequent reaction of the Irish middleclass to the Irish Ferries thingy was something way beyond precious.

Looking at the figures though the people out east beyond the Commarghs are made of tough stuff , very stoic but ehhh ……….dim.
The Swedes love them dearly though – at least they have that consolation.

And what about this Farming Renaissance eh !
It was 3 billion worth in the national accounts back in 2006 & 3 billion or so today.
I like it.
Log Orwellian Ireland Inc Motto for 2012
“Growth through Stagnation”

Lets hope for early grass growth this Spring to pull us out of this debt abyss……..
Me I am taking the horse to France
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Z4crBt-iM

Share of Agriculture forestry & fishing 1.4 % of output in 2007
1.0% of output in 2010.

Ahh I know where the error is located – they forget to add hunting & gathering in the national accounts.
Hiking in Kerry this November & funnily enough heard no Stags rutting – everything was very quiet………………..

The author seems unaware of the Irish GDP / GNP anomaly

He cannot understand why unemployment is so much higher down here relative to Iceland given the broadly similar GDP decline.

Perhaps we should do a personnel swap of Aughinish Alumina workers for Icelandic fishermen.
Both countries would benefit from a increased skills set.

Dork
I have even less of a clue what you are on about than normal….I suspect I am not alone.

This time of year Philip, hot drinks such mulled wine and hot whiskys could be responsible for the extra posting activities

@ Philip II

It’s oblique, surreal, sardonic, postmodern (if you like) commentary. An acquired taste, but worth the effort IMHO.

Reailty can test the limits of rational discourse, as it did in 1939. Whodathunk the Holocaust could have happened, but it did ?

The crack about hunter gatherers is in the best Myles na gCopaleen tradition.
We will always be rich, in cultural terms at least, as long as we have Dorks 🙂

You are wise of course as ever mr quigley, but the last thing the Dork is, is postmodern.

Postmodernity implies a set of competing narratives, none of which is more truthful than the other, and each of which only has any meaning in that it subverts another.

The Dork – though he’s welcome to correct – like Brian Woods Snr, is howling that the world is real, and we play conceptual games with it to our own destruction.

The author is grateful to Alan Ahearne and John Fitzgerald and I am very grateful to the author, for mentioning this at the start of his paper because it saved me a lot of unnecessary reading.

I disagree with the assertion that all three countries are in recovery. I don’t live in Iceland or Latvia so I cannot really say what is happening on the ground but by no stretch of the imagination can one say that Ireland is in recovery and to state this at the start of the article as a sort of premise warns the reader that what is coming could well be very wrong analysis. I guess that might be put down to the input from Mr. Ahearne and Mr. John Fitzgerald. I still remember Vincent Browne holding up some 130 page report from the ESRI two years ago “where did you warn us?” JF “On page 75… 3rd paragraph!” VB On page 75 in a 130 page document, not page one or even ten”? As for Ahearne you could write a book about all the hopeless advice he gave the late Brian Lenihan and I hope someone does not wait 30 years to do so.

@Robert Browne

+ 1

“still remember Vincent Browne holding up some 130 page report from the ESRI two years ago “where did you warn us?” JF “On page 75… 3rd paragraph!” VB On page 75 in a 130 page document, not page one or even ten”? ”

I remember reading that C-Span existed for politicians totake positions and make warnings that no one would notice, only so they could cite the speech later if convenient.

For an economist, just like a politican, his/her message is the one received, because that is the one intended. In 2007 the ordinary Joe thought FF were economic wizards, this was so accpeted, Rabitte was afraid to even mention the economy in that year’s election.

Various contributors here will claim they warned of this or that, but the truth is that the ordinary punter was not aware that economists had any quibble with Goveenment policy, except, as always with expenditure. It was never explained why the spending would be unsustainable, because that would involve admitting that he private sector market being wrong, ie that spending decided on by semi-literate builders might be lead to a worse allocation of resoursces than spending decided on by the elected representatives. Such heresy could not be entertained.

If JF put a warning on page 75 it was not a real warning. It was intended to influence the ordinary Joe at all.

Global Debt Crisis

The greatest private fraud of human history.
Who are the great fraudsters who are becoming the murderers of the human kind? How does the economy “illness” threaten Democracy and the freedom of people?

http://eamb-ydrohoos.blogspot.com/2012/01/global-debt-crisis.html
———————————
By knowing what happened in indebted Greece, where loan sharks created “bubbles” and the current inhuman debt, one can understand the inhuman plan in total …understand where this plan started just to bring all states at the same end …understand how this type of plans are established…

Authored by PANAGIOTIS TRAIANOU

Comments are closed.