The Icelandic Bubble

Since we're all fans of bubbles, here's a very entertaining article by Michael Lewis on the Icelandic Bubble, titled Wall Street on the Tundra.

Wall Street on the Tundra
Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

Full article: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/f...urrentPage=all

[cjppjc]

Re: The Icelandic Bubble

Thanks funny read.

“I think it is easier to take someone in the fishing industry and teach him about currency trading,” he says, “than to take someone from the banking industry and teach them how to fish.”

[cjppjc]

Re: The Icelandic Bubble

One of the distinctive traits about Iceland’s disaster, and Wall Street’s, is how little women had to do with it. Women worked in the banks, but not in the risktaking jobs. As far as I can tell, during Iceland’s boom, there was just one woman in a senior position inside an Icelandic bank. Her name is Kristin Petursdottir, and by 2005 she had risen to become deputy C.E.O. for Kaupthing in London. “The financial culture is very male-dominated,” she says. “The culture is quite extreme. It is a pool of sharks. Women just despise the culture.” Petursdottir still enjoyed finance. She just didn’t like the way Icelandic men did it, and so, in 2006, she quit her job. “People said I was crazy,” she says, but she wanted to create a financial-services business run entirely by women. To bring, as she puts it, “more feminine values to the world of finance.”
Today her firm is, among other things, one of the very few profitable financial businesses left in Iceland. After the stock exchange collapsed, the money flooded in. A few days before we met, for instance, she heard banging on the front door early one morning and opened it to discover a little old man. “I’m so fed up with this whole system,” he said. “I just want some women to take care of my money.”



That last line creates a conflict in me.

[Spartacus]

Re: The Icelandic Bubble

I'm very skeptical.
Something else is going on than "men will be brutal and women won't"

Search for "women" on this page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

and read each instance. Read the whole thing too, if you have the time

One of the distinctive traits about Iceland’s disaster, and Wall Street’s, is how little women had to do with it. Women worked in the banks, but not in the risktaking jobs. As far as I can tell, during Iceland’s boom, there was just one woman in a senior position inside an Icelandic bank. Her name is Kristin Petursdottir, and by 2005 she had risen to become deputy C.E.O. for Kaupthing in London. “The financial culture is very male-dominated,” she says. “The culture is quite extreme. It is a pool of sharks.
That last line creates a conflict in me.

[cjppjc]

Re: The Icelandic Bubble

I'm very skeptical.
Something else is going on than "men will be brutal and women won't"

Search for "women" on this page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

and read each instance. Read the whole thing too, if you have the time

Thank you. Enjoyed the read. One thing is true. In life, you never know how you are going to act in a situation, untill you are in that situation.