Entries from Chemicals & The Economy tagged with 'Iceland'

The Latvian canary

Coal miners used to take a canary with them, to help detect poisonous fumes. If the canary stopped singing, then they knew there was a problem. This led to the concept of "the canary in the coalmine acting as a...

Eurozone under pressure

Early last year, the blog flagged up a warning from Gillian Tett in the Financial Times that Iceland could go bankrupt, as its banks were "too big to rescue". Yet at the time, the United Nations had listed it as...

Iceland calls in IMF

As the blog predicted, Iceland has been forced to call on the IMF for help. Finally, the country's leaders have recognised that their $20bn economy couldn't support the level of debt built up during the 'go-go' years. The pity is...

Iceland on the brink

Last March, the blog noted an excellent article on Iceland by Gillian Tett of the Financial Times. She argued that Iceland was 'the first country run like a hedge fund'. And she worried that its banks might prove not 'too...

‘Too big to rescue’

Readers will know that I am a great admirer of Gillian Tett’s analyses of banking issues in the Financial Times. Today, she has another thought-provoking article, this time on the emergence of Iceland as ‘the world’s first country run like...