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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"Iceland, Again"

14 Comments -

1 – 14 of 14
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very impressive analysis.

3/19/09, 2:53 PM

Blogger mnuez said...

Not to mention the elves. You try living in a country where little people comprise a large part of the loacal fauna. It really gets in the way.

On a more serious note, Iceland ought to be a subject that would be of great interest to you from a genetics standpoint. As an isolate people, they're absolutely fascinating in so many ways - it can be determined to a large degree of accuracy which one of eleven regions of the country a person comes from, their language hasn't been subject to the influence of the wider world until extremely recently, their culture hasn't been buffeted by waves of competing virtues and values and therefore tumbled along incestuously morphing only with what it had handy, etc. Pretty damn interesting people.

3/19/09, 3:24 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You know... your reputation pretty much assures that you will hardly ever get credit for interesting points of views... shame, cause even if people don't agree with all of your ideas, you do come up with some pretty spot on observations.

You really should come up with a 2nd anonymous blog to post your non "race" related posts.

3/19/09, 3:42 PM

Anonymous clem said...

From Looking for elves in Iceland:

"Belief in the unseen runs so high in Iceland that the Public Roads Administration sometimes delays or reroutes road construction to avoid what locals believe are elf habitations or cursed spots."

So be thankful, Steve, that elves and leprechauns aren't (yet) protected species in California. 'Cause if that infrastructure project near your house happened to hit one of their homes ... those sewer and water lines might end up being rerouted right through your front yard.

3/19/09, 5:07 PM

Anonymous anony-mouse said...

During bull markets everyone is a financial genius.

During bear markets it's clear that everything is rigged/fixed/unfair, and the little guy has no chance.

And then the bull market starts up again.

So don't worry everybody. Eventually you'll all be a financial geniuses again and no one, especially yourselves, will remember what you wrote today.

More a comment on psychology than finance, actually.

3/19/09, 5:49 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Leprechauns are a problem in 'Bama, as well.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=189_1187241905

Neshobanakni

3/19/09, 6:27 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is an interesting story, but are you certain that a story is necessary here? I would suppose that in any financial catastrophe there is a certain random element; some people who did not act unusually stupidly will get hit unusually hard.

Can you demonstrate that Icelandic financiers did anything unusually stupid?

3/19/09, 10:50 PM

Anonymous Pat Shuff said...

Iceland became a paradise of high returns, even for individual foreigners simply looking for a bank account. For instance, in July, Kaupthing's Isle of Man subsidiary offered 7.15% on one-year deposits.

http://tinyurl.com/a2nubk

The money flowed in attracted to the higher yields provided only by riskier assets which were the first to evaporate. The money fled in a panicked bank run and Iceland collapsed.

In an interview with the manager of an Icelandic fishing fleet he noted that they are a lean operation with very few back office positions so when the former banking personnel come looking for any job opening they will have to get wet.

I guess the moral is teach a man finance and he'll be fishing the rest of his life. Base a nation on free lunch finance for footing castles in the air and watch the tide roll away from the dock of the bay, inflatable flotation devices compliments rash poison Ivy League economic PhDs notwithstanding.

Sham-anism, ooh ee ooh ah ah.

3/20/09, 6:16 AM

Anonymous Wade Nichols said...

Surprised no one mentioned this. Somewhat of a debunking of the Anthony Lewis article on Iceland in Vanity Fair:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/03
/reality_check_vanity_fairs_fis.html

3/20/09, 6:54 AM

Blogger Truth said...

"Can you demonstrate that Icelandic financiers did anything unusually stupid?"

Naah, economies go bust overnight completely by accident.

3/20/09, 7:56 AM

Anonymous Ivy League Bastard said...

yes, Icelandic genetics has been studied on a massive scale with the results mined for medical applications. The guy who ran the study was Kari Steffensen, if I remember correctly.

3/20/09, 8:21 AM

Blogger albertosaurus said...

Speaking of Iceland, the landscapes on that island are incredilble. See Viking Sagas shot on location in Iceland and available on NetFlix/Roku in HD.

It does for the north what Lawrence of Arabia did for Middle Eastern deserts. Of course Ralf Moeller is no Peter O'Toole. OTOH O'Toole never really had those Viking biceps.

3/20/09, 9:49 AM

Anonymous pwyll said...

The Icelandic cowboys weren't making bets that were any more unwise than the ones the i-bankers in the US and the continent were making. The difference is that their currency trades in thin volumes and due to its limited usage, is much more vulnerable to pressure than the USD or EUR. Plus, unlike GS, the Icelanders had no one to bail them them out when the bets turned sour.

3/21/09, 12:32 AM

Blogger John Seiler said...

Iceland, population 320,000, has too few people to be indicative of much. Its banks might have failed because of purely local problems, or because the undertow from the global depression brought them down. Also, in 2006 U.S. Naval Air Station Keflavik gradually shut down, so Icelanders might be suffering withdrawal symptoms from the loss of all those Yankee dollars.

3/21/09, 9:13 PM

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