Robert Wade, prófessor við LSE skrifar grein um íslenska efnahagshrunið í tímaritið Challenge.
Í langri og ítarlegri grein bendir hann meðal annars á þessa punkta.
Hvernig var mælikvarðinn á hamingjuna breytist þegar heil efnahagskerfi riða til falls, hvernig mönnum gat yfirsést spillingin og klíkustarfsemin í íslenska kerfinu, hvernig bankamenn frá litlu landi gátu orðið á heimsmælikvarða á örfáum árum, hvernig ofurbjartsýn trú á að hækkandi eignaverð jafngilti auðæfum villti mönnum sýn.
• how measures of “happiness”—and health—are affected when
people’s livelihoods are threatened en masse and the whole eco-
nomic structure is thrown in doubt
• how Transparency International’s measures of “corruption”
could miss the kind of neopatrimonial practices endemic to the
Icelandic civil service—and how such a bureaucracy nevertheless
delivered good-quality public services in many fields
• how the bankers were able to zoom from obscurity to world
players in less than a decade (a Russian money-laundering con-
nection?)
• how the IMF dealt with the fi rst rich country to seek its assistance
since Britain in 1976, how it decided to support Iceland’s capital
controls, and what was the role of the U.S. government and the
Nordic governments in its strategy for Iceland
• how timely warnings of danger ahead were drowned out by
Panglossian assurances that inflating asset prices equaled rising
wealth.
