7. Október 2008 festi seðlabankinn gengið um 42 kr. yfir raungengi. Þetta stóð yfir í sólahring – margt bendir til að á þessum tíma hafi varagjaldeyrisforðinn gufað upp. Um þetta er meðal annars fjallað í grein Roberts Wade og Sigurbjargar Sigurgeirsdóttur sem nefnist Lessons from Iceland. Greinina má nálgast í gengum þessa Facebook síðu í pdf. formi.

„As the collapse gathered speed, Oddsson moved on 7 October 2008 to peg the króna to a basket of currencies at close to the pre-crisis rate and simultaneously lowered the interest rate (which amounted to pouring petrol on the raging fire). He consulted no one save his protégé, Haarde. Even the Central Bank’s chief economist was kept in the dark. In conditions where the currency was already tumbling, the foreign- exchange reserves were exhausted and there were no capital controls, the peg lasted for only a few trading hours; it was perhaps the shortest-lived
currency peg ever. But it was long enough for cronies-in-the-know to spirit their money out of the króna at a much more favourable rate than they would get later. Inside sources indicate that billions fled the currency in these hours.26 Then the króna was floated—and sank like a stone.“

Svohljóðandi neðanmálsgrein fylgir textanum:

„26 The currency peg has been strangely neglected in the investigation of Iceland’s collapse. The mix of panic, ignorance and tactics behind it is not clear. The Governor told the media that he had secured a loan from the Russian Central Bank (big enough, implicitly though not explicitly, to secure the peg); but almost imme- diately there came an angry Russian denial. The tactic may have involved more than just the opportunity for friends to get their money out of the króna. Senior figures may also have calculated that bringing down Kaupthing, the one bank that looked as if it might survive, would be sweet revenge on the principle of ‘If my bank has gone down, yours is coming down too’. At a dinner during the 2007 imf Annual Meeting in Washington dc, it is known that Oddsson jabbed his finger at Kaupthing’s Chairman and said that, if the bank started to denominate its trans- actions in euros, ‘I will take you down’. The currency peg allowed an outflood from Kaupthing, still linked to the Centre Party and rival big men. Landsbanki, with close ties to the Central Bank Governor and the Independence Party, had collapsed just before the peg was introduced. These are murky waters.“