World Business
Iceland, a Tiny Dynamo, Loses Steam
Iceland’s long economic boom has ended in a painful bust, with a collapsing currency, rising inflation, double-digit interest rates and predictions of its first recession since 1992.
We are a gloomy people. It’s so crikey cold and dark up there, and only fish to eat. Fish and imported honey. Oh strewth!…Listen Buster! In Reykyavik it is dark for eight months of the year, and it’s cold enough to freeze your wrists off and there’s only golly fish to eat. Administrative errors are bound to occur in enormous quantities. Look at this – it’s all a mistake. It’s a real pain in the sphincter! Icelandic Honey Week? My Life!…Listen Cowboy. I got a job to do. It’s a stupid, pointless job but at least it keeps me away from Iceland, all right? The leg of the worker bee has… They slam the door on him. Someone rather like Jeremy Thorpe looks round the door and waves as they do so.
The world can’t afford to have the U.S. fail, and so we are able to get away with behavior that would wreck smaller countries. Great for us, but when we look at Iceland’s predicament we should say that there but for the grace of China go we. ♦
Loved these lines. China just finished hosting the second (?) Sino-Arabian conference. Got almost nil coverage in the press that I read. Did you se anything about this in the NYT or New Yorker? Anyway, we are invading Arab countries, killing Arabs, conducting horrible propaganda attempts in the ME while the Chinese are cementing relationships. I don’t think China is the huge dynamo some people fear yet. Yet is a small word.
Steve