Sigrún Davíðsdóttir's Icelog

In the Irish Independent today Thomas Molloy writes about ‘Iceland’s glasnost economy’ that Ireland sorely needs. He makes an interesting comparison (and quotes Icelog/uti.is), pointing out similarities and differences between the two countries.

I’ve earlier blogged on the Irish matters from an Icelandic perspective. It was the ‘Golden Circle’ and Patrick McKillen’s case against Nama, where Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz was an expert witness, that first drew my attention to Icelandic Irish parallels. I then realised that there are two Irish reports on the Irish situation so I read them and blogged on them. Comparing the Irish reports to the Icelandic report by the Althingi Special Investigative Commission I concluded that although exellent reports they can’t be compared to the SIC report. My point was that in spite of the reports there is a lot that Icelanders now know but the Irish don’t know.

Following the struggle of the Irish government recently I blogged if Iceland was safe but Ireland sorry. Not that I believe that Iceland is a great example to follow, Iceland couldn’t save its banks though it wanted but at least the banks, shareholders and creditors got some lesson there. And as I visited Ireland earlier this week it struck me that corruption might be a better explanation to the state of some European countries than just the fact that they are peripheral, pointing out the correlation between crisis and corruption.

These four Icelogs on Ireland vs Iceland underline that although each country has its own characteristics the parallels are quite illuminating as to the origin and causes of the situation Europe is in.

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