Canuckflack

The problem with Iceland

// March 15th, 2009 // Design, Economics

” … The rocks beneath Reykjavík may be igneous, but the city feels sedimentary: on top of several thick strata of architecture that should be called Nordic Pragmatic lies a thin layer that will almost certainly one day be known as Asshole Capitalist. The hobbit-size buildings that house the Icelandic government are charming and scaled to the city. The half-built oceanfront glass towers meant to house newly rich financiers and, in the bargain, block everyone else’s view of the white bluffs across the harbor are not …”

- Michael Lewis pretty much lays out his thesis in this excerpt from an essay on the collapse of the Iceland economy in April’s Vanity Fair.