“Both Iceland and Greece have faced enormous financial and economic crises in recent times,” he says. “Iceland recovered quickly and its biggest problem is now that some parts of its economy are actually growing too fast. Greece is stuck in a downwards spiral.”

“So what is the difference between these two crises? Well the most fundamental difference was that tiny Iceland ... had its own currency and a central bank. It could use the full range of economic powers including monetary powers ... and fiscal powers ... to defend its economy.”

He says that Greece, by contrast, “had no control over its monetary policy and effectively no control over its fiscal policy. So instead of defending itself from the crisis it was forced to do exactly what foreign bankers told it to do.”
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