CNN Money is running an interesting feature by David Goldman entitled "10 countries, 10 solutions" which details the particularities of the global economic crisis facing 10 key countries. In typical old-media fashion, the layout makes no sense from a user-friendliness perspective, so I'm going to take significant liberties in reposting their original content. They also have a single table layout of the 10 countries here. Time Warner lawyers, if you're watching this, get your editorial guys to put their content into a more sensible format that doesn't require constant clicking and I won't have to go such lengths to discuss it and in turn will actually drive more traffic to your site. Got that? Good. Now then, first some

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by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera, Puerto Ricobr /br /Just two years after holding a A HREF="http://globaleconomydoesmatter.blogspot.com/2007/05/iceland-2007-parliamentary-election.html"parliamentary election/A, voters in Iceland are likely to return to the polls next May 9 for an early general election. Normally, the poll would not need to be held until 2011, but these are anything but normal times in the Nordic island nation, whose economy has been devastated by the ongoing global financial crisis.br /br /With all of Iceland's three major banks under receivership since October; the national currency (the krona) having lost over half its value and the stock market over 90 percent of its value; inflation and unemployment on the rise; and the GDP expected to contract by ten percent this year, public discontent over the perceived mismanagement of the economy by the coalition government of Iceland's two major parties - the conservative Independence Party and the left-of-center Social Democratic Alliance - has fueled mounting ...

One of the biggest problems with the United States becoming a debtor nation instead of a creditor is that we really lose any ability to help out our valued friends in times of trouble. As such, the banking crisis in Iceland has forced the government to turn to Russia - who is happy to throw some of its excess liquidity toward the relatively stable instruments of the country in the form of a $5.4 billion loan. Reykjavik is really not all that happy about it, and seems to display some awareness that this is exactly the kind of deal that can end up outsourcing your Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Kremlin oversight just like Finland. Prime Minister Geir Haarde tells the Financial Times, "We have not received the kind of support that we were requesting from our friends. So in ...