They were all highly educated people

Posted by Robert Merrill on March 12, 2009 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

So said Tony Shearer, former CEO of British merchant Bank Singer and Friedlander, founded in 1907, purchased by the Icelandic bank Kaupthing in 2005, and destroyed in the collapse of the Icelandic financial system in October 2008.

Iceland? In Wall Street on the Tundra, Michael Lewis, writing in Vanity Fair, tells how the Icelanders figured out how to turn cod into Ph.D.’s, geothermal energy into an aluminum-smelting industry (provided the factory site could be certified free of elves), and everyday Icelanders into hedge-fund traders and currency speculators, until it all came crashing down in October 2008.

It’s a long article, but take the time to read it. There are lessons for us all.