Showing posts with label Iceland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iceland. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

UK, the next Iceland? part 2

Britain is showing signs of heading towards 1930s-style depression, the Bank of England says today for the first time. (Source.)

Personal debt in the UK, £1.5trillion, is larger than the country's GDP. British corporate borrowing adds up to another £2 trillion. By next year the government will owe over £4 trillion. Total UK public debt and obligations come to a staggering 282% of annual GDP. British house prices could fall by another 55%, and there is a non-negligible chance that the whole country will go broke. (Source.)

Sunday, March 1, 2009

UK: the next Iceland?

The top five U.K. banks have $10 trillion of [debt] assets and their [UK] GDP is only $2.13 trillion. The whole country could fall into the ocean. The top five U.S. banks [debt assets] represent only about 60 percent of GDP by comparison. Source

What is the capital of Iceland?
Answer: $25

"asking an economist to predict the future is like asking the Christmas turkey what's for dinner on Christmas: based on its entire lifetime of experience, the turkey expects to be fed on Christmas, not to be eaten. As far as the turkey is concerned, Christmas is a black swan-type event." Source: Taleb