Business & Money

Icelands Financial Collapse: One Year Later

Bookmark and Share

Iceland rose from obscurity to financial powerhouse in less than a decade. But a year ago it all turned to dust. We look at what caused this & the lessons we should learn. Then, are Saudis moving away from the dollar?

Episode Segments

Goodbye to the Dollar?

The big story of the week was a newspaper article in The Independent, a UK paper. In it Robert Fisk writes that source of his claim that the Saudis and others would like to switch from the US Dollar to a basket of currencies to price oil. The article was quickly denied by the Saudis, but not before FX Markets were riled. This story has far reaching effects as the Dollar has been the worlds reserve currency for generations.

The Iceland Collapse

To Europe, the financial crisis was not Lehman Brothers but Iceland. A small country of 350,000 total population which rose from obscurity to financial powerhouse in less than a decade. But a year ago it all turned to dust. The nations three largest banks defaulted on a whopping $60 billion dollars, leaving the Icelanders holding the bag. From fifth richest nation in the world, to debtor in less than a month. Are there any lessons here for us?

The Investor's Corner

In this segment we look at how to invest your portfolio. In this weeks edition we take a look at the mistakes of one of the nations largest investors , Stanford University and how they lost $4 billion, or nearly 1/4th of their portfolio. What did they do wrong? And how can we make sure that we dont repeat their mistakes.

Friday • March 20

CST 9:11 | EST 10:11 | MST 8:11 | PST 7:11 | GMT 6:11

Click to Listen Live