{"id":3961,"date":"2011-05-14T10:41:55","date_gmt":"2011-05-14T10:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=3961"},"modified":"2011-05-14T10:41:55","modified_gmt":"2011-05-14T10:41:55","slug":"icelands_approa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=3961","title":{"rendered":"Iceland&#8217;s Approach to Bank Bailouts (They Did Not)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"http:\/\/nyti.ms\/k52wSz\">Jake Halpern<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><I>If you want to understand what happened in Iceland \u2014 the whole story of the crash, the banks failing, the recent signs of recovery \u2014 start at the prime minister\u2019s office in downtown Reykjavik and continue east for a bit until you ascend a steep bluff overlooking the icy waters of Faxafloi Bay. There you will arrive at a used-car lot. Ask for the owner of this establishment, who is a short, 61-year-old man with extremely thick glasses named Gudfinnur S. Halldorsson \u2014 he goes by the name Guffi (pronounced Goofy) \u2014 and have him to tell you the story of the Porsche that kept on giving.<\/p>\n<p>During Iceland\u2019s boom years, which lasted from 2003 until 2008, a customer showed up at Guffi\u2019s dealership wanting to buy a Porsche on credit, no money down. Guffi didn\u2019t inquire about the man\u2019s line of work; in fact, he didn\u2019t care if the man paid back the loan \u2014 that was the bank\u2019s problem, not his. Guffi sold the Porsche, and the customer drove it for a month or so until the first payment was due. The man had no interest in making the payment, and so Guffi, who always aimed to please, helped the man resell the vehicle for a profit. Guffi did the same thing a month later, and again a month after that; all told, Guffi sold the same car five times in six months, amazingly charging a higher price on each successive sale.<\/I><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jake Halpern: If you want to understand what happened in Iceland \u2014 the whole story of the crash, the banks failing, the recent signs of recovery \u2014 start at the prime minister\u2019s office in downtown Reykjavik and continue east for a bit until you ascend a steep bluff overlooking the icy waters of Faxafloi Bay. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}