REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy threw the United States into an epoch-defining financial storm. Imagine 300 of them going bust at once.
That, in relative terms, is what Iceland endured a decade ago during its banking crisis, which on this rugged island steeped in myths of gods and giants is now known as "hrunid" — the collapse.
The last in a series of prosecutions of those deemed responsible started this month and the hope is it will give this country of 330,000 people some closure. Icelanders have become more cynical about political and business leaders, to the point of drafting a new constitution. The top financial entrepreneurs of a generation have been thrown behind bars and the economy has had to be reinvented more profoundly than most countries.
