Remember how far the economy of Iceland fell in the 2008 crisis?  The major banks collapsed, the stock exchange went off a cliff, and  the country's credit rating went from As to Bs.  Thousands emigrated ? this, from a nation of little more than 300,000 people.

The Wall Street joke at the time was:

Q: What's the capital of Iceland?

A: Oh, about $45.

So how are they doing now?  Just fine, according to this guest blogger at ZeroHedge:

Iceland’s approach is very much akin to what I have been advocating ? write down the unsustainable debt, liquidate the junk corporations and banks that failed, disincentivise the behaviour that caused the crisis, and provide help to the ordinary individuals in the real economy (as opposed to phoney "stimulus" cash to campaign donors and big finance).

And Iceland has snapped out of its depression. The rest of the West, where banks continue to behave exactly as they did prior to the crisis, not so much.