Icelandic banks grew to be ten times the size of the entire nation's gross domestic product before spectacularly collapsing during the 2008 financial crisis.

A closer look

Icelandic banks grew to be ten times the size of the entire nation's gross domestic product before spectacularly collapsing during the 2008 financial crisis. Unlike the United States, which quickly rushed to bail out its negligent Wall Street executives with massive taxpayer funds, this tiny Nordic country simply let its over-leveraged banks fail and actively threw several top bankers into a specialized prison. The immediate aftermath was brutal for citizens who lost their savings and watched inflation spike, but the economy rebounded remarkably fast by pivoting heavily to tech and international tourism. It is a delightfully cynical lesson that the best way to handle corporate vampires who gamble away a national economy is not to reward them with golden parachutes, but to give them a tiny cell with a view of a volcano