Iceland the Poster Child for Neocon Fiscal Policy

Iceland’s Economic Meltdown Is a Big Flashing Warning Sign

(AlterNet) Oct. 21, 2008 – Iceland, despite its coalition governments and Nordic social values, became a poster child for neoconservative economic policies inspired by Milton Friedman during the past decade. Friedman himself visited Iceland in 1984 and participated in what was described as a “lively television debate” with leading Socialists. This inspired a generation of young conservatives who came to power through the Independence Party in 1991 and have run its government through different coalitions since then.

Friedman may be dead now, but the economic and financial collapse of 2008 is becoming a real-life battleground of his theories against those of the other giant of 20th century economics, John Maynard Keynes.

Keynes’ analysis was complicated and nuanced. The work for which he’s best known, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, provided a theoretical basis for the economic reforms of the New Deal era — investments in public works and deficit spending that helped countries recover from the Great Depression.

While Friedman’s narrow form of money supply monetarism was quickly abandoned in the early 1980s, most governments have relied primarily on monetary instead of fiscal policy for stabilization of their economies over the past few decades. This turned Alan Greenspan, former head of the U.S. Federal Reserve and an advocate of Friedman’s policies, into the most important economic policy maker in the world.

ICELAND’S EXPERIMENT WITH FRIEDMAN POLICY

Under the leadership of Prime Minister David Oddsson and explicitly inspired by Friedman, Iceland’s neoconservative young Turks implemented a radical (but now familiar) program of privatization, tax cuts, reductions in spending and deficits, inflation targeting, central bank independence, free trade and exchange rate flexibility. Corporate taxes were cut from 50 percent down to 18 percent. Privatization and deregulation were driven directly through the prime minister’s office, and the major banks were privatized.

Economic missions and reports on Iceland issued by the influential International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) largely praised and encouraged these reforms, often disregarding the rising risks for its financial sector until recently.

In 2001, Joseph Stiglitz, recipient of the Nobel prize in economics and one of the leading lights of the “New Keynesian” school of economics, wrote a remarkably prescient paper for the Central Bank of Iceland. In the paper, he raised alarm about a vulnerable, small, open economy such as Iceland suffering from a severe financial and economic crisis from such policies. In the absence of reforms in the “global financial architecture,” Stiglitz outlined a set of regulatory and tax measures that Iceland should implement “both to reduce the likelihood of a crisis and to help manage the economy through a crisis.”

Stiglitz’s paper (PDF) has invaluable advice that should have been considered by any nation — and especially Iceland — but it appears these recommendations were ignored. The right-wing reformers certainly didn’t change their course. Why would they? Life was good and getting better in the small island state, with showrooms full of fancy cars and booming real estate, business and financial industries.

BOOMING ECONOMY

At first, the policies appeared to be very successful. The economy grew at a strong pace, rising until Iceland achieved one of the highest per capita GDPs in the world. In 2007 it also topped the score for the United Nation’s Human Development Index.

Iceland rocketed to the top 10 in the indexes of economic freedom designed by the Fraser Institute and the Heritage Foundation. It was lauded by the conservative Cato Institute for its flat taxes, privatization and economic freedoms. The institute also criticized Naomi Klein for not mentioning Iceland (along with Ireland, Estonia and Australia) as an example of success in her book about the rise of disaster capitalism, The Shock Doctrine.

Icelandic banks and businesses, with the support of their government, expanded aggressively overseas, particularly into the U.K. and the Netherlands. The banking industry and private businesses flourished and created a number of new billionaires on the island.  Then it all came crashing down.

A Voice from the Friedmanite Wilderness