Iceland's economic crash hit fast and hard

By Jonas Moody and Jeffrey Stinson, USA TODAY REYKJAVIK, Iceland — This is what a rapid financial meltdown can do. The government seizes banks, leaving shareholders luckless and foreign depositors unable to touch their money. The stock market is shut down. The currency is in free fall, leaving mortgage holders who took out loans in foreign currency paying double. Prices on imported goods are on the rise. This is the situation in Iceland, where a small, struggling government is even turning to the Kremlin to prevent bankruptcy after it became the first country to succumb to the global financial meltdown in a matter of days last week. "No Western country has crashed in peacetime as quickly and as badly," says Jon Danielsson, an associate professor of finance at the London School of Economics. "This shows the degree of problems... [read full story]