Iceland introduces emergency finance bill

Iceland's prime minister warned Monday that the country was threatened with "national bankruptcy" from the credit crisis as he introduced emergency legislation to give the government sweeping new powers over the financial sector. After a day of panic that saw trading in shares of major banks suspended, Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde said that the heavy exposure of the tiny country's banking sector to the global financial turmoil was putting the entire country at risk. He added that the government's bill had already received backing from opposition parties. Iceland is paying the price for an economic boom of recent years that saw its newly affluent companies go on an acquisition spree across Europe and its banking sector grow to dwarf the rest of the economy. Bank assets are nine times annual gross domestic product of €14... [read full story]