Ran across an interesting headline the other day about Iceland sentencing five bankers to prison in connection with the global financial meltdown. Of course, it didn't say five, it said five more. In brings the total number sentenced to 26. A quick search turned up this article in Iceland Magazine that helpfully lists the names and sentences of each banker convicted.
Some of those sentences have elapsed, but based on the durations given, right now 15 bankers are in prison in Iceland in connection with the collapse. That might not sound like a lot, but I think it might be more than the rest of the world combined. And also, it is actually a whole lot.
Iceland has a population of 323,000. It has an incarceration rate of 45 per 100,000. More than one in ten people in an Icelandic prison is a corrupt banker.
That is a staggering statement about the values of Iceland as a nation, and a pretty embarrassing statement about the rest of the developed world.
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