Unlike Ireland, Iceland did not bail out its banks and the country is doing fine...

On his second day as head of Iceland's third-largest bank, Arni Tomasson faced a crisis: the firm that regulators had asked him to run was out of cash.

It was October 8, 2008, at the height of the global financial meltdown and Iceland's bank assets in Britain had been frozen. Customers flocked to branches of Tomasson's Glitnir Banki to withdraw money, even though the Government had guaranteed their deposits. By the end of the day, the vaults were empty, says Tomasson, recalling the drama.

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But with the economy projected to grow 3 per cent this year, Iceland's decision to let the banks fail is looking smart.

"Iceland did the right thing by making sure its payment systems continued to function while creditors, not the taxpayers, shouldered the losses of banks," says Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, an economics professor at Columbia University in New York. "Ireland's done all the wrong things, on the other hand. That's probably the worst model." Full story...

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