WSJ's Video: How Iceland's Financial System Crashed - massive debts, government falls

Over the past few months, Iceland's financial sector imploded, and recently, the government collapsed. The following two videos, from the Wall Street Journal Online, explain some of the dynamics behind this country's reverse of fortune.

HOW ICELAND COLLAPSED 12/26/08

"WSJ's Andy Jordan examines how Iceland's economic miracle came to an abrupt end and explains why the world should care about the collapse of the small country's financial system."

ICELAND COALITION GOVERNMENT COLLAPSES 1/26/09

"Iceland's Prime Minister Geir Haarde is preparing to step down after announcing the collapse of the county's coalition government. Video courtesy of Reuters."

RELATED
Website: The Icelandic Government Information Center: The Icelandic Government Center regarding the current financial circumstances in Iceland
ABC News Video: Iceland's Banking Meltdown (10/21/08)
BBC News Video: Icelanders' fury over economy (12/19/08)

"Iceland's people have been venting their fury over Iceland's economic collapse at public meetings."

"27 years on my job, is like you say, thrown out the window."

BBC News Video: Protesters hit Icelandic PM's car (1/21/09)
BBC News Video: Crisis claims Icelandic cabinet (1/26/09)

Articles:
Timeline: Iceland economic crisis (BBC News, 1/26/09)
Iceland's Coalition Government Collapses (Charles Forelle, WSJ, 1/26/09)
Banking Crisis Brings Down Iceland Government (Guardian UK, 1/26/09)
"Ruling coalition falls; First government to fail as result of global economic crisis"
Waking up to reality in Iceland (Analysis by Jon Danielsson, Economist, Financial Markets Group, London School of Economics - BBC News, 1/26/09)

"The bankers and government effectively turned Iceland into a gigantic hedge fund sitting in the middle of the North Atlantic...What they failed to implement was the necessary supervision or enforcement of banking regulations."

Sound familiar?

Financial Planning Application on a Microsoft Surface Multi-Touch Table

This is an interesting interactive application to assist with financial planning tasks. The application, developed by Razorfish, utilizes the multi-touch capabilities of Microsoft's Surface comptuting table.


Microsoft Surface Financial Services Application - Razorfish Demo from razorfish - emerging experiences on Vimeo.

Unfortunately, there are some problems with this application, as pointed out by Jonathan Brill in his recent Point & Do blogpost. In this application, coins are used as part of the interaction. It is not clear why this approach would be useful. It might be fun to play with if you had lots of time to kill in a bank's lobby.

Economic Odds and Ends: Stock Market Panorama; Banking and Children;

Here are a few odds and ends regarding the economy:

Ambient information systems - a real-time data panorama of the stock market:


Real-time data panoramas: "Once the stock market opens, our 3D simulation comes to life & people start 'breathing' business information" via Bashiba.com "BASHIBA Panorama exploits the visual perceptual capabilities of the human brain. It harnesses untapped brain power."

Children and the current economic crisis:


Banking and Saving with Your Child (Video via Knowledge Essentials)

(from Knowledge Essentials on BlipTV) "Tough economic times are everywhere. How do you explain what the economy is to your child and then parlay that into help with your household budget? Check this out to see."

Link to Wachovia Timeline Article: Key Events, 1879 to Sept. 2008

I'm posting links to time-lines that contain information that could be used for an interactive multimedia economic timeline. Since I live in Charlotte, N.C., I thought I'd look for information about Wachovia.

At the time of this post, it was not certain if CitiGroup or Wells Fargo would be playing a part in the transformation of this bank.

Take a look at the Wachovia Corporation Timeline. I haven't verified the facts listed in the timeline.

Warning: The time-line is text-based, and it is not interactive.

Imagine how a rich sources of information this could be if it was transformed into interactive multimedia time-line!

Instead of text, with events listed in a linear fashion, an interactive multimedia time-line would be more exciting to play with. It would allow you to explore pictures, listen to interviews, watch video clips, peek at artifacts, and branch off to explore related links to other historical, political, and cultural dynamics that were going on at the time of each event.

If the timeline was collaborative, it would become a living document, sort of like a wiki, but in a different format.