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I was, I think, one of the first commentators to notice that a funny thing was happening in Iceland: the nation that was supposed to be Ground Zero for financial disaster was actually having a milder crisis than many others, thanks to heterodox policies — debt repudiation, capital controls, and massive devaluation. Now, as Matthew Yglesias points out, Iceland is getting ready to lift the controls, and its experience still looks remarkably good considering the circumstances.

And as Yglesias says, the interesting contrast is with Ireland, now being hailed as a success story for austerity because things eventually stopped getting worse and have lately been getting a bit better. Talk about lowering the bar.

I suppose someone will ask about possible parallels with Greece. Well, if Greece is forced out of the euro it will be in a position to try an Iceland-style devaluation (and will surely have imposed capital controls). Whether it will work as well as it did in Iceland is an open question — for one thing, leaving the euro is very different from never having joined — and I’m still hoping that the whole thing can be avoided. For now, let’s just say that sometimes heterodoxy works much better than the orthodox will ever admit.