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Reykjavik: Iceland's banking crisis bears many parallels with Cyprus (Photo: Johannes Jansson/norden.org)

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Iceland to Cyprus: 'People should not pay for speculators'

Reykjavik: Iceland's banking crisis bears many parallels with Cyprus (Photo: Johannes Jansson/norden.org)

On the night of 6 October 2008, Thorfinnur Omarsson got a phone call. He had just quit his job at an Icelandic TV station and was looking forward to a "quiet time" as he was about to go back to study. It did not turn out that way.

"All banks in Iceland went bust over night. The economy ministry didn't even have a spokesperson at the time, so they called me to offer me a job, as some 200 foreign journalists were flying into the island," Omarsson recalls.

He became spokesman "on th...

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