To answer Justin's question in this post: Exactly what I'm already doing.

To once again quote the article:
"We were on our own for years and we went too far, too fast, in too little time. We behaved like children and the first thing we did when the stock market opened 10 years ago was go to London and buy toy stores and candy stores. Now we are bankrupt and there will be no money for years to come and we have more debts than we can ever repay.

We're just like kids whose parents went away for the weekend and we trashed the entire house."

Woah… So maybe the second question is: "Now that Iceland has indeed faced failure, what will its response be?"

The short term was obviously to demand a revolution of the government, followed by rioting and suicide. But will there be hope in the longer term?

I don't really understand how Peter can write an article like that at this point. Like Trevor in the comments of that article, I have to share his sentiment that "I very much doubt that Iceland is the happiest place in the world right now." I bet the more interesting article would now be how their happiness has changed after a full collapse.

Here's a recent quote from an article about the riots and suicide that took place in Iceland (source http://www.businesspundit.com/iceland-collapse-ri…
"On Friday morning, human rights campaigner and protest organizer Hordur Torfason told a chilling anecdote to illustrate the desperation many Icelanders are feeling. He had received a phone call from a man who said that four generations of his family had lost everything. “He wanted me to help them build a gallows in front of the parliament building,” says Torfason. “I asked him if this was to have some symbolic significance. ‘No,’ came the answer. ‘A member of my family wants to hang himself in public.’"

“I said I would help them but not in this way,” says Torfason. “But he killed himself two days ago.”

And check this one out, a glimmer of hope: "More people are attending church, he says, not just for spiritual succor, but because food is sometimes provided for a nominal charge."

Anecdote: I recently finished the book "Flow," and I thought it was pretty mediocre. In his obvious hatred of most religion – especially Christianity – he tries to argue against it's truth in the first chapter, with quite laughable results. The poor quality of his attempt put me on guard for the rest of the book, and while it certainly got better, it didn't get too much better, with a few exceptions. It was not scientific at all, considering the subject matter.

Here's Forbes recent report on the happiest countries using slightly different metrics: http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/05/world-happiest-p…