Is an Identity Crisis Worth 10 Percentage Points of Unemployment?

That's the question that the Washington Post is implicitly raising for readers in its discussion of Iceland's recovery from the recession. The piece notes that Iceland's unemployment rate is 7.0 percent. It doesn't make the comparison to other crisis-afflicted countries which have unemployment rates well in the double-digits, with Spain leading the pack at 22 percent.

In general the piece does paint a reasonably positive picture of Iceland's economy, but it warns readers that:

"It's tempting ...