You may remember the 2010 documentary, Inside Job. It was about the 2008 financial crisis. It was a lot of fun. On the other hand, it gave the wrong idea about the crisis. It made it all about bad bankers. While that was true, if it hadn’t been for the bursting of the housing bubble, it wouldn’t have been that big a deal. But one thing highlighted in the film was very true: Iceland was pounded by the financial crisis — worse than almost any other country. So why is it that we don’t hear much about Iceland anymore? Well, because they weathered the storm far better than pretty much any other country.

Matt Yglesias wrote about how all this came to be, Iceland Put Bankers in Jail Rather Than Bailing Them Out — and It Worked. Iceland managed to make its crisis relatively mild regarding its workers and then improved very quickly. He provided the classic comparison between Iceland and Ireland. The latter country is held up throughout Europe as an exemplar — as though it were the well behaved child in the kindergarten. Iceland is now almost back to its normal pre-crisis unemployment. Ireland — which did everything the plutocrats said was “right” — still have an unemployment rate that is almost six percent points above its pre-crisis level.

So how did Iceland manage this? Well, to be honest, it didn’t really have much to do with jailing bankers. But let’s not cast that off. Jailing bankers really will help prevent another crisis. In Iceland. In the rest of the advanced world, bankers were coddled and so have every reason to do the same thing again. But that whole thing about not bailing out the banks? That was big. Dean Baker has dealt with this issue, The Myth that Sold the Financial Bailout. But the main this is that the power elite who run our government cared about saving the bankers — not the banking system.

One of the ways that Iceland dealt with the fallout from the banking collapse was to use good old Keynesian style demand side policy. The government racked up loads of debt to get through the crisis. While all over America and Europe, people were shouting about the clearly wrong Reinhart and Rogoff 90% debt cliff, Iceland was calmly pushing its debt to GDP ratio over 100%. And then, as its economy got better, its debt started coming down. This year, it is in the mid-80%.

Iceland also did something that I’ve been screaming about for years: it allowed its inflation rate to go up. This was especially important for them, and inflation went up to a very troubling almost 20% annualized rate one month, and in the mid-teens for about a year. But it is back to about what ours is: 2%. The difference is that we’ve been laser focused on inflation. It has never been even as high as 4% annualized rate for a month since the crisis. And most of the time, it’s been less than 2%. This, of course, has been great for the rich. It’s been a catastrophe for workers.

Iceland also imposed capital controls: restricting the movement of money from the country. In fact, that’s the big news: Iceland is in the process of lifting its capital controls, which ought to give the economy another boost. I don’t think that capital controls were much of an option in the United States. But the takeaway from all this is that there were lots of options for how we dealt with the bursting of the housing bubble. We chose to do those things that kept the rich rich and did as little as possible for working Americans. Democracy in America!

I learned from Tierney Sneed this week at Talking Points Memo, Louisiana GOPers in Fiscal Mess Beg Grover Norquist to Relax No Tax Pledge. As you probably remember, Norquist is the man who is best known for the quote, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” It’s a curious thing to say. It’s supposed to be clever, but it misses the mark. He doesn’t want to abolish government, he wants to weaken it so that he can murder it? So he wants to abolish government! Whatever.

Anyway, Norquist’s great political idea was to get all the Republicans to sign a little pledge that says they will absolutely never raise taxes in any way. It’s part of a larger trend in Republican politics where every vote is “scored.” This leads to politicians being far more conservative than their constituencies. And there is also something fundamentally treasonous about the pledge. What if we suddenly got into World War III? I’m sure the Republicans would abandon Norquist if it ever came to it — just as they would if they ever got any backbone. But smart people don’t legislate by starting out with a long list of things they will never do. And that is a big reason why Republicans are such useless legislators.

But all over the country, there are state legislatures controlled by Republicans that would very much like to to have a little flexibility to deal with their budget problems. Currently, the state faces a $1.6 billion budget shortfall — about 5% of their total budget. Seven years ago, the state had a one billion dollar surplus. What happened? Well, after becoming governor, Bobby Jindal pushed through a huge tax cut. Just like in Kansas, this was supposed to spur growth. But it didn’t. It never does. But Jindal won’t budge. As Kevin Drum noted, “Bobby Jindal is still delusional enough to think he’s running for president.”

As you can see in the following graph, when Bobby Jindal took over control of Louisiana, unemployment was better than the country as a whole. When recession hit, it was not hit nearly as hard — because of the oil industry. But overall, it tracked along with the country pretty well. But since the beginning of 2014, it has taken a turn for the worse. And as of mid-2014, the country as a whole is doing better than Louisiana. Am I blaming this on Jindal? Not at all. But note that there is no reason to think that the tax cut helped to create jobs — not that Jindal and the rest of his Republican allies ever cared that it did.

So now, many Republicans in Louisiana would greatly appreciate it if they were allowed to fix the problem some other way than savaging their college system. In fact, they went whining to Norquist saying that they should be given credit for the previous tax cut. Norquist rightly noted that by such logic, Obama could claim to be a tax cutter. Just the same, I can’t help but remember that Norquist didn’t care about the payroll tax going back up. That’s consistent, however; Norquist doesn’t care about taxes that hurt the poor. No major Republican “thinker” does.

But the whole thing is quite the spectacle. Instead of dealing with each other, Louisiana Republicans are forced to go to Grover Norquist to get approval on how they are supposed to govern. Of course, he only has power because they give it to him. And, of course, because Bobby Jindal thinks he has a chance of becoming president. Some day, the people of Louisiana might consider voting for people who will do right by them and not outsource their thinking to a subgenius ideologue like Norquist.

See also: Swing State Voter Regret Is Killing Me.