Cold War ally the United States, indicated that Iceland was left without "shelter", according to the 2018 book Small States and Shelter Theory: Iceland’s External Affairs by University of Iceland political scientists. The Icelandic government was under the impression that Iceland would receive extensive assistance from the United States, similar to the aid that Iceland repeatedly got in economic crises during the Cold War. University of Iceland political scientist Baldur Thorhallsson has argued that Iceland received belated assistance from the IMF relative to Ireland (which was also undergoing a financial crisis) because Iceland was not a member of the EU and euro (unlike Ireland). Following negotiations with the IMF, a package of $4.6 billion was agreed on 19 November, with the IMF loaning $2.1 billion and another $2.3 billion in loans and currency swaps from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. In addition, Poland has offered to lend $200 million and the Faroe Islands have offered 300 million Danish kroner ($50 million, about 3 per cent of Faroese GDP). The next day, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom announced a joint loan of $6.3 billion (€5 billion), related to the deposit insurance dispute. The assistance bolstered the Central Bank of Iceland's foreign currency reserves, which was an important first step in the economic recovery. By the end of 2015, Iceland had repaid all the loans that it received in relation to the IMF program. The IMF did not impose the kind of strict conditions on the assistance as it had done in similar past situations in Asia and Latin America. According to economists Ásgeir Jónsson and Hersir Sigurjónsson, "Iceland was treated differently from developing countries and former IMF clients. There was no call for Iceland to adopt sharp austerity measures at the inception of the joint economic plan. Instead, the government would be allowed to maintain large public deficits in the first year – 2009 – allowing fiscal multipliers to counteract the output contraction that was underway. Iceland also was not asked to downsize its Scandinavian-type welfare system." Iceland is the only country in the world to have a population under two million yet still have a floating exchange rate and an independent monetary policy. Further reading Guðmundur Jónsson. 2004. "The transformation of the Icelandic economy: Industrialization and economic growth, 1870-1950." In Exploring Economic Growth: Essays in Measurement and Analysis. A Feistschrift For Riitta Hjerpe on Her 60th Birthday (eds,