A HARBINGER? Life Under Capital Controls. Jim Bennett emails: “This article is interesting first as a comment on the strength of the economy of the more pro-capitalist part of North America, and second as a picture of life in Iceland under capital controls. People read the term but younger readers have no real feel for what it means in terms of day-to-day life. There have been no capital controls in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and none in Western Europe for some time before that. But even Britain had capital controls for quite some time after WW2.” Yes, and by a curious coincidence, the U.S. government has been making it steadily more difficult for Americans to move money offshore.