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McDonald's is not only a giant in the fast-food world, but it is also the source of handy economic indicators. See, for instance, The Economist's Big Mac Index and its alternative.

But there's a much more blunt McD's indicator: it occurs when, despite operating in about 120 countries worldwide, the burger chain decides that your country is a lost cause:

Iceland edged further towards the margins of the global economy on Monday when McDonald's announced the closure of its three restaurants in the crisis-hit country and said that it had no plans to return. The move will see Iceland, one of the world’s wealthiest nations per capita until the collapse of its banking sector last year, join Albania, Armenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in a small band of European countries without a McDonald’s.

That is serious.