Comments on: We the Icelandic people

By: lou

lou — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:37:24 +0000

Hello
I know that it’s not really the good place to post this message but i don’t have other choice, i didn’t find the” proper” forum !
sorry in advance….
My name is Lucie i’m 20 and I’m a french student who live in Paris.
I want to participate to a project this summer which is very important to me: thanks to an association who helps financially young people to travel all over the world, i have the opportunity to go to Iceland for 1 month all alone. My personal project is to meet icelandic people to better understand the icelandic culture and to discover icelandic litterature. That’s why i need some help! I need some contacts in the country to reassure the association and to not ‘disembark’ in an unknown country without knowing someone!
I don’t want to disturb of course, my goal is to travel all over the country and not to invite myself to your home of course!
thank you in advance for your little help It’s very important to me!!
LOU

By: James

James — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:53:20 +0000

People blaming Iceland are fools. Iceland is simply the canary in the coalmine. All of us are connected, for better or worse, and the tough times Iceland is enduring are heading our way soon. Instead of blaming other countries, we need to look at these multinational financial institutions and the class of people who run them.

Hang in there, Alda!

By: maja

maja — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:38:21 +0000

Looks to me like your fan club just keeps getting bigger and bigger, Alda! I’ve solely relied on your blogging for all my info on the icelandic financial situation, the personal spin makes it a lot more real than what I might read in the Australian media.

We may all take part in democratic elections of our governments, but I doubt that anyone can say that the little people of any country have any semblance of control over their government and financial system. It’s ludicrous to say that any individuals could have stopped this global financial crisis from happening. Mob mentality always comes out on top.

By: delara

delara — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:35:36 +0000

Well put, Alda.

By: Lora

Lora — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:15:45 +0000

“Times are a’changin’, Colin. I think for the better”. I certainly hope Keera’s right.

I have been reading all of your recent entries, but since I know very little of this financial stuff I couldn’t really join in on the discussion. I can’t believe people can actually be pointing fingers at “normal” people. I mean, sure, we’re all to blame in part for this mess… but surely the banks & politicians and stuff played a much bigger part in it!

Anyway, all I can say is that I hope that Iceland (and the rest of the world) eventually pulls out of this crap. And meanwhile, I hope none of the average people like you and your family suffer much.

By: Keera

Keera — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:20:35 +0000

Times are a’changin’, Colin. I think for the better. The US needed this wake-up call. It may not be such a bad thing to have to reassess a lot of recent behavior in several countries – which is my way of getting back on topic.

By: Colin

Colin — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:05:32 +0000

Keera, true enough, yet they all seem to have a tenuous grasp on the truth. Actually, being a coastal latte sipper, I was reading the New Yorker last night and nearly fell out of the chair because there was an advert from a group called something like Physicians for Single Payer Healthcare. I’d have put the odds of that somewhere south of and African American being elected president ;

By: Keera

Keera — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:59:36 +0000

Colin, your comment about governments spinning yarns has reminded me of one of the biggest differences between Europe (esp. the Nordic countries) and the US: The level of trust in their respective governments. Americans have historically been skeptical to big government and government involvement (and that is one reason for US skepticism towards nationalized healthcare) whereas in Europe, especially in the Nordic countries, it is the reverse. Europeans want their governments to take care of things and expect them to.

By: Colin

Colin — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:35:39 +0000

Alda, I’ve been reading your blog for some time and I sincerely hope that you didn’t take any of my comments as being rooted in a “blame the victim” mentality – my impression was that Icelanders were being spun a tale by their government, an all too familiar experience on this side of the Atlantic.

I find this sort of thing fascinating but now it’s tipped over into morbid fascination. Understanding what a current account deficit is (since I was an adolescent dork, as opposed to the middle aged dork I am now) hasn’t helped me much – in fact, I didn’t really grasp the full enormity of what was going on until I listened to This American Life’s explanation of the commercial paper market and credit default swaps. I was listening on the way home from work and the missus said I looked ashen when I walked in the door.

As for whether or not individual citizens are to blame, now is not the time and your blog is not the venue to be working through that question. There’s plenty of blame to go around, and when the people making decisions that affect billions of people are doing so in a way that makes it hard to know when to intervene, it’s a little too easy to fall back on hindsight and take your anger out on people who are not directly to blame.

Like you, we’ve been careful with our money. I can’t say that I’m enthusiastic about being left holding the bag, but what choice do we have?

By: alda

alda — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:08:02 +0000

Thanks, Keera. Comforting words.