I’ve been reading your blog since “interesting times” started. As you have already mentioned, here in Finland we had similar, although not quite as severe (IMF didn’t get involved) crisis during early nineties. You really could learn something from our experiences, about how not to manage crisis. But there you go, down the same path, like it was some odd force of nature that draws economies in crisis to same mistakes, where ever they occur.

Such crisis allways seem to come with great deal of injustice. Sheer luck becomes biggest factor of life when good people are losing their fortunes, guilty people getting away with theirs, taxpayers getting burdened and vultures making quick gains by predatory tactics. Lying politicians and bankers, it just sounds so familiar. Maybe there is no way around it, you’re stuck with your current batch of lawmakers, they surely won’t allow any quick plugging of injust legal bugs, loopholes and corruption as such action would expose themselves for consequences. It is also why they don’t want elections anytime soon, or any more transparency in your system.

I put a link to your blog on my page http://www.myntkarfan.wordpress.com, I hope you don’t mind, but please let me know if you want me to remove it. I will add more good links when I have the time.

I’ve also been writing about everyday life in Iceland during the recession, but I’m not as fluent with the English language as you are.

Jessica – 1. alas, there is no Icelandic Obama on the horizon, riding on his white steed … but there are lots of highly qualified specialists here that I’m sure could do an excellent job in the different areas of administration, but don’t necessarily have aspirations in politics. To me, that’s one of the best reasons for appointing an extra-parliamentary government. 2. Sadly, no. Bad customer service is just so tightly woven into the fabric of Icelandic society that I don’t think something like this will change it. In fact, I think those who are running the companies are hardly aware that the service is so bad. Fish don’t know they’re wet, etc.