Comments on: Wanna party on Facebook?

By: alda

alda — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:59:59 +0000

Stan – don’t worry about it. I don’t. I think if anything these two can work very well in tandem. The Facebook group doesn’t allow for posts and subsequent discussions related to those posts like the blog does, but it does allow people to start their own discussions, etc. which the blog does not. I don’t anticipate my stats to drop on the site – if anything the group will help publicize the blog. So go for it!

By: Stan

Stan — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:11:21 +0000

About Facebook…

I just wonder if participation in the Facebook forum will detract from the page counts on this site and thus might hurt your chances for getting advertisers. I prefer the forum to comments because threads are preserved and can grow rather than be dropped when the next post comes out.

What to do?

By: James

James — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:56:31 +0000

Alda – Yes, I agree that Brown overreacted and that unfortunately harmed Iceland. However, surely Icelanders aren’t treating that newspaper article as a true description of events and expert legal opinion – it was written by a culpable board member of Iceland’s central bank!!! To highlight just a couple of examples:
1. “if the fund is unable to fully meet its obligations, then there is no requirement, under EEA rules, for the Icelandic government to step in”. Well, that seems to be the opposite to what all EU states unanimously subsequently declared! So, the board member is effectively saying that he was complicit in exposing Icelanders to unacceptable risk because he was ignorant of the legal and financial implications. Do Icelanders really want to keep such board members, especially as higher competence levels will be required to navigate the recession…
- “the Icelandic Ministry of Finance and Central Bank even found themselves briefly on the list of terrorist organizations published on the Web site of the British Treasury”. What *evidence* is there of this? As I said, I thought only Landsbanki was on a list…

Note I’m not attacking Iceland; actually the opposite as my underlying point is merely that the country urgently needs more capable leaders for the recession. But the current leaders are repeatedly trying to divert Icelanders’ attention from their past incompetence – and it appears that this newspaper article was a successful example… Anyway, all this serious stuff seems a little too heavy for a Sunday afternoon!

By: alda

alda — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 23:55:50 +0000

James – I’m not selling Professor HHG’s quote any dearer than I bought it (as the Icelanders would say), but I expect this article should answer your questions:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122695569056034695.html

By: Muriel Volestrangler

Muriel Volestrangler — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:31:11 +0000

It’s amazing how little of the really important news gets reported by the Icelandic press. A week or two ago someone related to the government mentioned the possibility of foreign creditors taking ownership of the “new” Icelandic banks, or part of them, as repayment. Now that idea has come up again as a real possibility.
In the last few days the German bank creditors announced that they were forming a consortium to manage the collection of the debt owed them, some $21 billion.
Earlier an Icelandic finance minister said that the total cost would be $20 billion and that it would take until perhaps 2020 to pay it off. The $20 billion included the $5-6 billion IMF loan and the $5 billion or so for Icesave.
So what about the Germans and their $21 billion? At a minimum it seems that the total repayment cost would be $30 billion, not $20 billion. Was the Icelandic government lying to the people — yet again?
And how are the Germans going to get paid back? Well, probably by giving them ownership of the “new” banks, which would make them creditors (and owners) of large parts of Icelandic real estate, agriculture industry, businesses, etc. Maybe they would even own part of the fish quotas. Icelanders, meet your new overlords — the Germans.
And if Iceland joins the EU, then the fishing grounds shrink to 12 miles.
All of this shows what an enormous, catastrophic mistake the Icelandic government made by nationalizing the banks and taking reponsibility for their debts. They should have let them completely fail and walked away from the debt, whatever the short-term problems may have been. Their solution is/was to hand over ownership of everything in the country to foreign creditors, and let the little people work as indentured servants for the next 20 years.

By: min-ciné

min-ciné — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:45:51 +0000

RÚV cuts costs by ISK 550 million.
Is the map of the weather forecast going to get even smaller?

By: alda

alda — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 18:37:11 +0000

luigi – what, no seit4buffoon?

By: luigi

luigi — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 15:56:28 +0000

Not everyone who throws shit on you, can be an enemy

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:59:24 +0000

Have you bought one!?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b82f2ec4-bd79-11dd-bba1-0000779fd18c.html

Icelanders collapse in laughter
By David Ibison in Stockholm
Published: November 28 2008

With its banking system in crisis, violent demonstrations in Reykjavik, a punishing recession on the way and soaring inflation, there may not seem much to laugh about in Iceland.

But Icelanders take pride in their darkly ironic sense of humour. The latest example is The Crisis Game, a board game that takes a grimly comical swipe at the financial crisis that has devastated the economy.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:44:23 +0000

“With subzero temps and killer wind. Pretty nasty. And most awfully, the recession is digging its claws in deeper by the day. We’re really starting to feel it now…”

This kind of weather must make people feel depressed at the best of times! Generally, how do people tend to behave in the Winter?

So far as the recession/depression goes – we don’t need so much of the big political/economic issues – knowing how the ordinary people are being hit is what we would really like to know as this is not reported anywhere.