Or rather on The Guardian website, as before.
Mildly annoyed that they changed my heading, and a little more than mildly annoyed at the sub-heading they plastered on the thing. This:
David Oddsson, head of Iceland’s central bank, surely can’t hold on much longer. He’s rewriting history, but has nowhere to hide
Did not come from me. [Plus I would never omit punctuation.]
IT WAS WERY WERY WINDY TODAY
Went for a stroll around the golf course this afternoon and idly wondered, as I went out the door, whether I should take my camera. I didn’t – and as soon as I got there, regretted it. The waves were absolutely spectacular, as were the clouds, the rays of the sun, the mist. Right now 6°C [43F]. Sunrise 10:10 am, sunset 4:15 pm.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Just a note from Scotland to congratulate you on your Guardian article.
Our First Minister, Alec Salmond, is rather regretting holding up the Celtic tigers, Iceland and Ireland, as exemplars, bearing in mind that they were the first to hit the Credit Crunch.
You might be interested in this presentation
http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisJCook/equity-shares-a-solution-to-the-credit-crash-presentation
which I made recently in Ireland outlining a simple but radical way out of the shit they’re in. It went down really well.
Essentially, we are proposing a “Debt/Equity swap” but not to Equity as we know it…
My Norwegian partner, Anne Grethe, has said for some time that the Icelanders would be the first to “get” the simple but partnership-based mutualised credit and mutualised investment concepts which the Scottish charity she founded – Nordic Enterprise Trust -has developed with a little funding from Innovation Norway.
Best Regards
Chris Cook
Well done! I hope you’re getting paid for those articles.
Hi Chris – thanks for the comment and the input!
maja – I wish! Like they say – it’s hard to get paid for writing for the internet. Lots of people want the content, but print is where you get paid. Is it all about “influence”? – we shall see.
Nicely done articles!
Good article, as usual. Perhaps the sub-editor doesn’t like Oddsson!? (It is a left-wing paper and Oddsson must look like a right-wing reactionary! And incompetent too!).
I hope the lesson is learned – former politicians must not become central bankers!
Do people in Iceland wonder just WHY he hasn’t resigned/been sacked?
Maybe you could organize The World’s Worst Central Banker Award for him!?
I’ve just seen this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/iceland/3485746/Iceland-plans-to-merge-Central-Bank-and-financial-regulator-awaits-IMF-loan.html
The Icelandic Government was last night considering a plan to merge its Central Bank and Financial Supervisory Authority, as the country awaited approval for a $2bn (£1.3bn) International Monetary Fund loan.
The proposal follows weeks of public demonstrations since the krona collapsed, with most anger directed towards the Central Bank governed by former prime minister David Oddsson.
Prime Minister Geir Haarde would not confirm whether the current Central Bank board would be dismissed, following weeks of tension between the monetary policy makers and the Government. “All over the world there was a trend for splitting up these bodies,” a spokesman for the Prime Minister said. “Now we think this might have been wrong, that it might have been better to keep them together and strengthen their powers.”
Eric – thank you.
Andrew – I have no idea, but I shudder that the ‘nowhere to hide’ phrase is being ascribed to me. It makes it sound like persecution at the highest level, and I really can’t condone that. I’ve asked them to change it – we’ll see what happens. As for the award, I’ll leave that to Muriel, she of the Bad Icelander Awards.
“I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. I want him brought to justice. We’ll smoke him out of his turf hut, and we’ll get him eventually.”
I think the subject of this article really needs a post from you! I couldn’t stop smiling!
Even though it’s actually rather grim when you really think about it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1087814/Bing-Bang-Iceland-childrens-TV-Lazy-Town-bombarded-applications-redundant-bankers.html
Bing Bang! Iceland children’s TV show Lazy Town is bombarded with applications from redundant bankers
Andrew – I’m not surprised. Are you? They advertised that they were hiring, and around 500 people had just been laid off.
Cracking articles as usual!
Just a reminder to the women of Iceland — the state of Nebraska in the USA has a law that allows you to abandon all your children to the state, up to age 18, with no penalty or criminal charges! What a wonderful opportunity! In fact, one father left nine children behind, the oldest being 17. You had better hurry, however, the law expires this Friday at 12 midnite. So pack up all those unwanted kids that you won’t be able to feed in the coming years and put them on an airplane to Omaha. Tell the folks there that they are “Oddson children” — they’ll know what you’re talking about.
And while you’re in the US, how about a divorce too? Most states allow a woman to divorce her husband, and dump the debts on hubby. So if your man has borrowed money to buy Icelandic bank stocks, or taken out a house mortgage in foreign currency, kick him to the curb! Take an “escape” holiday to the US and come back a free woman!
RE: The Guardian not paying for content.
That is appalling. Dear Alda, we realise you’re in deep economical shit right now, but please write an entire article for us on the subject for free anyway. We will use your local knowledge to make our internationally-read newspaper more international and you will get a job cleaning carpets with the best of them.
I don’t care that print is where the money is at. How many people still read newsprint anyway? This is 2008, everybody is online.
REVOLT
Annie – heheh. Yep. I wasn’t exactly sure of the terms going in, but I am now.
Ditto what Annie said! That is appalling that they didn’t pay you.
Also, what about the fact that your blog is identified as the “cult blogsite” Iceland Weather Report? Using cult seems like a slight to m; here in the U.S. “cult” definitely has a negative connotation.
Nice picture in the Guardian, Alda. You look even better without that red nose!
Oh, and I like your wits, too, of course. Great story on “Doddsson”!
Well, here in the UK, “cult blogsite” is definitely a positive – just like “cult film”! Few British people would think it concerned a sect of extremist followers practicing an arcane weather reporting religion…
Alda seems to have “slashdotted” the Guardian at least from within Iceland. The site was very slow for a few days. When I was finally able to read it all and the comments I was relieved that the comments were not very ugly. Some rational calm is starting to come over the crisis. Perhaps now a sensible plan can be put into place. ‘The Stooges’ need to be sacked, indeed, but what then? I’ve always felt that you can’t simply demand change and answers, you must tell them what those changes are and how to do them. Left to themselves the decisions they make are rarely in the best interests of the people. But that is all too obvious to perhaps billions of people all over the world about their own rulers.
Strange days, indeed.
I must say that Alda’s clarity and command of the English language especially right now is amazing. Truly humbling to
an Anglophone such as myself.
Aw. Thank you!
Rozanne, James – glad ‘cult’ doesn’t denote crazed Scientologists or arcane weather freaks … at least in some parts of the world!