The small country elites drank the Kool-Aid given them by large country elites (especially in the US and UK), which have been driving this bus for nearly 30 years through a combination of neocon foreign policy (Project for the New American Century) and neolib economics (Austro-Chicago mumbo jumbo). Now they’ve driven it off a cliff. The latest UK GDP figures show it. France and Germany, which have seen that a real economy needs to produce something and have stepped back from the FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) brink, are showing signs recovering, while the UK and the US, determined to maintain FIRE economies, aren’t.

Voting for conservatives? Reagan and Thatcher got this toxic snowball rolling. You want more?

As for 2000, that was the year the US showed the world that the model for Dodd’s locomotive was indeed a bad idea as the Dot Com Boom turned into a bomb. But that was forgotten with the next bubble.

It wouldn’t cost much to buy the hosting and domain name.

I could imagine it giving the Morgun a run for its money if done properly.

Not to unduly inflate you, but if the citizens of Iceland are losing Morgunblaðið as a respected journal, they, and the world, have at last gained your report. There is perhaps more than a little irony, and justice, in that.

Surely he’s the sort of person that the independent, IP Icelanders need? If people like him don’t step up, then as my friend Fisy said over on Icenews:

“Stick around, because some people with a back bone are soon to make the government, as it has been always before.”

(feel the unintentional irony )

You know what? Icelandic locomotive is now returning to a normal tracks. Krona depreciated?
Well, but now you are going to earn more or less the same as most of western working class. Which is around 2000 euros a month.
You still have a very healthy birth ratio. You can not expect fish or finances ( all of them are f-word ) to provide you with the same living standard as before. More mouths means less fish or finance per soul.
Prices will be inflated but one has to pay for geographical isolation after all… On the bright side you enjoy cheap energy and clean air with water which is a lot. Most of icelanders tend to forget that and they look into being “world’s best” instead.
This exaggerated optimism (Ísland er best í heimi ) is probably the worst thing done to the nation during David´s reign. Now it is time to realistic optimism and you do have a basis for that.
Thinking about icesave debacle you can look into it as a rather costly credit Iceland seems to be in need. You can not live under currency restrictions, it must be killing your companies trying to do anything outside of fishing and providing for daily needs (which ironically converges into giants as Bónus…)
In short, stay positive.

Maybe The Locomotive is going off the rails because there aren’t any train tracks in Iceland…

However Tory party in UK plc, would love to have to Take out Gordon Brown and NuLabour.!!!

Why? Because democracy is more often than not a list of candidates which reads “bad, bad, bad, not so bad, bad, …,…,…”

Saying that an average icelandic voter is responsible for lavish style of living in the recent years is just ridiculous. Sorry for my disbelieve in a higher power of collective wisdom but democracy does not guarantee a ship will not hit an iceberg.

Please note what Iceland experienced is by far not unique.
I remember too well banksters ( one letter should be “g” actually) calculating Baltic states indicators and pointing out that “these are not yet indebted as much % of GDP as their Western counterparts” meaning “there is an enormous room for growth”, please, please come investors.
I am sure the same was going on in South East Europe and in many other countries including UK, Ireland.

The elite of those small countries submitted just too joyfully to this credit party cause it presented unseen possibilities of “entrepreneurship”: build something, sell it at inflated price and go away with money. When party is over a paycheck time came. At that point Swedish desperate pressure on Latvia is exemplary: you must obey to social cuttings (somewhere in a range of 15% salaries cut, etc) just in order to get IMF loan and our loan as well.
Doesn’t it sound familiar? The tone is quite different from the recent years when Swedish capital take a journey into Baltics and Ukraine and was enjoying unprecedented profits.

Summarizing it all what one can tell? Neocons have so much in common with free and liberal as commies had with social equality.
Does it mean conservatism and capitalism is a dead end? I doubt it very much
I remember too well year 2000 and my fellow icelanders rightfully criticizing states over control and putting Denmark as an example. Dodd’s locomotive was not such a bad idea at the time. Just like for many ideas the implemmentation matters. I.e. giving state property into the hands of “good friends” has nothing to do with modernization of economy.