Teitur Atlason, hands down one of Iceland’s best bloggers [who actually writes from Sweden] calls attention to an interesting development on his blog: a young, up-and-coming politician named Erla Ósk Ásgeirsdóttir is taking a seat in parliament today on behalf of the Independence Party.
One of Erla Ósk’s greatest career accomplishments is to have planned the wildly successful marketing campaign behind the Icesave accounts when she was employed by Landsbanki.
Teitur writes:
In other words, holding a seat in parliament is a woman with first-hand knowledge of how those criminal bank accounts were marketed. A woman who is, in part, responsible for the greatest disgrace that Icelanders have seen and experienced on their own skins.
It is not to her advantage, nor to those of other Independence Party members, for the Icesave dispute to be resolved through negotiations. No one wants to be responsible for the Icesave debt yoke. The resolution of the Icesave dispute means acknowledging the IP’s responsibility.
At this point it is completely impossible for the Icesave dispute to be resolved through negotiations while the IP has something to say about it. On the other hand, the IP will pretend to be trying really hard to resolve the issue.
But believe me, dear readers.
They are bluffing, and wait for the opportunity to seize power once again.
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{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Yet another low point, and the smell is getting worse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXASL8mJVeo
Her job was to market Icesave. She did a good job at it. What’s the problem? She presumably was a marketing expert and didn’t have knowledge of the Landsbanki loan book, gearing, etc…
So, here we are, a person did a good job and is now in government. Is it somewhat petty of people to complain? Rhetorical question, the answer is yes, of course it is.
So – what’s the options?
- “new” Parliament and “new” Government
- Ant Hill wisdom (have you heard anything from them btw?)
- Icelanders, taking care of themselves and their crooks
PS. Power is something you have to get. By yourself. Not to ask for it or ask someone in power to “be fair” but to get.
Thanks for pointing that out Alda – I hadn´t been aware of her or her past. I think that Michael has a point to a certain extent however, I am sure that if you are a marketer – you do your research – you work out which areas to highlight, which to downplay – so I doubt very much that she was at all naive about what was going on with the house of cards.
Michael Lewis – she may be excellent at her job, but as Teitur points out, Icesave is arguably the most serious political crisis in the history of the republic. Someone who was so close to it has no business being in parliament making decisions that affect that issue and, by extension, the welfare of hundreds of thousands of people.
@Michael: Of course, it’s not petty at all to complain about this person being member of parliament. It’s a symbol for the inability of the Independence Party to take their share of responsibility.
There has not yet been an investigation into the role and responsibilities of the people, who were close to the epicenter of the crash. They might still have to be considered not guilty legally, but there is absolutely no need for a casual and hasty acquittal in a moral sense.
There were a lot of people doing a very “good job” at deceiving and misleading other people. This doesn’t qualify for being good.
@Peter Reeves
When I checked out your link to that YouTube clip the “related video” section had as top pick “Don’t stop believing” by Journey.
Don’t start believing is more like it!
Does the line actually exist which ALL Icelanders would agree that NO ONE must cross? Or will they always simply tolerate everything. If the Independence Party is really gaining support, as these regularly trotted-out polls try to suggest, then genetic dementia is much more common than any of the world’s top pathologists realized.
It’s like everybody is outraged at this, as they were at Oddson’s ridiculous appointment at the Morgunbladid, but denial, family ties and political co-alcoholism keep their mouths closed and their limbs straitjacketed.
National paralysis.
Does it matter that Erla is a woman ? Not a far as I am concerned.
Do we need marketing experts in parliament? Not as far as I am concerned.
We need a conscious and informed discours in society and that is what politicians and MPs fail to deliver.
Michael
She was the marketing brain behind Icesave? Why isn’t she giving evidence somewhere? Or is misleading/ down right lies in marketing/advertising ok? There must be some whistleblowers in Niceland…..?
sylvia from viking wirral
In a democracy, at last its citizens have to take responsibility for it.
I don’t know if the Independence Party was able to place Ms. Ásgeirsdóttir in parliament on their own or not. But I remain confident that the IP can only do so in the long term if the voters within Iceland allow it. They might complain or not now, but if Ms. Ásgeirsdóttir remains in power it is entirely the responsibility of the citizens of Iceland.
I think it very wrong to say that someone who dreamt up the marketing for something is found guilty by association. Marketing what is on the face of it a simple retail bank account.
What next – exile the cleaners ? What of the reception staff – were they just saying ‘hello’ to people entering the building or were they secretly trading toxic CDO’s ?
Punishing people who had nothing to do with the collapse of the bank, or its previous mismanagement, is the worst kind of vindictive and petty minded mob rule I can imagine.
Michael Lewis, there must be people with excellent qualifications who are NOT tainted by association with that mess-which-shall-not-be-named. One has to ask, WHY was this specimen selected? Is it the Icelandic mafia saying, “Nyah nyah – you can’t do anything to stop us, hahaha”?
I have a similar nag about our “special” prosecutor, who was suddenly announced as getting the job, since he was the only applicant. Hello? What’s his academic record? Who’s in his family? Which of his relatives is either in the mafia or could be threatened by them?
The guy seems normal enough, and might indeed be an excellent and industrious worker, but could it really be true that a person of widely proven impartiality and experience was not to be found?
Just asking… These appointments don’t look transparent to me, and transparent appointments are a precondition for a reduced likelihood of another mess like the one Icelanders are in now.
I tend to agree with Michael, she is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The retail side of the Icesave operation was perfectly legal. What happened to the deposited money after that is highly questionable, but whoever was doing whatever probably wouldn’t tell the PR department.
The big problem for everybody is that we have no information yet about who did what, who the key people in the bank/government/business sectors where who were responsible. Will this come out in the Black Report, or cases prosecuted by Eva Joly? Until then, everyone is under suspicion!
“Punishing people who had nothing to do with the collapse of the bank, or its previous mismanagement, is the worst kind of vindictive and petty minded mob rule I can imagine.”
So that’ll mean then that 300 000 people won’t be made to suffer, only the 30 or so individuals that are now living it up in the Caymans.
If IP get back in, I suppose she’ll be Minister of Propaganda!!
Erla Ósk is not dubious just because of her past in the advertising business, she’s also a fanatical Rand-ist (as in Ayn Rand, not the excellent James Randi) who is still utterly in favor of the self-ruling market and minimal to non-existant government… even after the markets demonstrating that less government interference and almost complete autonomy of the free market lead to disaster for all but the select 1%.
“Punishing people who had nothing to do with the collapse of the bank, or its previous mismanagement, is the worst kind of vindictive and petty minded mob rule I can imagine.”
Who is the judge here to decide, that this person had nothing to do with collapse and mismanagement, while actively working to promote Icesave? Is this you? Hubris?
This is apparently not about being guilty or not guilty in a legal sense but about being biased in a decision making process, which is affecting this “petty mob”.
My sympathy is more with the “mob”, which got
If you don’t like her or her political views, vote her out of office! Come to think about it, how did she get voted in ?
Andrew – if it were solely up to me … well, then we’d have a dictatorship.
She got voted in because she is a member of the Independence Party, which unbelievably still holds vast support among the Icelandic electorate. Landsbanki was an IP stronghold – in fact they sold it to their personal friends on the condition that IP members would hold key positions there. It was subsequently considered an incubator for young up-and-coming IP party members.
..just to finish the last sentence from my previous comment, which got truncated somehow:
…My sympathy is more with the “mob”, which got to face the consequences of this Ponzi Scheme, rather than with its enablers.
Aren’t the candidates for parliament chosen by the parties rather than individually elected by general vote? If so, choosing this candidate is a statement of the IP to deny their responsibility.
I’d recommend everyone to read the speach of Central BankGovernor Gudmundsson:
http://sedlabanki.is/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=7592
Is he free to talk or not is questionable but he is definetly free to express his academic views about the collapse of Icelandic banking system.
As having worked for Landsbanki at the time I remember all too well foreign(!!) accounting specialists telling that Landsbanki quarterly report was just fine. CB governor seconds that:
“…Did the Icelandic banks face a solvency problem? Not if we look at what used to be the traditional metrics before the crisis, cf. the
displayed table… Compared to peers, their capital and leverage ratios were not out of line. Neither do the underlying liquidity problems glare at us through these metrics. But that might say more about the metrics than the reality. Add to this the fact that, around a month before the collapse, the FME issued statements about how well the banks performed on a range of stress tests. However, these stress tests were flawed in the sense that they did not include liquidity. Furthermore, they tested one institution at a time and did therefore not take into account the interconnectedness and contagion elements that proved so important during the collapse.”
See it? Experts believed the bank is ok. Some people were ringing alarm bells but please note it is extremely difficult to proof a point using new, out-of-the box thinking techniques. Do not expect some marketing girl to understand what is going in the Icelandic banking sector as a whole.
I am pretty sure the answer why icelandic banks have failed will never be answered just like there is no answer what caused the Great Depression. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke managed to make an academic career on the topic but please be sure his views on how to prevent the next Great Depression are not unquestionable.
“I think it very wrong to say that someone who dreamt up the marketing for something is found guilty by association.”
She was just doing her job. Just following orders. If people are told to do bad things, you can’t blame them when they do those things. It’s not their fault. And no-one is to blame if they’re all just following orders. Thank God for hierarchy, otherwise people would have to take responsibility for their actions…