Yesterday Iceland failed in its quest to secure a seat on the UN Security Council.* According to The Times, this constitutes a “fresh humiliation” for Iceland on the international stage.

I’m sorry: but when does running for something - whether office, or seat, or anything else - and not making it, constitute “humiliation”? You run for something, give it your best shot, but somebody else is successful … does that mean “humiliation” for you? Are Olympic athletes “humiliated” if they don’t win gold? Will it be a “humiliation” for John McCain if he doesn’t win the US elections?

And what exactly are the instances of previous “humiliation” for Iceland? That our banks crashed? That our currency is in free-fall? Certainly it is upsetting, distressing, particularly for those of us who had nothing to do with creating the mess … but “humiliating”? I don’t feel humiliated. I feel angry, sad, sometimes distraught … but certainly not humiliated. And I hope my fellow countrymen don’t feel that way, either.

The tone of that Times article seems to be yet another manifestation of the over and/or covert Iceland-bashing that suddenly seems to be all the rage. It’s like the schoolyard bullies have found someone to kick around to deflect attention from all the dysfunction at home. Icelanders in other countries are experiencing such ugly instances of discrimination that it verges on persecution. Some of the following have appeared on the news, others are stories that are circulating that nonetheless are credible enough that the Consumer Spokesman has seen reason to investigate them:

Example: An Icelandic student doing his master’s in engineering in Karlsruhe, Germany, was kicked out of an apartment he rented with two female students. They had advertised for a tidy roommate; however, one of the women, who was British, said she would not share an apartment with an Icelander. He was told to pack up and move out.

Example: Two Icelandic women were in a shop in Denmark. The clerk was providing fine service until they started speaking in Icelandic. He then asked if that was Icelandic they were speaking, and when they said yes, he told them to leave - they didn’t serve Icelanders. On the way out they stopped to look at an item by the door, at which the clerk walked up to them, took the item from them, looked into their eyes and said, “we don’t serve Icelanders.”

Example: Icelanders got up to make a presentation at a conference in Rome. Everyone applauded except for a group of people at the back, who booed. They turned out to be Brits.

Example: an Icelander went to use a credit card in a shop in Denmark. The clerk spit on the card and gave it back without making the transaction.

Example: A credit card belonging to an Icelander was cut in two by a shop clerk in Denmark.

I can’t vouch for the validity of the above stories, but if some of the ugly comments that have appeared on this website and elsewhere on the web are anything to go by, I’d say they are perfectly credible.

Iceland is an easy target right now - a small nation dealing with massive difficulties that moreover stands alone and is not in a very good position to defend itself.

Would Gordon Brown have invoked anti-terrorist legislation to freeze the assets of, say, German or French bank? Why did the failing US banks not get a similar treatment as Landsbanki in the UK?

For most of last week, ALL bank transactions to and from Iceland were blocked in the UK. That meant Icelandic students couldn’t transfer money from home, Icelandic importers [including food importers] couldn’t pay their suppliers, Icelandic exporters couldn’t get paid for their goods. And - why? Because UK banks didn’t “trust” Icelandic banks. Because all of a sudden, Icelanders are personae non gratae. This country was economically bullied, shut out, until yesterday, when the British government sent a letter out instructing the banks to open for transactions to Iceland again. And this is by a nation that is supposed to be a friendly nation, a NATO ally.

I don’t see what this country has done, what heinous offense has been committed, to warrant the kind of treatment we have observed of late. I just know that the whole thing seems menacing and very, very chilling.

IT’S TURNED COLD
Beautiful sunny day today, but cool. Right now it’s 1°C [34F], sunrise was at 8:28 am, sunset at 5:56 pm.

* This may sound like the proverbial sour grapes to some people, but I don’t know anyone in Iceland who gave a rat’s ass about that Security Council seat, although a lot of people objected to the cost of the campaign. It seemed like a fickle flight of fancy by a few ambitious politicians, and as someone remarked yesterday, “so 2007.”

{ 70 comments }

For those of you who are in Iceland: there is a demonstration TO DEMAND CHANGE, tomrrow at 3 pm on Austurvöllur.

More information here [thanks icegrl for the link].

There’s also a Facebook group: Davíð Oddsson ætti að segja af sér [Davíð Oddsson should resign] for those interested, as well as Ákall til þjóðarinnar [a call to the nation], who as far as I can see are the organizers of the demonstration.

If you can be there, please come out. We need bodies!!

[more later, including weather]

{ 16 comments }

For the past two days I have been struggling to understand how it is that our Central Bank governors are still in office. The fact that they have not been unceremoniously kicked out on their sorry asses [because clearly they are too morally corrupt to make that move themselves] is something I find completely unfathomable and which makes me see RED.

Let us consider a few facts. Earlier this year, two professors from the London School of Economics were commissioned by Landsbanki to prepare a report on the state of the Icelandic banking sector. Their verdict: it was headed for imminent disaster. They came to Iceland and introduced their findings at a symposium, and also spoke to the Icelandic authorities. Those authorities included the Central Bank governors who requested that the information be kept under wraps because it was too “delicate”. The report subsequently went into a drawer, not to be seen again.

Today in Fréttablaðið there is a column written by Þorvaldur Gylfason, a professor of economics at the University of Iceland. The man does not mince his words and has been one of the few voices of reason in Icelandic society since the whole house of cards started to collapse. In today’s column he recounts a meeting at the Central Bank a few years ago, in which he warned that there was a very real danger that the same thing would happen in Iceland as in Thailand in the late 1990s [when their banking system collapsed] - he himself had been in Thailand just before the crash and observed the same trends. To which one of the governors responded haughtily: “Iceland is not Thailand.”

The main lesson to be learned from Thailand, Gylfason writes, is that a Central Bank’s foreign currency reserves must be sufficient to cover the country’s banks’ short-term foreign debts. A reserve must be built up and regulations set to curb the banks’ debt accumulation. Neither was done here in Iceland. The Central Bank ignored repeated warnings over many years that their reserves were insufficient and meanwhile the bankers, blinded by greed and avarice, continued to accumulate debts.

The government, the Central Bank and the Financial Supervisory Authority [FSA] had a responsibility to halt the growth of the Icelandic banks through strict monitoring and regulation - but failed miserably. The Central Bank should have imposed a strong reserve requirement [by which banks are required to keep the same amount in reserve as the total sum of deposits] but the banks asked for an exemption from the requirement which the Central Bank granted. [!!!] The Central Bank’s supervision of the bank’s liquid assets failed completely.

Obviously we are dealing with incompetence of the highest order. And sadly it is not limited to the Central Bank. The government stuck their people into the banks, the most glaring example of which is Kjartan Gunnarsson, one of the pillars of the ruling Independence Party, which represents the old power structures in this country. Gunnarsson sat as deputy chaiman of the Landsbanki board for a full 25 years, until being deposed last week. It was partly through his instigation that Landsbanki - which had been a state bank for over a century and enjoyed solid goodwill and trust both in Iceland and abroad - was sold to Björgólfur Guðmundsson [whom the Brits in the crowd may recognize as the owner of West Ham football club] a few years ago, despite the fact that Guðmundsson had been involved in the bankruptcy of the Hafskip shipping company years before and had been sentenced and incarcerated for his part in that affair.

In Gylfason’s view, an investigation should have been launched last week as soon as the state nationalized Landsbanki, of whether its owners had violated the law and whether their [numerous] assets should be frozen. Landsbanki was repeatedly instructed to open subsidiaries - as opposed to branches - in the UK and The Netherlands, to manage its operations there, including the now-infamous Icesave accounts. Those subsidiaries would have operated under their respective country’s law, like the subsidiaries of Glitnir and Kaupthing did in those countries, and depositors in those banks would therefore have been covered by their country’s compensation scheme. However, Landsbanki shirked those responsibilities, and by so doing made the Icelandic people responsible for paying their massive debts, something I will undoubtedly be doing until I die and which will be passed on to my daughter’s generation.

And where are the former owners of Landsbanki now? Björgólfur Guðmundsson and his son Björgólfur Thór Björgólfsson, the only Icelander to make the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people? [ha!] They’ve vanished off the face of the island. Have not been seen since the bank went down. Apparently they’ve been approached to be interviewed but have refused. [The only one of our "tycoons" who has been man enough to be interviewed in front of the nation is Baugur boss and former majority shareholder in Glitnir Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson, who appeared in Silfur Egils last weekend and kept his cool the entire time, while the talk show host went into conniptions - but that's another story.] Those men who pranced around here like kings with their chests thrust out and chins held high have now scuttled under the nearest rock. Nice to finally meet you, gentlemen.

And in part because of the colossal f*ckups of all those agents, our country is currently blacklisted by banks and creditors, resulting in job losses, imminent food shortages, inability of our people abroad to get money out of the country and other insurmountable difficulties for us the little people. Last week, one of the members of the Central Bank’s board - a woman - resigned, because her conscience would not allow her to carry on. She urged others to follow her example. But the Central Bank governors don’t appear to be going anywhere [except to Russia, to negotiate a loan and sell off our future] and the government is seemingly too impotent to force them to step down.

Is it any wonder so many of us feel overwhelmed by a feeling of helpless rage? As I’ve said before: if we could sack our Central Bank management, we would. BELIEVE IT. In the meantime, we’re forced to watch as corruption eats away at one of our key institutions and our credibility as a nation sinks into the sea.

THE WEATHER TODAY
Gray and miserable. What else? Right now, just past midnight, it’s 6°C [43F]. The sun will come up at 8:22 am and set at 6:03 pm.

{ 36 comments }

Yesterday I read a story in a column someone wrote in Fréttablaðið, about a little three-year old girl who burned her hand. After crying for a while, she went off and started playing again like nothing had happened. Over the course of the afternoon her mother noticed that a big blister formed on her hand, but the little girl just kept on playing. When she asked her daughter if her hand didn’t hurt, the little girl responded, “Yes, but only if I think about it.”

That’s kind of how things are up here right now. Despite the buoyant tone of the last couple of posts, make no mistake that things are kinda rough. In fact it often requires concerted effort not to get sucked into a pit of despair.

A professor at Reykjavík University was on the Kastljós news magazine the other night and said that as a nation we are in the denial phase and moving into the anger phase, and that’s probably fairly accurate. Everything that’s happening seems kind of unreal. In the abovementioned column there was a fairly good analogy: it’s like suddenly waking up in a different country, with a foreign language and incomprehensible road system. People have feelings of fear, anger and an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. There is so much uncertainty: what will be the implications of all this for us? How will it play out? What will our New World Order look like?

Everything has pretty much ground to a halt. For example, since we got back from holiday two and a half weeks ago - the day before the first bank, Glitnir, crashed - I’ve had only one assignment. I’m copyediting a magazine that has been a regular job for the past few years … and we’ve just found out that this will be the last issue. Apart from that, work has dried up. Most likely because everything is paralyzed. Nobody is doing anything, everything is on hold. I spoke to my father last night … he works in the cultural sector and said they have instructions to put off everything and anything they can for the time being. I spoke to a friend today who is in the same line of work as myself, and while she’s working, she’s not sure how many people will actually be able to pay and has cut all private spending to a bare minimum. What’s most scary, especially for people like YT who don’t have a fixed salary, is that everything will just shut down.

Meanwhile, even if work does start to come in, I’m not even sure what to charge anymore. Nobody knows what our currency is worth, what the inflation figures will be like tomorrow or a week from now, if things will cost the same, more, or a lot more. Our fearless leaders claim to be working overtime to get things back on track, but how exactly will they do that? All those measures they’re taking, stabilizing the currency, pegging the exchange rate, etc. are just a big mystery to the likes of YT … I just hope somebody know what they’re doing, but I’m starting to have grave doubts.

In the meantime, there is a very serious lack of foreign currency in the country, which means that importers are not able to pay their suppliers even though they effectively have the funds. Some foreign suppliers are demanding payment up front, which is impossible, so there is a real concern that we will run out of certain goods. What foreign currency there is is being rationed and things like oil, petrol and medical drugs take priority over less essential goods.

And like the good professor said, there is a massive amount of anger brewing. At our Central Bank, our Financial Supervisory Authority, our government, and yes - Gordon Brown. But more on that later.

AN EXQUISITE DAY
Gentle sunshine and the most delicate of breezes, all day long. It was pretty cold this morning I’m told with icy roads and frosty windshields, but by the time I went out it was just a gorgeous autumn day. We reached a high of around 5°C [41F] I think, which is what it is now. The sun came up at 8.19 am and went down at 6.06 pm.

{ 59 comments }

One of my fellow countrymen has gone and vented his written a post on The Guardian’s “Comment is Free” site about the spark that set off the Iceland-UK diplomatic row last week. That post has now solicited a slew of ugly rants similar to what this post did on this site a few days ago; however amongst the rubble was this gem, which a reader - trev london - posted in the comments to the last post.

I’m taking the liberty of republishing it here because it’s just … great. It’s from a commenter who calls himself cuppateawifmilk. The link to the original post is here.

—

Hullo Peoples from Icelands

I feeling much sadness in heart about your angry to England peoples becus they have been very nice to me. I running to England when I knowing Tony Blair, who very saint man, let poor peoples from lands with trouble sneaking into UK very quietly. Maybe he speeking to good frend Gordun Brown and do same deal for you. I hop so. There many opportunity in London and maybe you luck like me and find hotel clean opportunity for up to 6 pound hour! My English boss, who very generosity gentleman, tell me I extra luck becus it give network opportunity by clean room of hotshot business mogel. Infact, I very surprise so many Iceland people not liking their business mogul becus I have fortune to clean room of a Mr Johannesson, top tycoon, and he leeving room very clean (but some towel missing it true and he taking all little soaps and thing)

But I think problem is Gordun Brown not understanding you proper. He scotch and so he not speeking English good and maybe Iceland government not speeking English good becus you speeking eskimo language in normal. I understanding this problem as many foren worker in hotel and sometime we confuse when speek in English all together but in end we sort out problem and laugh at silly misstook. Soon I think Iceland primeminister and Gurdan Brown will also laugh together. This probable soon but not this moment becus Gurdan Brown is busy as he like financial Harry Potter and he saving world financial system right now. Maybe he visit your primeminister in his Igloo for Christmas or something.

But you must understanding england peoples. They think they rich becus house expensive. I explain problem to my father that england people are like farmers who think they rich becus someone say cows worth million pound even if not real. I say problems in ENgland becus now they wake up and know cows not worth million pound and all vey panicky on moneys. He ask me Iceland issue and I say it simple: Gurdan Brown and England peoples have million pound cows but Iceland is like next door farmer who have billion pound chiken and they make deal to give money to have eggs regular . But cows all sick and not worth million pound anyway and same time Iceland billion pound chicken go missing and Iceland people say all egg go to Iceland people until they find chicken again. But Gurdan Brown say fox eat chicken so no chance and then he grab all egg he can. With this information my father has explain all global liquidity crisis to village at home.

Thankyou much.

—

WE HAVE A COOL AND WINDY OCTOBER DAY
No great shakes, if the truth be told. Went out earlier and saw that the top of Mt. Esja is all white, which means winter is hovering just above us, ready to pounce:

There’s a few drops of rain landing on my window pane and outside there are a few straggly yellow leaves left on the birch trees. Right now we have 6°C [43F], the sun came up at 8:16 am and will set at 6:10 pm.

{ 41 comments }

This place is crawling with foreign media at the moment and many, it seems, are looking for drama: the destitute banker sitting on a curb in his pinstriped suit, the family with ten children that has lost everything in the bank collapse and doesn’t know how they’re going to survive, stooped people waiting in line outside supermarkets that are empty of food.

Instead they’re finding that life here is pretty much as it always was. Things cost the same as they did two weeks ago. Gas went up by about ten kronur at the pumps last week, then went back down again. Supermarkets are stocked with food - foreign and domestic. And while the inevitable fallout is already upon us with the accompanying job losses and whatnot, Icelanders are dealing with this whole economic collapse with a surprising amount of equanimity.

Last week was definitely crazy. There was so much information coming at us every hour of every day that it was a full time job just to process it. For many of us it was like an immersion course in global economics. Unsurprisingly, productivity plummeted and workplaces more or less came to a standstill. Nobody really knew what was going to happen in the next hour or the next day so keeping the wheels turning was difficult. Everyone was talking about the crisis, checking the internet, listening to the latest on the news. Hungry for information.

I came across an article in The Times [I think] a couple of days ago in which the reporter was going on about how the only people smiling in Reykjavík now were the tourists. That is a complete misrepresentation and in line with the sensationalist tone I’m observing in a lot of the foreign media. Yes, certainly people here are walking around with a  more serious expression than often before, but nobody is freaking out and literally everybody I have talked to is optimistic for the future. In fact many people feel that what is happening is a Very Good Thing. I went to my hairdresser’s on Friday and she talked about how pleased she is about what’s happening - that the greed and envy and full-out derangement that has characterized our society for the past few years is disappearing. And this despite her car payments having doubled on account of having a loan in a foreign currency. In her words, “I can’t wait for Christmas this year … fewer presents, less stress, and people just enjoying being together and nurturing each other. Cultivating what really matters.”

Cultivating what really matters. A return to basic values. That’s the prevailing emphasis around here these days and yes, it is a Very Good Thing. A few short weeks ago the media was still glorifying our “Tycoons” and doing features on people who decorated their massive concrete homes with cold fixtures and soulless minimalist furniture. What we get now is stories of people sticking together, helping each other, like the Glitnir employees who on Friday met outside in the bank’s parking lot for a massive group hug, or the husband and wife who both worked for Landsbanki and both lost their jobs on the same day … but one of them was quickly re-hired so the family would have at least one breadwinner. Newspapers urge people to be careful of what they say around children and the elderly, and a front-page headline in Morgunblaðið on Saturday read: “The psychiatric ward is not inundated” - contradicting a report a week earlier that the psychiatric ward at the National Hospital could hardly cope with the influx of new admissions.

While many media outlets only focus on the gloomy aspect of what’s happening here in Niceland, I find it almost impossible to list all the good, positive things that are happening. Education authorities are making sure children have a secure place in the preschools even if their parents default on payments. A crisis committee is being set up to help people who have lost their jobs. Mortgages are all being taken over by the state’s Housing Financing Fund and those who can’t make mortgage payments can apply to have them halted for the time being. People are being urged to come out and talk about their job losses and even their financial difficulties, because it will help them and others - the message being that there’s no shame in it, ESPECIALLY not now. I could go on.

Many MANY people talk about the exciting times ahead - that’s we’re on the brink of building a new society and that this constitutes a wealth of exciting opportunities. We have good, solid resources: fish in the sea, heat in the ground, copious amounts of energy, a beautiful country with myriad opportunities in tourism, and an excellent workforce: a nation of well-educated and hard working people, many of whom are now out of work and who can use their expertise to help rebuild our economy and much of the infrastructure. After all, this is not the worst that we have endured: on two or three occasions in the past the Icelandic nation has been close to being wiped out by calamities much worse than this, such as volcanic eruptions and the bubonic plague.

This is not to minimize the difficulties that some people are dealing with, particularly in the short-term. It’s probably hardest for those who have lost their jobs, who have mortgages or loans in foreign currencies, and people currently studying abroad, who cannot even transfer money from here [as foreign currency transfers have been temporarily suspended] and may have run out of funds. It’s also a bit of a pain for those travelling abroad who want to buy foreign currency at the bank but have found there is a limit and they have to show a ticket to prove they’re going abroad [this is what it was like here 20 years ago, so there is a certain element of nostalgia!]. Yet on the whole, we’re survivors up here. We have a good sense of humour, a healthy dose of unconcern, and we get on with things - without much drama.

AND IT’S ALL BECAUSE OF THE WEATHER
I do think a lot of the Icelanders’ resilience can be traced to the weather - in fact, one of our most common idioms to describe adversity is þegar á móti blæs, which literally means “when the wind is blowing against us”. We’re used to just putting our head down and forging ahead, no matter what. We have a bit of wind today [not TOO much] and overcast skies, temps are 6°C [43F]. The sun came up at 8.13 this morning, will go down at 6.13 pm.

{ 40 comments }

If there was ever a need for inane google searches, now would be it. In between the onslaught of ‘iceland bankrupt’ or [believe it or not] ‘iceland weather report’ in the past week or so, the odd gem has been hiding amongst the rubble.

where penis goes in girl pictures
- somewhere, someplace, sex ed has gone horribly wrong.

how to use the bathroom in the woods [Atlanta, Georgia]
- um … fin place. pull down pans. crouch down. us, er, bathroom. wipe wif leaf.

what is the effect of exposing your penis to a girl [Singapore]
- it’s terrible. first it shrivels up horribly, then it falls off.

pics from penissen [Germany]
- this, my friends, is what we call lost in translation.

parents forced to walk children down the isle at graduation ceremonies [Nicaragua]
- … at gunpoint.

nude matron spank [Reading, UK]
- ooooh!

best thing to do while inside of a sauna [Pearland, Texas]
- I know! CROSSWORDS!!

nude sexy photoes of fucking usa girls and exposer of penis [Delhi, India]
- clearly they have very specific requirements in Delhi.

naked girls chewing on a penus [Carpentersville, Illinois]
- ouch!

earth will break on september [Bombay, India]
- prescient?

iceland hooker prices [Las Vegas – Venetian Resort Hotel Casino]
- a little research goes a long way.

humming sound after flashing toilet [Sewell, NJ]
- weird. my toilet screams when I flash it.

before i enter her [Bronx, NY]
- … seek the advice of the Internet.

nice explicite love making videos [San Antonio, TX]
- … where everyone says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.

can i liver in iceland [Oslo, Norway]
- why, yes! and onion, too.

[More googlies here.]

GORGEOUS SUNSHINE ON THIS SATURDAY MORNING
And life is just peachy. Isn’t it? Right now we have 7°C [45F] and unbelievably the sun is still coming up here in Iceland: 8.07 this morning, due to set at 6.20 pm.

{ 19 comments }

Relations between the UK and Iceland hit the deep freeze today.

It’s a bizarre scenario. For the uninitiated, it revolves around Landsbanki’s UK operations, Icesave, into which thousands of Brits, including a number of local councils, deposited their money.

Yesterday morning UK Chancellor Alistair Darling was quoted as saying that “believe it or not” Icelandic authorities had “told him” that they would not be honouring their commitment to foreign depositors to compensate them for losses, adding that it seemed as though the Icelandic state did not have enough funds to do so. A short while later, Gordon Brown blasted the Icelandic government, saying the UK government would sue Iceland’s ass to the max in order to fully recover any funds that were lost.

Meanwhile, Icelandic authorities were, like, Dude! WTF!?! No one had any recollection of telling Darling anything of that sort.

So everyone started spinning in circles, trying to figure out how the Brits had arrived at this conclusion. See, over here we’d been told that our government WOULD guarantee deposits in those Icesave accounts. So the Brits must have misunderstood, people said. Something lost in translation, or whatever.

In trying to find a scapegoat, lots of people leaned towards an interview with Central Bank Governor Davíð Oddsson in Kastljós on Tuesday night, in which [as I understood it, at least] he said that those who had invested in SHARES in the Icelandic banks would probably incur losses, just as they have here, but that regular depositors would be covered by the same compensation scheme that Icelandic depositors are. This seemed to be the most likely scenario for the cock-up and by this morning, half of the population was once again furious at Doddson* for speaking so recklessly as to make old Gordon Brown misunderstand him. [Whether it was proper for Doddsson to appear on state television and shoot off his mouth the way he did is another matter entirely.]

So our PM Geir Haarde had to go into serious damage control mode with the Brits yesterday, getting the message across that the whole thing was based on a misunderstanding and that naturally Niceland would be honouring its commitments like the civilized nation it is. Yes, but was the nation “going bankrupt” as Alistair Darling had said? Geir reiterated it was not and that the liquidation of Landsbanki’s assets would likely go a long way towards covering those deposits.

The tragedy in this “little misunderstanding”, however, is that when the GORDON BROWN THREATENS TO SUE ICELAND headlines hit the UK yesterday, there was a bank run on Kaupthing, our last remaining functioning bank and the one deemed to have the potential to carry on operating. Last night it, too, folded and was taken over by the state.

It was bad enough to wake up to that on the news this morning, but imagine our surprise to learn that Gordon Brown had invoked fricking anti-terrorist legislation in order to freeze Kaupthing’s assets. Not only that, but he appeared in the global media this afternoon slamming the actions of the Icelandic government as “totally unacceptable” - still claiming that we were not going to honour our committments, even after our Minister of Finance had spoken to Darling this morning and told him YET AGAIN that Iceland would be compensating the depositors.

The acting Minister for Foreign Affairs instantly summoned the British Ambassador for a meeting and made it clear that the Icelandic authorities considered this matter to be very serious and detrimental to our diplomatic relations. I mean: being called Terrorists? By a supposed ally? On par with Osama Bin Laden?

Honestly, the whole thing seems totally and utterly out of proportion and the British Prime Minister completely out of line. To make radical statements that have the potential to cause so much damage without even first going the diplomatic route, even just CONSULTING your counterpart here in Iceland to see if there is any truth to the allegations … it just seems completely bizarre and makes one wonder what else is going on. My first thought was that Brown’s over-stressed, that he lost his cool and / or was looking for someone else to blame. But for what? - The answer seemed to present itself later in the day, when it transpired that the British government had urged a lot of the local councils to invest their money in the Icelandic banks - and now the councils were furious and demanding that the government do something to help them recover their losses.

Meanwhile, Darling claims the [mis]understanding came about in conversation with our Minister of Finance Árni Mathiesen. Being the least popular of our cabinet ministers and an exceedingly tactless man, a lot of people here are calling for the transcript of that conversation. I, for one, would love to hear it. In fact, I think we NEED to hear it, if only to determine whether old Árni needs to be sent to English language classes. [But in line with Icelandic government administration, we probably won't.]

Ah. All this drama. Sad to see it come to this, especially with the UK which is a nation so dear to the hearts of most Icelanders, YT included. Just adds to the gloom and doom of this wretched situation.

PS. Those of you in the US will be able to hear me interviewed on The Takeaway on WNYC radio in New York at 6.10 am tomorrow. If you get up that early.

* Thanks to Dr Gunni for coining that phrase.

{ 76 comments }

One of my favourite Icelandic bloggers, Dr Gunni, can always be relied on for a glimmer of sanity, not to mention a chuckle. In his post from October 7 he’s got a pretty interesting take on the situation that’s was under discussion in the last post [I hope he forgives me for the somewhat inadequate translation of the following excerpts - his is the sort of text that loses a lot] …

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not comparing the Third Reich in Germany with the recent collapse of high-flying prosperity here in Iceland. Nobody got killed. But still. There are similarities. After the Nazis were overthrown no outsider could understand: How could society tolerate all those people being killed in the concentration camps? Why didn’t anybody say anything? Why didn’t anybody stop it? At what point did the nation give its blessing to the insanity? We scratched our heads about this all through high school.

In the future people will ask: How did it happen that all of a sudden it was OK in Iceland, a dwarf-nation of 300,000 people, and indeed just perfectly fine, for people to swipe piles of money to stick into wage deals, severance packages and you name it, and that some guy could earn in a month the same amount as it took a regular Joe standing next to him in line at the supermarket 20-30 years to earn? That a six-fold lotto prize was equal to the monthly wages of the rich? How did society tolerate such insane discrimination?

Incidentally, this Norwegian interview is brilliant. Why didn’t anyone here in Iceland ask questions like this? Oh, right, I remember. The owners of the banks also own the media. The research departments wrote the questions. And what 20-30 individuals sent everything here straight to hell like Vilhjálmur Bjarnason is claiming in this Norwegian report? Will we never know? Will there be no Nuremberg trial?

And then they’ll say to us like they said to the German nation: It’s your fault, you idiots. You participated in this with your foreign currency loans and all your other crap.

Incidentally, the voices are growing increasingly stronger here who want the government to freeze the assets of the 20-30 people who “sent everything straight to hell” and I’m adding my voice to that chorus. They’ve flown off on their private jets, no doubt to tend to their bank accounts in the Caymans, while we’re left to clean up their mess. The owners of the banks all have holdings elsewhere - why are those holdings not being used to offset the losses of their companies?

Expect postulations from YT later today about the “tool” we have in the Central Bank [as someone so succinctly put it in the comments to the last post] and his part in the latest: the British government’s decision to apply terrorist laws to Kaupthing bank, causing it, too, to fold. It just keeps getting better.

AND BECAUSE SOME OF YOU WERE  MISSING THE WEATHER
You’ll be happy to know that it hasn’t gone bankrupt. We’re in between low-pressure areas at the moment, had a storm this morning and another on the way, but at present

{ 14 comments }