Posts Tagged ‘Revolution in Iceland’
Posted by smeddum on August 18, 2009
The Specter of Debt Revolt Is Haunting Europe
Why Iceland and Latvia Won’t (and Can’t) Pay for the Kleptocrats’ Ripoffs
By MICHAEL HUDSON
August 18th 2009
Counterpunch
Click here for more details of stipulations and conditions attached to Icesave deal as agreed by Icelandic parliament.
In the wake of the world crash populations are asking not only whether debts should be paid, but whether they can be paid! If they can’t be, then trying to pay will only shrink economics further, preventing them from becoming viable. This is what has led past structural adjustment programs to fail.
For the past decade Iceland has been a kind of controlled experiment, an extreme test case of neoliberal free-market ideology. What has been tested has been whether there is a limit to how far a population can be pushed into debt-dependency. Is there a limit, a point at which government will draw a line against by taking on public responsibility for private debts beyond any reasonable capacity to pay without drastically slashing public spending on education, health care and other basic services? Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Battle for Europe, Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: Mike Hudson, Revolution in Iceland | 2 Comments »
Posted by seumasach on August 17, 2009
Iceland Weather Report
16th august, 2009
Everyone: I have often thought how great it would be if non-Icelandic speakers could understand some of the speeches that have been delivered at the demonstrations and open citizen’s meetings held here over the last few months. They differ, obviously, depending on who is speaking, but in my view they give great insight into the passion and fervor of the Icelandic nation in these difficult times. To that end, I decided to do a quick translation of the speech given by writer Einar Már Guðmundsson at the Icesave demonstration last Thursday. [The speech is published by permission and the picture was taken by my friend Þorri.]
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Posted in Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: bankrupt iceland, Einar Már Guðmundsson, Icesave, Revolution in Iceland | 1 Comment »
Posted by smeddum on August 16, 2009
Almost a year since the collapse of the Icelandic banks, the rotten nature of these financial corpses is slowly beginning to emerge.
By Rowena Mason
15 Aug 2009
Telegraph
Iceland’s banks are stabilising but the murky heart of what went wrong is still a mystery
For months rumours of share-ramping, market manipulation, excessive loans to their owners and unusual transfers off-shore have been circling Kaupthing Glitnir and Landsbanki, whose failure last October left 300,000 British customers unable to access their money. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: Revolution in Iceland | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 7, 2009
Eva Jolly
Global Research
7th august, 2009
From G8 to G20, many heads of state and government seem to delight in repeating that nothing will ever be the same again. The world is changing, to the point of being turned on its head by the crisis; the way we think and act in terms of financial regulation, international relations and development aid must therefore, according to them, change too. However, numerous examples contradict all this big talk. The situation in which Iceland now finds itself following the implosion of its banking system and the emergency nationalisation of its three main banks (Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir) is undoubtedly one of the most significant of these examples. This small country of 320,000 inhabitants is now reeling under the weight of billions of Euros of debt, which has absolutely nothing to do with the vast majority of its population and which Iceland cannot afford to pay.
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Posted in Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: bankrupt iceland, Revolution in Iceland | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 4, 2009
Iceland Weather Report
4th august, 2009
Public outrage continued today over the injunction ordered against RÚV [the Icelandic state broadcaster], aimed at stopping it from processing thedetails of the Kaupthing loan book.
Bizarrely, an injunction has not been ordered against other media – only the state broadcaster, although the other media have been sternly instructed by Kaupthing to ignore the WikiLeaks report, OR ELSE. At the same time everybody knows this injunction is a farce – the information has already been downloaded by everyone and his dog here in Iceland and besides, it’s still readily available online.
Some people are doing an excellent job at processing the information in theWikiLeaks article – including the excellent Dagblaðið NEI. It points out, among other things, that Kaupthing, which at the time of its privatization in the early part of this decade was estimated to be worth ISK 20 billion [USD 159 million], loaned its TEN LARGEST CLIENTS a grand total of ISK 1,500 billion [yes, you read that right] in the subsequent few years that it operated as a private banking institution.
Many of the largest recipients of loans from Kaupthing were shareholders in the bank, while the collateral for the loan were shares in the bank itself. [And if you’re like me, this is the point where you’re tempted to stop reading because the mind starts turning somersaults. Is it any wonder they need a team of highly-specialized experts to unravel all the endless knots and tangles in this sorry scenario? This is only the beginning!]
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Posted in Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: bankrupt iceland, failing banks, financial fraud, Kaupthing, Revolution in Iceland | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on July 24, 2009
Alda
Iceland Weather Report
22nd July, 2009
Pretty significant piece of news today: a Memorandum of Understanding was made public which reveals that British, Dutch and Icelandic authorities met in 2006 to discuss what would happen if Landsbanki went into default and could not cover the deposits of British and Dutch savers in the Icesave accounts.
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Posted in Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: Icesave, Revolution in Iceland | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on July 24, 2009
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Telegraph
22nd July, 2009
Iceland’s new finance minister Steingrímur Sigfússon is not looking for a fight with Britain. But like every citizen of this rocky outpost, he thinks the British government’s draconian sanctions against his country at the height of the financial crisis last year were grotesque and have made it much harder to clinch a deal to refund IceSave depositors in the UK.
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Posted in Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: Financial crisis, Icesave, Revolution in Iceland | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on July 14, 2009
Jordan Shilton
WSWS
14th July, 2009
On June 26, a comprehensive agreement was announced between Iceland’s government, trade unions and employers’ organisations, containing plans for sharp public spending cuts and tax hikes. The “stability pact” had been under negotiation for several weeks and is in response to pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the government to seek a balanced budget by 2013.
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Posted in Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: Citizens Movement, iceland and IMF, Iceland capital controls, Icesave, Johanna Sigurðurdóttir, Revolution in Iceland, Voices Of the People | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on July 14, 2009
Here is where the pressure from the streets plays such a crucial role in preventing the government from selling out and strengthening their hand in the renegotiation of the deal. The current terms of the deal appear to be exploitative and unrealistic. Iceland can and must stand firm and not commit itself to unpayable debt.
This is Money
14th July, 2009
The Icelandic Government could try to renegotiate the £2.3bn compensation it has committed to paying British savers over the collapse of Icesave and its parent bank Landsbanki.
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Posted in Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: bankrupt iceland, Icesave, Revolution in Iceland | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on July 7, 2009
Daily Telegraph
6th July, 2009
A diplomatic row erupted between the two nations after Landsbanki, the parent bank of Icesave, failed last October affecting 300,000 British savers.
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Posted in Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: Icesave, Revolution in Iceland | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on July 4, 2009
News Frettir
29th June, 2009
Wonders at the credit terms for the Icesave deal. The EU has granted countries in recessions loans in recent years at lower interests.
Elvira Mendez, specialist in European Law at the University of Iceland, wonders at the rates offered in the deal that was made with Britain and Holland because of the Icesave commitments. This was reported in the news on the National Radio.
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Posted in Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: bankrupt iceland, Icesave, Revolution in Iceland | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 