Those silly Icelanders, putting the needs of people ahead of the Banksters ......

[marmar]

via truthdig:



Truthdiggers of the Week: Iceland’s Leaders
Posted on Dec 1, 2012




One country refused to bail out its derelict banks and slash social spending amid the financial crisis. And guess what? Unlike the eurozone and the United States, it’s making a sturdy comeback.

Iceland’s stock market plunged 90 percent in 2008. Inflation reached 18 percent, unemployment shot up ninefold and its biggest banks failed. This was no recession. It was a full-blown depression.

Since then, the country has steadily improved. By September of this year, it repaid its IMF rescue loans ahead of schedule. Unemployment dropped by half and its economy will have grown by roughly 2.5 percent by the beginning of 2013.

So what’s Iceland’s secret? According to the editors at Bloomberg News, it’s a refusal to do what virtually every other nation that was pummeled by the crisis did: adopt policies of economic austerity.

Iceland’s approach was the polar opposite of the U.S. and Europe, which rescued their banks and did little to aid indebted homeowners. Although lessons drawn from Iceland, with just 320,000 people and an economy based on fishing, aluminum production and tourism, might not be readily transferable to bigger countries, its rebound suggests there’s more than one way to recover from a financial meltdown.

Nothing distinguishes Iceland as much as its aid to consumers. To homeowners with negative equity, the country offered write-offs that would wipe out debt above 110 percent of the property value. The government also provided means-tested subsidies to reduce mortgage-interest expenses: Those with lower earnings, less home equity and children were granted the most generous support.

The International Monetary Fund’s mission chief to Iceland has sung the nation’s praises too. “Iceland has made significant achievements since the crisis,” Daria V. Zakharova told Bloomberg in August. “We have a very positive outlook on growth, especially for this year and next year because it appears to us that the growth is broad based.” ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdigger_of_the_week_iceland_20121201/

[xchrom]

1. du rec. nt

[Democracyinkind]

2. Iceland.. The elephant in the living room of global capitalism...

There's a reason no one seems to be talking about it.

[heaven05]

3. Is

something as socially conscious as this action seems to be, toooooo complicated and dangerous for the people of our country and eurozone countries to initiate? Just a question.

[Starry Messenger]

4. This needs to be plastered all over.

The death-cult of "entitlement" cutting is freaking me out this week.

[Squinch]

5. Waaaaiiiit a minute! Isn't that EXACTLY what Paul Krugman told us to do? nt

[AlbertCat]

6. Isn't that EXACTLY what Paul Krugman told us to do?

Isn't that kinda what we did in the 1930's too?

[Squinch]

7. That and Glass Steagall

I miss Glass Steagall, don't you?

[AlbertCat]

13. I miss Glass Steagall, don't you?

Hell yeah!

who said a bank can gamble with MY MONEY without MY PERMISSION?

[Squinch]

14. Congress. The morons.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

8. Our leaders were bought

and they stayed bought.

[leftstreet]

9. DURec

[Fire Walk With Me]

10. Massive K&R! Stand up fight back!

[smirkymonkey]

11. I am convinced that Scandinavian society is far superior to our own.

I would move to a Scandinavian country if I could.

[nashville_brook]

12. k and r

[ShadesOfBlue]

15. Slow your rolll

About a month ago I came across a report regarding this situation on BBC. The BBC is thankfully the one source where the journalists act like journalists and try to present both sides.

Based on the BBC report Iceland is indeed on a rebound after the economic disaster that took place in 2008. But the BBC also pointed out some of the problems that go underreported, one of which was the fact that Iceland lost a good chunk of its citizens during the crisis and recovery and that that more than anything accounted for its drop in unemployment (in other words a huge number of its citizens who lost their jobs during the criisis ended up leaving the country to find work). The BBC report also talked to officials from Iceland who maintained that the country was far from being out of the woods and thus there were still pitfalls that they are going to have to get around. Yes, that is still better than where they were four years ago but the situation is not nearly as rosey a some are trying to make it out as being.

I know we all want to champion stories of the happy ever after ending when we thumb our noses at the banks. And when I first came across the BBC promotion of Iceland's rebound I thought I had found one. But as I listened I realized it wasn't as black and white as I hoped. Besides....with Iceland's overall low population one could argue that country isn't exactly the model to use when discussing if the policies could have worked in the larger nations such as the US.

[Egalitarian Thug]

17. First, the BBC, while light years ahead of our infotainment industry is hardly the shinning light

of journalistic standards. They invariably repeat every scintilla of blather that the economic royalists put out regardless of factual evidence and just as reliably ignore or under-report any contradictory information.

Second, BBC is owned by the British government which, in turn, is owned by the BofE, Barclays, etc. who were the largest recipients of Iceland's revolutionary "fuck you".

So while the news about Iceland is not universally good, they have fared far better than any other nation that was sucked into the G$ scam.

[Heywood J]

16. Have they settled the Icesave issue yet?

I seem to recall that being a big issue with the rest of Europe, with other countries complaining that they had to bail out Iceland with their equivalent of the FDIC. It doesn't look like their rebound came for free.