Can we haz same please (Iceland`s forensic banking report)

pierrot

What are your thoughts on this?
Do you think we will get anything remotely similar?
What implications would it have for the country?

I don't think we will, but would like to see it.
Although I'd be worried that it would lead to people going wild for a bit and then forgetting it.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/12/iceland-truth-commission-damning-report

Dirk Gently

A report is useless if its findings are not acted upon. I see the Icelandic PM welcomed the report as they needed "closure". Closure comes after the problem has been identified and a solution to prevent it happening again in future is put into law. It scares the hell out of me that here in Ireland we had the most open economy in the world and regulation in theory only but not acted on, unaccountability and corruption. It collapsed our economy. Now people are saying the solution is to privatise everything and let the market look after things. What happens after the next inevitable crash?
What lessons have we learned, how will we prevent it in future?

Reports are all well and good but the findings must be acted upon and lessons learnt. I've see no evidence that this wont happen again and thats the most frightening aspect of it. We are where we are but no great effort into preventing it repeating again. It's a reoccurring theme in Ireland and internationally. Market crashes, banks get bailed out, tax payer foots the bill. What do we do with companies who become so big that they become a threat to the state? The too big to fall boys. How do we protect ourselves from reckless speculation. What regulation is in place to absorb the loss of massive companies collapsing. What measures are we taking to promote small and medium business to prevent an over reliance on giant single regional employers like Quinn in Cavan. We need to be able to absorb losses without bailing people out. We cant keep prostituting our prosperity out to multinational companies and unregulated banks fuelling unsustainable get rich schemes. This country has potential, I'm not one of those who believe we have nothing to offer except low wage workers and low corporate tax to attract foreign MNC's. For example we could be one of the worlds biggest wave and tidal power electricity producers within a decade if the support and research/ development is given now, creating an Irish industry in power production, turbine construction and expertise, exporting it to other countries. We need to retain our educated work force, our engineers and invest in education and research, not doom ourselves to a lifetime of bailouts and serfdom bailing out the speculative market. How do we create a real economy as opposed to a speculative economy based on glorified gambling addicts having control over our nations sovereignty and our personal liberty.

By all means have a "forensic report" into our wonderful open free market collapse but if we stop there then the report isnt worth the paper it's written on. We need regulation, sustainability and accountability and also legal deterrents against putting the state at risk in the way the banks did. We need to break the cycle of boom / bailout, not just document it in a report and repeat over and over again.

pierrot

Absolutely. But surely we need an thorough investigation like this, rather than the so called inquiry we've been promised.

aoboa

Criminal investigation running in Iceland too.
At least this report is public and names names.
The one they're doing here is private and will probably be finished in 10 years time.

fontanalis

I bet the peope who carried this out in Iceland didn't do 2 years out of a 4 year course in "Cranogs in pre Niall of the Nine Hostages Ireland" in Trinity.

conorhal

Can we haz same please (Iceland`s forensic banking report)

Of course we can!
Of course it will require a tribunal, take about 15 years, get released as a heavily redacted report in case it will prejudice any future prosecutions, half those involved will be dead by the time it is published, a couple of hundred lawyers will have been made millionaires and the whole thing will have cost the taxpayer the equivalent cost of building 42 schools ....... all for a sheaf of paper that nobody will read, and the establishment will do nothing about because they'd simply wish it would go away.

I'd prefer a short list of names and a comparable number of bullets and a wall.
:mad: