Iceland takes on the EU

Dostoevsky

Who do these people think they are? 320,000 of them and they aren't taking crap from anybody.

First, the population goes ballistic and starts massive protests from late 2008 when it's suggested by their government that they will have to bail out Icelandic banks and businesses. Then, under this pressure, their government tell the British and Dutch idiots who lent Icelandic idiots money that Icelandic taxpayers will not pay those private debts. We can't be having this radical shít now...

They also had pleasure in decisively telling the British government to go fúck itself when it used anti-terrorism legislation to seize Icelandic assets in Britain. The Icelandic state then proceeded to arrest and sentence senior Icelandic politicians, civil servants and business people for their role in the crisis. Ah now, more subversion...

In 2013, despite telling the capitalist private sector to go fúck itself, it has now had 3 years of economic growth and brought unemployment down to 4.7%.


Now, the EU (population: over 500 million people) threatens little Iceland with sanctions and whatever else it feels is appropriate. PM of Iceland: go fúck yourself, too! (mentioning how EU sanctions on his country would be against WTO rules, and much else)

Will anybody stop this nation of arrant rebels and their subversion of world economic and political powers and ideologies? We don't want this Icelandic attitude catching on. It could hurt the Irish economy!

Specialun

Ireland

Legends

So, you're in favour of the over-fishing of Mackerel stocks?

sword1

Specialun wrote: »

Legends

I Wish ireland was more like them and fight for a bigger share off quota rather than try to give it away

ted1

The women in Iceland are smoking hot. They could easily flirt themselves out of any sanctions.

Specialun

Ireland

Rojomcdojo wrote: »

So, you're in favour of the over-fishing of Mackerel stocks?

Hey enda

wretcheddomain

I think you're massively underestimating the gargantuan effort the current government is employing in tackling our economic woes.

The Backwards Man

Ireland and Iceland are in no way comparable, apart from being island nations. So you might have well put Australia and Hispaniola as your poll choices.

Ten of Swords

wretcheddomain wrote: »

I think you're massively underestimating the gargantuan effort the current government is employing in tackling our economic woes.

They are doing a good job keeping their efforts a secret :pac:

Dostoevsky

Ireland

Rojomcdojo wrote: »

So, you're in favour of the over-fishing of Mackerel stocks?

The EU claims it's overfishing; Iceland denies this. While there's no doubt that stock has to be protected, there is no agreement on mackerel fishing in that part of the world. The EU, with massive resources, did not foresee this result of global warming. There are no laws against what Iceland is doing.

Here's a good article explaining the politics.

Hownowcow

Bloody Vikings.

sword1

Rojomcdojo wrote: »

So, you're in favour of the over-fishing of Mackerel stocks?

The icelandic are doing up. To 24 hour tows for small hauls of mixed herring and mackeral and saying it is mackeral.the irish go out and do a 10 minutę tow for a large amount of fish and then letting them go because they are not as valuable as the fish the boat 1 mile away got .the quota system does not work as the scientist do not have all the info .the icelandic are just boosting the no. So they get a bigger share and access to irelands coast

Dr Turk Turkelton

The Backwards Man wrote: »

Ireland and Iceland are in no way comparable, apart from being island nations. So you might have well put Australia and Hispaniola as your poll choices.

Its only an r and a c.Fairly comparable to me.

Karl Stein

Iceland should be careful. It wouldn't want to be providing an example to others of how to tell the big boys to fuck off and run its own affairs how it sees fit.

Can't be having that shit.

skyfall2012

Check this documentary out: the debt to the bondholder is 'odious' debt and we don't have to pay it, lots of countries out there have refused to pay odious debt e.g. When the US invaded Iraq, they didn't want to have to take on their debt and refused to pay it, Ecuador, Iceland etc.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/debtocracy/


Odious debt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odious_debt

Chucky the tree

Isn't this the same Iceland that voted the political party that caused the mess in the first place?

C.K Dexter Haven

They could make a fortune exporting icebergs right now:pac:

MOC88

but but we got a debt wri...off..do...

what I mean to say its great how we get to pay interest on a debt thats not ours over a longer period of time. The negotiations must be fierce. What will Iceland have to bargain with when they come begging tot the table because their banks and economy are... now operating well

Banjo String

Ireland

First they declared themselves bankrupt.

Then they set the whole feckin island on fire via a volcano.......

I smell Insurance fraud.

Voltex

Iceland is like an M50 junction..it relies on s hit loads of stuff (money) going through it to justify its existence. Ireland has 10 times the population and according to S&P is doing the right thing;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_credit_rating#Standard_.26_Poor.27s

Ireland is a small economy relative to World economics...so what Iceland does relative to Ireland should be irrelevant.

mike65

Ah ya codding me!

I like the cut of their jib.

What's the employment market like in Iceland?

skyfall2012

Voltex wrote: »

Iceland is like an M50 junction..it relies on s hit loads of stuff (money) going through it to justify its existence. Ireland has 10 times the population and according to S&P is doing the right thing;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_credit_rating#Standard_.26_Poor.27s

Ireland is a small economy relative to World economics...so what Iceland does relative to Ireland should be irrelevant.

We have always compared ourselves to Britain in economic terms, which has a massive population in comparison to Ireland.

I don't trust those credit rating companies they have got it wrong in the past 2008 we went from AAA to junk status. I judge how well a country is doing, by the employment and emigration levels which are pretty bad here.

washman3

Ireland

Chucky the tree wrote: »

Isn't this the same Iceland that voted the political party that caused the mess in the first place?

That's correct Enda...:D

Its also the same Iceland that arrested the culprits, including the prime-minister..;)

keeponhurling

skyfall2012 wrote: »

Check this documentary out: the debt to the bondholder is 'odious' debt and we don't have to pay it, lots of countries out there have refused to pay odious debt e.g. When the US invaded Iraq, they didn't want to have to take on their debt and refused to pay it, Ecuador, Iceland etc.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/debtocracy/


Odious debt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odious_debt[/QUOTE]

Sure nobody really thinks we should be paying off the debts of bondholders in a private bank.
It's a nonsense, and I think anybody would now argue we should.

skyfall2012

keeponhurling wrote: »

skyfall2012 wrote: »

Check this documentary out: the debt to the bondholder is 'odious' debt and we don't have to pay it, lots of countries out there have refused to pay odious debt e.g. When the US invaded Iraq, they didn't want to have to take on their debt and refused to pay it, Ecuador, Iceland etc.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/debtocracy/


Odious debt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odious_debt[/QUOTE]

Sure nobody really thinks we should be paying off the debts of bondholders in a private bank.
It's a nonsense, and I think anybody would now argue we should.

This is a International law which our national debt should be classified under. There should be committee set up; of judges and other professionals and a few citizens (not politicians or bankers) to rule our national debt as Odious debt and our government should no longer be paying it.

They don't listen to our protests, but they might listen to the international law and we should do it before they try to put their hands into our savings and pay the debt with that.

biko

Ireland

**** EU!
Go Iceland!

Fratton Fred

I wonder if the OP would feel the same if Landsbanki had branches in Ireland and his life savings were deposited there.

Would you expect the Irish government to sit back and do nothing, or use any means possible to stop those savings being transferred over seas to help pay someone else's debt?

It wasn't faceless bond holders who the British government were protecting, it was private savers, the same people that would put their money in the credit union.

For Forks Sake

Fratton Fred wrote: »

I wonder if the OP would feel the same if Landsbanki had branches in Ireland and his life savings were deposited there.

Would you expect the Irish government to sit back and do nothing, or use any means possible to stop those savings being transferred over seas to help pay someone else's debt?

It wasn't faceless bond holders who the British government were protecting, it was private savers, the same people that would put their money in the credit union.

I would recommend everyone have a read of this, it refutes a lot of they myths that have been spouted regarding Iceland. http://studiotendra.com/2012/12/29/what-is-actually-going-on-in-iceland/

Banjo String

Ireland

For Forks Sake wrote: »

I would recommend everyone have a read of this, it refutes a lot of they myths that have been spouted regarding Iceland. http://studiotendra.com/2012/12/29/what-is-actually-going-on-in-iceland/

From your article.

The only reason why we didn’t is that the Icelandic government, then and now, is completely incompetent.

Same as our set up.

Then and now.

Phoebas

Specialun wrote: »

Hey enda

washman3 wrote: »

That's correct Enda...:D

Has simply calling someone Enda now a valid alternative to reasoned debate?

Chucky the tree

Phoebas wrote: »

Has simply calling someone Enda now a valid alternative to reasoned debate?

It is if your IQ is in double figures.

SpaceTime

It's not quite the same situation as Ireland either.

Iceland's banks attracted vast amounts of private savers' money in with high interest rates. Those savers have relatively little power when the Icelandic authorities wiped them out. It actually was pretty damn nasty of their banks. Effectively they just took in money and blew it. Iceland wouldn't have had the financial resources (even with a bail out) to fill that hole and they really didn't have a lot of options.

Ireland's situation's quite different. Our banks borrowed largely from other banks and on the derivative markets. The kinds of investors we had to deal with have a lot more financial fire power than a bunch of disgruntled private savers.

Also, had we wiped out the savings in our banks, it would have predominantly hit Irish people, not foreign investors. We were never a high-interest destination to put your money into a savings account.

Quite honestly, I think what the Icelandic banks did was even more despicable than our lot. It hit normal savers in a huge way.
They effectively went phishing for cash and filled it into a pyramid scheme of some sort which couldn't last.

Our banks were primarily idiots who lashed borrowed money into property investments that went tits up.

The other aspect was that the Icelandic investments were largely overseas, even though there was a bubble in Iceland the population size limited the size of it quite a bit. Ireland's investments were largely inward focused. So, at least the Icelanders had something to sell when it did go bang. We mostly had worthless assets like fields with houses on them in Leitrim.

I'm not sure if there's a lot to admire really as they didn't have a hell of a lot of choices. It was a case of either radically wiping out the investors and defaulting or else ... ?!?
There was no EU / ECB to come to the rescue and the IMF would have probably just told them to wipe out the investors anyway.

Bits_n_Bobs

Ireland

Voltex wrote: »

Ireland has 10 times the population and according to S&P is doing the right thing;

Well if S&P say so it must be true....

FouxDaFaFa

Ireland

They also stopped FBI agents who flew into Iceland unannounced to investigate Wikileaks and made them turn around and fly straight back to the US. Which was hilarious.

For such a small country, they are ballsy.

Larbre34

Ireland

What Spacetime said.

Also, the Icelandic man on the street has effectively suffered a 50% deflation in his buying power. I know things are bad enough here, but if the consumer market here had suffered a shock on the scale of Iceland, we would literally be talking about widescale deprivation and starvation, as well as a real economy that would not recover for perhaps 30 years.

You hear people quoting growth figures for Iceland, but that is growth from a massive deflation - they had only one way to go and thats up..

Iceland is engaged in rampant overfishing and restarting its financial sector because its utterly desperate for cash and activity, they dont have a whole lot else to turn to. The rest of their economy is subsistence and small homesteads, so their supply of food and resources remains obtainable, and luckily their energy is geothermal at a very low cost.

Iceland also gets overseas money from its NATO activity, it hosts a number of strategic bases and installations. I would be concerned if they keep up the reckless behaviour, they could be badly punished by the withdrawal of this type of income

In summary, you might feel Ireland has had to bite its tongue, take its medicine, be subservient to the whims of the larger EU countries, but at least we have staved off a full scale economic collapse, our unemployment may be at 14%, but at least its not 25 or even 40%.

You may think Iceland are brave and plucky and rebellious, but in the long run 'you dont want no part of that sh!t'.......

muppetkiller

Iceland is not as fancypants as you think, They actually first tried to bail the banks out but couldn't afford it. Then they said F%^k you.

http://studiotendra.com/2012/12/29/what-is-actually-going-on-in-iceland/

My name is URL

During the Turbot War in the 90's Iceland were the ones siding with the EU. Ireland went against the EU and supported Canada.. and that was at a time when an actual war was likely to break out.

Several armed DFO fisheries patrol vessels, along with Canadian Coast Guard and Canadian Navy support, intercepted and pursued the Estai, which cut its weighted trawl net and fled after an initial boarding attempt, resulting in a chase which stretched over several hours and ended only after the Canadian Fisheries Patrol vessel Cape Roger fired a .50 calibre (12.7 mm) machine gun across the bow of the Estai.

Negotiations ceased on March 25, and the following day, Canadian ships cut the nets of the Spanish trawler Pescamero Uno. The Spanish Navy responded by deploying a second patrol boat. Canadian warships and patrol planes in the vicinity were authorized by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to fire on Spanish vessels that exposed their guns.

Iceland tried to put political pressure on the United Kingdom and Ireland. The British and the Irish pointedly ignored these actions and continued their unquestioned support of Brian Tobin and the Canadians.

the Newlyn, then flying the Canadian flag was arrested by a French ship that believed it to be Canadian. This dragged Britain from its position of passive backing into full support of the Canadians. Overnight, Canadian flags began to fly from all manner of British and Irish vessels, irking the Spanish.

Grayson

There's one thing Iceland did that we need to. jail the feckers responsable. Besides that, our government is doing the right thing.

The fcukers should stop whaling though.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/19/iceland-fin-whale-hunting-greenpeace

WanabeOlympian

The women in Iceland blamed the collapse on too many men in power so now there are regulations where a 40% quota of each gender must be on all committEEEs and in the parliament. :cool:

Tiddlypeeps

Ireland

SpaceTime wrote: »

It's not quite the same situation as Ireland either.

Iceland's banks attracted vast amounts of private savers' money in with high interest rates. Those savers have relatively little power when the Icelandic authorities wiped them out. It actually was pretty damn nasty of their banks. Effectively they just took in money and blew it. Iceland wouldn't have had the financial resources (even with a bail out) to fill that hole and they really didn't have a lot of options.

Ireland's situation's quite different. Our banks borrowed largely from other banks and on the derivative markets. The kinds of investors we had to deal with have a lot more financial fire power than a bunch of disgruntled private savers.

Also, had we wiped out the savings in our banks, it would have predominantly hit Irish people, not foreign investors. We were never a high-interest destination to put your money into a savings account.

Quite honestly, I think what the Icelandic banks did was even more despicable than our lot. It hit normal savers in a huge way.
They effectively went phishing for cash and filled it into a pyramid scheme of some sort which couldn't last.

Our banks were primarily idiots who lashed borrowed money into property investments that went tits up.

The other aspect was that the Icelandic investments were largely overseas, even though there was a bubble in Iceland the population size limited the size of it quite a bit. Ireland's investments were largely inward focused. So, at least the Icelanders had something to sell when it did go bang. We mostly had worthless assets like fields with houses on them in Leitrim.

I'm not sure if there's a lot to admire really as they didn't have a hell of a lot of choices. It was a case of either radically wiping out the investors and defaulting or else ... ?!?
There was no EU / ECB to come to the rescue and the IMF would have probably just told them to wipe out the investors anyway.

You are blaming a nation for the deeds of it's banks, a privately run organisation.

That'd be the same as saying that we the people of Ireland are responsible for the idiotic lending of Anglo.

It's unfair to pin those mistakes on the average tax payer.

Anybody who invested their savings in a Icelandic bank was taking a risk, with the hope of making some profit from it. It's was at the time a very low risk type of gabling, but there was always risk. It would be entirely unfair to ask the tax payer to pay for propping up these banks to help people who gambled and lost.

Larbre34 wrote: »

What Spacetime said.

Also, the Icelandic man on the street has effectively suffered a 50% deflation in his buying power. I know things are bad enough here, but if the consumer market here had suffered a shock on the scale of Iceland, we would literally be talking about widescale deprivation and starvation, as well as a real economy that would not recover for perhaps 30 years.

You hear people quoting growth figures for Iceland, but that is growth from a massive deflation - they had only one way to go and thats up..

Iceland is engaged in rampant overfishing and restarting its financial sector because its utterly desperate for cash and activity, they dont have a whole lot else to turn to. The rest of their economy is subsistence and small homesteads, so their supply of food and resources remains obtainable, and luckily their energy is geothermal at a very low cost.

Iceland also gets overseas money from its NATO activity, it hosts a number of strategic bases and installations. I would be concerned if they keep up the reckless behaviour, they could be badly punished by the withdrawal of this type of income

In summary, you might feel Ireland has had to bite its tongue, take its medicine, be subservient to the whims of the larger EU countries, but at least we have staved off a full scale economic collapse, our unemployment may be at 14%, but at least its not 25 or even 40%.

You may think Iceland are brave and plucky and rebellious, but in the long run 'you dont want no part of that sh!t'.......

You say the economy may not have recovered for 30 years, but what are you basing this on?

The way I look it is this, if we had defaulted and let the banks collapse it would have ultimately led to a collapse of the Euro currency (my opinion, feel free to call me an idiot). I think this is the case because the EU will not let Greece's economy collapse. They keep breaking the rules of their bail out and they keep getting bailed out regardless. The EU knows (or at least strongly suspects) it's the end of the road if any of the individual countries collapse.

If the whole system were to collapse over a short period of time then it would recover fairly quickly too. All those countries need to find a way to trade with each other, they rely on each other too heavily. So if that involves starting to trade in bottle caps, sea shells or straight up barter system it makes no difference, they will find a way to trade goods.

I firmly believe that if we had let the Euro die a natural death back in 2008/2009 then most European countries would now be better off for it. The start would have stung a lot more but I think we would have recovered much faster.

SpaceTime

The Icelandic situation was caused by a small country, with very limited knowledge of what their bankers were actually doing, thinking that they'd hit the jackpot and were referring to these 'heros' as "the New Vikings".

In many ways they litterally were, they plundered billions of small savings from online bank accounts.

Sadly, the Icelandic folk were completely taken for a ride by the bankers and their own failure to look behind what was going on at those banks.

Blaming the gender balance of the parliament and committees is nonsense really. It was poor regulation and everyone turning a blind eye because they thought the were onto something good.

They quite litterally thought that their bankers were super-geniuses who were so good at managing assets that they were turning these enormous profits and the economy was rolling in money to a scale that had never been seen before in Iceland.

The lack of regulation and the regulatory capture that occurred was very similar to what happened in Ireland though, but the actual process that was going on at their banks was quite different to what was going on here or in Spain. It was very similar to Cyprus pre-EU accession though!

I know a few Icelanders and a lot of the unemployment issues have been taken care of because people have left for Norway in particular. Because the Icelandic population's so small, smaller than County Cork, you'd hardly notice them if they all emigrated.

Back in 2010, 10,612 left Iceland.
Population : 319,014

To put that into an Irish context multiply it by 14.3 (that's how many times more people live in the Republic of Ireland).

It would be the equivalent of 151,751 Irish people emigrating per year!

Much like Ireland, a lot of the numbers were made up of people who'd emigrated there from other EEA countries during the boom who were now returning home as the Icelandic economy collapsed.

I really do think though we've a rose tinted glasses view of what's going on up there. Growth is relative and if your economy is floored, your spending power halved, you can only grow. It doesn't mean that your lifestyle hasn't taken an enormous hit though.

---

I'm not blaming the deeds of a nation on privately run organisations.

The fact is that those privately run organisations were financing the deeds of that nation and with out them it's a remote set of fishing villages on a volcano in the North Atlantic.

That's the fundamental problem. They can't ever recover the boom times because they were built on the back of corrupt banks.

Ultimately, it is the nations responsibility to regulate those banks! The nation and its people benefited enormously from the way those banks were operating and I think to be quite honest to just say - yeah, screw the lot of you private savers who put money into our banks, is pretty rough treatment. A lot of very small investors i.e. actual savers, were very, very badly stung by what went on up there and I think it's all too easy for us to just see the Icelandic side of the argument.

Loads of British and Dutch savers were targeted by those banks and many of them lost their life savings as a result. Even some British local authorities lost all their cash reserves as they'd been instructed by the central Govt in the UK to shop around for the best bank rates and ended up putting money into Icelandic banks.

I'm not saying that the Icelandic tax payer should have to take the full burden of it, but you can certainly see why a lot of people were extremely angry with the way the Icelandic Government didn't regulate the industry properly and provided international savers whose money it was benefiting from with no protection at all.

The Icelanders took a huge loss on that mess too. Roughly 50% of their spending power is gone.

MOC88

Larbre34 wrote: »

What Spacetime said.

Also, the Icelandic man on the street has effectively suffered a 50% deflation in his buying power. I know things are bad enough here, but if the consumer market here had suffered a shock on the scale of Iceland, we would literally be talking about widescale deprivation and starvation, as well as a real economy that would not recover for perhaps 30 years.

You hear people quoting growth figures for Iceland, but that is growth from a massive deflation - they had only one way to go and thats up..

Iceland is engaged in rampant overfishing and restarting its financial sector because its utterly desperate for cash and activity, they dont have a whole lot else to turn to. The rest of their economy is subsistence and small homesteads, so their supply of food and resources remains obtainable, and luckily their energy is geothermal at a very low cost.

Iceland also gets overseas money from its NATO activity, it hosts a number of strategic bases and installations. I would be concerned if they keep up the reckless behaviour, they could be badly punished by the withdrawal of this type of income

In summary, you might feel Ireland has had to bite its tongue, take its medicine, be subservient to the whims of the larger EU countries, but at least we have staved off a full scale economic collapse, our unemployment may be at 14%, but at least its not 25 or even 40%.

You may think Iceland are brave and plucky and rebellious, but in the long run 'you dont want no part of that sh!t'.......

Haha come visit the S-East where the average is 25% or Waterford where its over 30% haha why not get the figures of how many are left doing courses and picking up bea or getting none at all - then add those who've emigrated and see where unemployment really is.

washman3

Ireland

Phoebas wrote: »

Has simply calling someone Enda now a valid alternative to reasoned debate?

Might just be that its upsetting for some readers on this thread when they read posts from obvious Government apologists blaming the Icelandic people for the mess there, just as our inept failed schoolteacher blamed the Irish people when he spoke at a European forum some time back.;)

SpaceTime

I'm not blaming the Icelandic people, I'm blaming the Icelandic banks, who were regulated by the Icelandic Government which was elected by the Icelandic people.

Just as I blame the halfwits who kept voting in FF again and again and again and again no matter how much damage they did.

I am still hearing people telling me that "Ah sure wasn't everything much better when Bertie was in charge". There are still people out there who will sing the praises of Haughey !

I'd a guy telling me "ah didn't he build that IFSC" and an woman telling me that "ah wasn't he very suave and sophisticated"

I'm not blaming all the Icelandic people, or all the Irish people, but a large % of them did vote for the policies that caused these messes.

It's actually scary to see FF's popularity rising in the polls again! People just have no cop on whatsoever.

We live in democracies, not dictatorships and we do have to accept some responsibility when we elect Governments (and fail to hold them to account) who run our economies into a brick wall.

At least Icelanders are actually holding their lot's feet to the fire on this one, where as we're just rolling over as usual.

humbert

For Forks Sake wrote: »

I would recommend everyone have a read of this, it refutes a lot of they myths that have been spouted regarding Iceland. http://studiotendra.com/2012/12/29/what-is-actually-going-on-in-iceland/

Really enjoyable concise article which would leave me of the opinion that there was absolutely no courage from Iceland or Ireland.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

wretcheddomain wrote: »

I think you're massively underestimating the gargantuan effort the current government is employing in tackling our economic woes.

What, granting a 10-minute meeting to a hunger striker?

Riddle101

Ireland

Iceland have always had an attitude about them. It's not a smart idea in the long term though, angering the EU they way they are. That being said of course, they did so some admirable things , but Iceland is a different scenario to Ireland.