Only the beginning on the road to victory

Getting the Independent Party out of government was just the beginning. There is still so much to do. 

Instead of protests today, 2.000 people gathered to celebrate the demise of the former government. 

There is still no time to celebrate. The political parties must take a hammering in elections. 

People forget amazingly quickly. Now the Progressive Party is soaring in the polls, just because they changed their leadership, basically changed the faces in the front. All sorts of demagogues are having a field day. Njordur P. Njardvik has made Vilmundur Gylfason’s ideas about a new democracy on certain values his own. Trouble is, Vilmundur was thirty years ahead of his time. Thrainn Bertelsson, one of the most critical political columnists in the country is running for the Progressive Party. Trouble is that he is no less self-serving than those he’s been criticising for being self-serving. 

Hallgrimur Helgason has made new shield for a new republic. Its graphic is eerily communist. So was it really a communist victory? Talk about excluding so many who felt they were part of the “people” protesting downtown. 

The smell of victory is currently too sweet for some. It might end up becoming sour if they don’t watch their backs. The power is still in the hands of the politicians and they are still not to be trusted.

Governments across Europe tremble as angry people take to the streets

Proud of its status as one of the world’s most developed, most productive and most equal societies, Iceland is in the throes of what is, by its staid standards, a revolution.

From the Guardian

Norwegian fetish

Iceland’s new finance minister wants the Norwegian krona. At least according to Norwegian paper Klassekampen. 

It had become quite predictable to beat on the extreme right in the Independent Party so it is going to be fun beating on the extreme left in the Left Green party. 

Let’s just start by asking this question. Those who are most vehemently against the Euro in Iceland are usually the extreme right and the extreme left, Independent Party and Left Greens (you can include the degenerate Independent Party spinoff Liberal Party here too). Their reasoning is always along the lines of independence, not being dependent on others, that our interests will be overlooked and that we must keep control over our own affairs. Also the European economic zone is not stable enough for many of those critics.

But they are all for the Norwegian krona or the US dollar???

Steingrimur J. Sigfusson has a strange Norwegian fetish. But if there is one thing you can say about our new finance minister, then it is that he does not know a lot about finance.

If You Crash The Economy, The Lesbians Take Over

That’s right: If your economy collapses, you end up with a working-class socialist lesbian in charge of your country.

From Firedoglake

PS: This will be the last “gay and lesbian” story before this site turns into pinknews.com

Open books

It would be nice if one of the things that can be agreed on in “New Iceland” is that political parties running for office do so with their books open. 

Why should anyone want it to be a secret who their financial supporters are?

David’s discrepancy

In a famous appearance at the Chamber of Commerce in November David Oddson claimed that he had foreseen the whole shebangs in the economy but no one had listened. Hallgrimur Thorsteinsson quotes David as reading doomsday predictions at the meeting in November from a report the Central bank had made after a visit to London in February. 

But he wonders how the same David could utter the following in a speech at the Central Bank’s annual meeting three weeks after the trip to London. 

“The Icelandic banking system and economic matters stand on solid ground though currently faced with tough winds. Systematic abolition of restrictions in commerce in the last fifteen years or so, privatization, systematic tax-reductions and the globalisation of Icelandic business has brought us enormous profits and laid the foundations for a new upturn in the coming years. We will without hesitation continue on the same pathe when we have worked our way out of the temporary difficulties we are facing now. “

Nobel prize winner blasts IMF over loans

“They are making the same mistake they were making in 97,” Stiglitz, a former chief economist at the World Bank, told reporters in Paris on Tuesday, referring to loans given to Iceland,  Pakistan and Ukraine to cope with the financial crisis.

From Unian.net

Dilbert

Dilbert is having a field day with the economic situation.

Another Icelandic Crisis: And Yet, the Krona Doesn’t Seem to Care

So let’s look at why the krona actually gained strength. You see, when the Prime Minister (Geir Haarde) resigned that day, the market got some hope that change could now come.

While currencies usually hate any major changes, it’s a bit different when those changes promise to fix a broken economy. In other words, Forex traders believe a new political situation in Iceland could actually help the economy. And the krona benefited from this belief.

From World Currency Watch

Dangers of a leftist government

Egill Helgason puts it perfectly…

“If there is a leftist government then: 

- the currency will crumble

- the stock market will go down

- the banks will not survive

- money will be transferred abroad

- people will lose their savings

- inflation will run wild

- government will expand

- taxes will be raised

(oops all of this has already happened)”