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There is a quite wonderful article in the Iceland Review about the human cost of the current financial crisis. There will clearly be pain for a lot of Icelanders in the months and years ahead but even with all the negativity the author finishes on a positive note:
When a hungry man stumbles home at the end of a long night out on the town, he doesn’t reach for what’s good for him, he stuffs his face with what fills him up fastest. I only hope that as the Icelanders close the book on the “economic miracle” and open up the book on the “green energy miracle” they write their first chapters with a provident hand. That will be the true miracle.
Donaldson’s website down
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As Nevin points out, Jeffrey Donaldson’s website “is currently being
upgraded”. However, the website is still online apart from the domain name,
with th...
2 hours ago
4 comments:
A shocking piece that makes it clear just how the Iceland crisis is devastating individual lives. It's equally shocking how much British money was invested in Iceland - some 11 billion - which may never be seen again. And that includes local councils and charities. Also I was reading that British banks are rated just 44 in a list of the world's safest banking systems. There could be a lot worse to come.
(This comment disappeared the first time, btw)
Nick,
In lots of countries there have been problems with councils and other government agencies losing money on investments. Maybe they should have protocols to make them save cash reserves in some kind of state savings bank with a tracker interest rate. It seems ludicrous that people will have worse public services even though they have paid their taxes faithfully.
I do feel really sorry for ordinary Icelandic people because you just know that the greediest will not suffer and are hanging out in the Caymans or Bahamas right now. Unrestrained capitalism sucks.
I have changed back to the pop-up window for comments because other people had disappearing comments too which is very annoying.
Public bodies putting their spare cash into a state savings bank sounds good. How ironic that it was actually the British government that encouraged them to invest in banks with higher returns in the first place!
They should be able to use that as an argument to get the money back from central government but I think they call that robbing Peter to pay Paul ;-)
The British government could also barter fishing rights from the Icelanders (or would that really put oil on the fire??).
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