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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIceland Was Right, We Were Wrong: The IMF
VANCOUVER (Silver Gold Bull) -- For approximately three years, our governments, the banking cabal, and the Corporate Media have assured us that they knew the appropriate approach for fixing the economies that they had previously crippled with their own mismanagement. We were told that the key was to stomp on the Little People with "austerity" in order to continue making full interest payments to the Bond Parasites -- at any/all costs.
Following three years of this continuous, uninterrupted failure, Greece has already defaulted on 75% of its debts, and its economy is totally destroyed. The UK, Spain and Italy are all plummeting downward in suicide-spirals, where the more austerity these sadistic governments inflict upon their own people the worse their debt/deficit problems get. Ireland and Portugal are nearly in the same position.
Now in what may be the greatest economic "mea culpa" in history, we have the media admitting that this government/banking/propaganda-machine troika has been wrong all along. They have been forced to acknowledge that Iceland's approach to economic triage was the correct approach right from the beginning.
What was Iceland's approach? To do the exact opposite of everything the bankers running our own economies told us to do. The bankers (naturally) told us that we needed to bail out the criminal Big Banks, at taxpayer expense (they were Too Big To Fail). Iceland gave the banksters nothing.
The bankers told us that no amount of suffering (for the Little People) was too great in order to make sure that the Bond Parasites got paid at 100 cents on the dollar. Iceland told the Bond Parasites they would get what was left over, after the people had been taken care of (by their own government).
Continues http://www.thestreet.com/story/11665082/1/iceland-was-right-we-were-wrong-the-imf.html
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Gabi Hayes
(28,795 posts)before that Jew, Jesus, even.
pbmus
(13,141 posts)
rurallib
(64,685 posts)
superpatriotman
(6,867 posts)Go, Iceland!
Parasites in jail.
Pharaoh
(8,209 posts)FUCK YOU!!!!!!!
And the world cheered! 
ANewEra
(50 posts)would otherwise benefit from this approach, since they need to take care of the benevolent, kindly bankers who "accidentally" got them into the mess in the first place playing with others money 
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)coming to us soon after the election!
Selatius
(20,441 posts)Instead of writing a check for 700 billion to the banks, it should've went to programs meant to boost consumer spending and programs to offer relief to distressed homeowners. The banks should've been allowed to go into bankruptcy, the creditors getting their pound of flesh from these entities and the shareholders getting what's left. The pieces, what are left anyway, could possibly be nationalized and spun off as new companies.
annabanana
(52,804 posts)
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)and carted a whole bunch off to jail.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Blue_Tires
(57,596 posts)
allan01
(1,950 posts)next time ,,, let them fail
malaise
(295,871 posts)Great article
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)concessions from them was a cataclysmic error? I firmly believe that this is the biggest reason the President still might lose this election. He committed the greatest fuck up in American history by laying down for these monsters, and a lot of us have not forgotten.
cprise
(8,445 posts)Letting the major US banks fail would have caused an outright collapse of the economy. Maybe you think a collapse in 2008/2009 would have brought about a better economic consensus and gotten rid of the plutocracy, but I tend to disagree.
The political economy of the 2000s let those banks get to the point where they were, indeed, too big to fail without taking down everything else around them. We had put a profound degree of trust into them through our trust in US currency. The error was in letting those banks become so consolidated and unregulated in the first place.
At that point, they could credibly hold a gun to our collective heads. At that point, you just give them the money, or else. Probably the best thing to do in our case would have been to throw some initial sum at them to keep them liquid for a number of weeks, then attempt to introduce conditions for what percentage of their debts we would be willing to back them up.
Iceland was still right to do what they did, but their country could not set the tone for the global economy and what they endured was engineered in foreign lands. Wealth was being rapidly pulled out of the country, not transferred to an elite within the country.
-
The 2008 crisis should be a lesson that you can't let your entire economy be run by private, unregulated banks and on hopes that wealth-accumulation machines will let that wealth "trickle down" to the rest of us (they will in theory, but over time something or other will spook the rich and they will prefer to hoard more than usual). If the US had Iceland's political wherewithal, the logical first steps in our case would be to restore Glass-Steagal and progressive tax rates and put central banking under government control.
The likelihood of that happening in the near-mid term is highly unlikely, as people are becoming disenfranchised and the ones that aren't are distracted with endless entertainment and social network navel-gazing. Both of those trends are backed by a culture that fawns over super heroes (ubermen of the CSI/military type and of the fantastical type -- a distinction that media corps and government are blurring) and also hates its own image (working class people, as seen on 'reality TV'). I would even say that most people here who would rather help others stay "in the game" are so conditioned that they will more than likely work to "vote them off the island" instead; they prefer money and centralized corporate services to transact - watchfully - in every little thing they do.
The only way I can imagine getting from 'here' to 'there' is to create the kind of culture that can seriously entertain and go through with a general strike. People need to learn what "labor" is beyond the couple of paragraphs they read in a highschool textbook, and Labor needs to lose its oblivious attitude toward Public Relations so that those textbooks and TV shows reflect something more meaningful. Class is something that our media and government needs to cope with at a constitutional level. This is all pie-in-the-sky however, as people prefer police to unions and feel little much less for people around them:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/08/americans-to-tsa-love-you/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/born-love/201005/shocker-empathy-dropped-40-in-college-students-2000
Good luck with that...
RegieRocker
(4,226 posts)Last edited Thu Aug 23, 2012, 11:03 PM - Edit history (1)
loyalties lie " Wealth was being rapidly pulled out of the country, not transferred to an elite within the country. " Instead you prefer a run on the people. You are part of the problem and not the solution.
cprise
(8,445 posts)...over to money and property. They are still all that matter, unfortunately.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think you can ditch the machinery of monetary capital (using the playbook of market fundamentalists, no less) without having first built up political capital to cover the profound breach in trust. Letting all the banks fail would literally leave us with no way to function on a day to day basis. Perhaps that appeals to some DUers as a reverse form of Thatcher's "shock therapy". I call it a road to one of the nastier forms of fascism because that's how people would react to the shock.
I'm not saying that rescuing banks is *preferable* to protecting people's homes or bailing them out. But once a nation has gone down the neoliberal road that we have, there's no way to tear the banker's interests away from the average person on the street -- Not when those people have forgotten how to function locally or even *like* each other.
Any expectation that we can write a last-minute fix into law to stanch the societal damage that both Republicans and 'New Democrats' have abetted strikes me as much more problematic than a realization that by 2007 things had already gone way too far. You would be writing the laws for a public that is psychologically unequipped to lend it any credibility.
amandabeech
(9,893 posts)holiday in September 2008 to give time to legislator and regulators to work out at least the outlines of a plan that would involve serious conditions for any bailout with the details to be worked out in coming weeks.
What we had was a screaming Wall Street insider with a two page outline that did not include any promise of conditions who was masquerading as a Treasury Secretary and a supine elected government. Our current President was as supine as them all, which was a bad sign.
No one in Congress or the Executive was exactly standing up in the fight against those who would later be termed "banksters". You have that right.
However you appear to be perfectly happy in your role as road kill and are telling the rest of us that there is no other route than to join you on the yellow line. That's what you don't have right.
tama
(9,137 posts)Greece etc. being now raped by IMF and rest of Troika is just one episode in the story of collapse of Global Capitalism.
Letting "too big to fail" banksters fail instead of pulling all the duckt tape from market means only one thing: freedom to breath cleaner air. Iceland had revolution, they kicked out the parasite leaches and crowd sourced a new constitution.
You can identify with the parasite class all you want and hope for rape to continue ad infinitum, but it wont. That's economy 101.
cprise
(8,445 posts)I can see, however, that they have the nation brainwashed and by the balls.
The 1% would still be fairly comfortable after a collapse. The rest of us would suffer immensely, however.
Do you wish for a repeat of 1929? Just so you can satisfy your desire to see the rich fail at their own game?
We have to first cash-out from their mentality and stop looking up to them (and hating working-class people), otherwise we all fall but with the wealthy on top of us. If the rich are going to be knocked down a peg-or-10 by failure, is ought to be at *our* game.
Only we ain't got one!
tama
(9,137 posts)No, and that is why I am anti-capitalist. Crash and boom cycles are inherent properties of capitalism, ask any decent economist, only difference is that Wienna School is getting pervert satisfaction from the crashes and Marxist economists want to get rid of the whole system.
The biggest financial & debt boom bubble ever, aka capitalism artificial life support since 1979 when real economy - energy use per capita - stopped growing, ended in 2008. Same year as Peak Oil, ie. limits of growth. So it's clear that we are now going through the end of capitalism as we know it, system dependent from continuous growth. Supporting bankster parasites is not doing anything good for any of us, never has, never will.
I agree that from the point of view of human attention span this is a long process, or rather multiple processes. We do have many kinds of games on our side and we should play only win-win games. One is the plain fact that parasites depend from us, we do not depend from them. Most empowering game is to just stop being afraid and making the best of this life. That is my main criticism of how OWS has been handled, in awe and fear of the very predictable violent suffocation it faced. Which spoke deeply to our masochist martyr victim side, which leaves us frustrated and nurturing our wounds, as well as the sadist pervert aspect of police and large part of US and other societies. Which we need to be totally realistic about, and that there is also bit of that in each of us. But neither of these emotions need more feeding.
Quite likely the fact that so called middle class has been co-opted by banksters by make-believe shared interests of stock holder value and pension funds means that people will not be liberated from fear of losing security until they have lost all bonds (pun intended) to capitalist class. We truly are possessed by our possessions. But when we wake up from that nightmere, we find that real safety does not depend from money and financial papers in any way, they are just hypnotism and make believe, but from good will and compassion between people, and living in balance and harmony with rest of life on this planet.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)than it was then.
The banks are far too big too fail. They were before 2008. They still are.
Blanks
(4,835 posts)The problem is that bankers were right at the ear of the government; that's why it was a 'bank friendly' solution that the government adopted.
I have no problem with the banks having been bailed out; however, there weren't enough strings attached. Bonuses should have been suspended. Bonuses should be tied to profits; getting your worthless ass bailed out by the federal government hardly constitutes making a profit. It makes no sense to give bankers bonuses while people lose their houses because the economy is strangled of money. The banks should have been bailed out by helping people make their house payments.
The greater issue here is that we have all means of production tied to money. It isn't profitable to grow your own food; so instead of even trying; when we run out of money, we go to the food bank. We need to remember that a lot of things have intrinsic value; money does not. There is a lot of real estate in Detroit that would appear to have no financial value, but incredible intrinsic value; when will we learn to see this.
A lot of things that we do (or don't do) wouldn't make any sense if we were just trying to survive, instead of trying to get ahead financially.
Just as an example; we send our retirement money off to somewhere so that bankers and stockbrokers play with it. Every 10 years or so; they clean us out. Why don't we insist that money be invested locally? At least then; if we saw the business owner of a company we're investing in (through our retirement fund) driving around in a Mercedes, we could wonder: WTF? We could frequent the business and decide whether or not we want to continue investing.
We'd have a little more control over what kind of businesses go into our communities. I can see the wisdom of putting a layer between the 'retirement fund investor' and the business owner, but there's no reason the profit that goes to the 'investment broker' can't be kept local too.
The way it is now your retirement money is safer in your mattress. Of course they won't let you do that (or at least there are tax disincentives).
cprise
(8,445 posts)And I don't wish my initial reply to be taken as an indication that the financial sector deserves preferential treatment. The bank bail-outs were needed, but the whole plan was executed in the wrong way leaving the average person largely out in the cold.
Many of the other responses here ironically fall into the trap of bolstering Tea Party economic reasoning (against bail outs) out of simple anti-rich vindictiveness. Its OK to feel vindictive under the circumstances, but the kneejerk that goes along with it won't help us. Telling the rich to "jump" is more constructive than that.
Blanks
(4,835 posts)I agree that something had to be done, and no matter what solution was implemented; the banks were gonna benefit too.
It seemed that the way it went (and it was done during the Bush administration) the banks were the only ones who benefitted.
I like to think that had it been the democrats in charge of the government; regular folk would have benefitted more. Obama inherited TARP and so he didn't have as much control over it. However, we aren't in the depths of depression as bad as we could have been, and have been in times past when banks were allowed to fail.
As much as it pisses me off that the FED was loaning the banks money at practically zero interest and paying them interest; I can see why they would want to keep that a secret as well.
I hope some lessons were learned about the importance of regulation from all this.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Ian62
(604 posts)and is now doing very well.
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/lessons-from-brazil-how-it-beat-its.html
That program was instituted by a relatively left wing President of Brazil (not the candidate that was supported by the right wing moneyed elites).
Argentina didn't and continues to suffer from regular fiscal and currency crises.
polly7
(20,582 posts)hobbit709
(41,694 posts)
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Oh, wait..
annabanana
(52,804 posts)This is right up there with idiot-savant Greenspan being amazed..amazed I tell you that the banks might not self regulate...
Too little too late.
marmar
(79,695 posts)I'm surprised they haven't invaded this thread yet.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)
ozsea1
(36 posts)There are a number of concern troll regulars over there who seem to enjoy "servicing" the onepercenters. Some are more upfront about it than others.
Coexist
(26,202 posts)If you were involved in Icelandic high finance in the runup to the recession, you might want to start watching your back.
That's because the government has appointed a white collar crime bounty hunter who wants to haul your behind in (alive, to be sure).
LeMonde reporter Charlotte Chabas has a profile of Ólafur Þór Hauksson, a former local police lieutenant whom the Iceland government appointed to track down individuals likely to have helped sink the country's banking sector during the credit crunch.
Hauksson's job description, according to PressEurop's translation of the piece:
"On one hand, we have to investigate all suspicion of fraud and offences committed before 2009, on the other hand, we bring the lawsuits against the suspects to court ourselves," Hauksson explains. This is a 'totally new' method which allows the investigators to "follow the case" and the judicial system to "know the cases like the back of their hand". This is indispensable in order "to compete with the well-prepared defence attorneys".
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/iceland-has-hired-an-ex-cop-bounty-hunter-to-go-after-the-bankers-that-wrecked-its-economy-2012-7#ixzz24NkjnXVM
hughee99
(16,113 posts)doesn't the title seem to indicate that someone from the IMF admitted "Iceland was right and we were wrong"? I didn't see that anywhere in the article, though, just a quote from someone at the IMF that Iceland's approach lead to a "surprisingly strong recovery".
tama
(9,137 posts)that have been saying Iceland was right - with help from IMF.
But never mind the words, look at the actions. What IMF together with ECB and EC is doing to Greece and others is exactly same if not worse than what it did in Latin America and elsewhere.
hughee99
(16,113 posts)The article makes a lot of great points, but I don't see in here where the IMF is admitting it's approach had been all wrong (and they're going to change it).
tama
(9,137 posts)Not IMF officially, rather just the personal opinions of the Mission Chief to Iceland. Latest on IMF.org relating to Iceland is that they payed quarter of their loan from IMF long before dead line.
hughee99
(16,113 posts)My point is, if you write an article where you suggest IN THE TITLE that something has happened, then you should include evidence that it did. The title suggests that the IMF is admitting they were wrong and Iceland was right. Then in the story they don't say that the IMF has admitted this. I hate shitty journalism and/or sloppy editing!
we have Internet. So that we can collectively complain about sloppy journalism and do the job better.
Moosepoop
(2,075 posts)on Lessons, Challenges of Economic Crisis
Press Release No.11/355
October 3, 2011
Iceland was one of the first countries to experience the full force of the global financial crisis in 2008. Three years later, with the country on the road to recovery, the Icelandic authorities and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will co-host a high-level conference in Reykjavik, on October 27, 2011, to review Iceland’s achievements and examine the challenges that still lie ahead.
“The Icelandic people have shown great determination and resilience in implementing complex policies under difficult circumstances,” said IMF Deputy Managing Director Nemat Shafik. “All the parties involved, including the IMF, have something to learn from this experience, and this is why I am delighted that we are co-sponsoring this event.” She noted, “With the global economy still dealing with the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, I am confident that the impressive line-up of speakers gathering in Reykjavik will help us distill useful lessons for policymakers, economists, and the IMF.”
“The economic program with the IMF has been highly successful in stabilizing the Icelandic economy and putting it on a path of recovery,” said Central Bank Governor Már Guðmundsson. “There might be some interesting lessons for the international community,” he noted.
<snip>
Zorra
(27,670 posts)
"an imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all Republics,"
"We must support Wall St Banksters, and
make every effort to crush OWS! The
Third Way is the right way!
Remember our Third Way slogan:
......'Parasites Before People'"
......
AllyCat
(18,818 posts)I don't understand economics, banking well and would love a Taibbi style account of Iceland's recent history.
Hydra
(14,459 posts)Although I've heard of many, like The Shock Doctrine, that would apply.
You can do what I did though- watch Money As Debt on youtube or such and then use wikipedia and other sources to learn the terms and effects. The things you want to know about as basics are "Fractional Reserve" banking/currency, Capital vs labor and supply/demand manipulation.
Once you have the building blocks, the rest is easy to follow...but be aware that you're probably going to freak out when you see how it all really works and why our world is f***ed up. Try to keep in mind that a solution cannot be found until the problem is properly identified- which is why austerity is being pushed as a solution to a problem that it cannot fix.
tama
(9,137 posts)At that point, the new mantra of these Oligarchs became “no more Icelands”. In part, this has been achieved by tightening their economic choke-hold on individual Euro zone economies – thus gaining added leverage on their weak, incompetent, and traitorous governments. The Oligarchs realized that they had been arrogant and sloppy in their handling of Iceland – never dreaming that the government of that tiny nation would be courageous enough to “call their bluff” and simply walk away from all of that fraudulent debt. They now seek to permanently eliminate the economic sovereignty of Euro states, ensuring that no other European nation can escape from the fascist debt-slavery these Oligarchs seek to impose.
The obvious question is: how can this be achieved? With most Europeans firmly opposed to any greater integration, and increasingly suspicious of the motives and actions of their own governments, it is highly unlikely that any of the current governments in Europe have the “political capital” to muscle-through such a plan.
As with most of the machinations of these villains, it is a multi-stage strategy. The first stage is nearing completion: taking several Euro-zone economies as close as possible to the brink of total economic collapse – without triggering outright bankruptcy/debt-default. The banksters realized that this had been part of their mistake with Iceland. At the time that they sought to impose their massive “loss guarantees” on Iceland (which would allow them to permanently blood-suck that economy), Iceland’s underlying economy was still reasonably prosperous/stable. Thus it was able to absorb the economic “shock” of walking away from the banksters’ debts – and the “penalty” of being shut out of international debt markets.
With Greece’s economy now in total ruin and Ireland, Portugal and likely Spain soon to follow, the banksters want to make these economies so ridiculously over-leveraged with debt, and debt-dependent that “walking away” would result in maximum economic devastation. At this point, there’s no reason to believe that they will fail to do to the other three “PIGS” what they have now accomplished with Greece.
http://www.bullionbullscanada.com/intl-commentary/21703-economic-rape-of-europe-nearly-complete-part-iv
bullwinkle428
(20,662 posts)Though I'm waiting for a certain defender of all things banking to come in and school all of us, though! 
99Forever
(14,524 posts)... our own party leaders haven't learned yet.
tama
(9,137 posts)Can't find translation of the whole draft, this has some useful info:
http://stjornlagarad.is/english/
IMHO what is most important that Human Rights and Nature are not separated; Ecuador's new Constitution contained related provisions about rights of Mother Earth.
Articles about direct democracy are also big step forward.
Video about drafting process, made for Finnish parliament:
&feature=youtu.be
progressivebydesign
(19,458 posts)They were nearly destroyed by the same trickle down/deregulation bullshit that Bush and Romney peddle.
Uncle Joe
(65,089 posts)Thanks for the thread, RegieRocker.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)EXACTLY !!!
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)We'll follow their prescription?
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)Don't you think that matters?
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)Seems like we're in a better position to do what they did.
If we wake up.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)That part is over.
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)Maybe we can try it out next time.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)I think some people don't quite understand what happened. Lehman Brothers, an institution with gold reputation for 125 years, collapsed. That set the ball rolling...with a number of global banks on the brink of following in the collapse. It would've meant destruction for the world's financial system, if that had been allowed to happen.
There is no danger of that happening again. It has passed. The financial system of the world was saved. The U.S. did not collapse into a second Great Depression.
Things are not great now. But that sort of historical danger is past us.
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)But folks were saying the meltdown was impossible... right before the meltdown. It turned out to be possible.
There are hundreds of trillions of derivative bets hanging out there, much of it guaranteed by taxpayers. That can go very badly, very quickly.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)It was a surprise, except for a couple of nerds who follow this stuff, and who aren't really famous, and obviously no one listens to. Except for them, this crash was a surprise.
Iceland filed for bankruptcy, BTW, which the article doesn't mention. No $ to give to banks or anyone. And doesn't it make a difference that other countries (like Great Britain and the U.S.) aided the global banks? Or were there totally different, non-global banks in Iceland?
TheKentuckian
(26,314 posts)Strings were mandatory, nationalization preferred. Whether or not to then re-privatize or not is a debate probably worth having.
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)I can't wait to see this reported by America's liberal media.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)