The Supreme Court of Iceland‘s ruling has thrown the Icelandic household debt pickle into an almighty pickle-feast. The Court ruled that the currency loans which many Icelandic housholds had borrowed at their chosen financial institution for car loans and mortgages were illegal. According to Icelandic law, it is illegal to tie loan contracts to indexes [...]

Are the ghosts of the past supposed to determine Iceland’s future? In the Special Investigation Report, former Morgunbladid editor Styrmir Gunnarsson says that Iceland has been a “disgusting society”. “I have followed this for fifty years. This is a disgusting society, it is all disgusting. There are no principles, there are no ideologies, there is [...]

So what is the national referendum going to be about? According to some Facebook statuses and discussions you get the sense that too many people think that the president’s veto means that Iceland has an option on whether to pay the IceSave debt or not. If only things were that simple. The whole affair has [...]

So I promised I’d explain the reason why the government’s current “solutions” for the household debt in Iceland are useless. A regular reader to this site, Vilhjalm A. has pointed out the unique situation home-owners in Iceland are facing because of the consumer price indexation attached to all mortgages in ISK: An unnormal country In normal countries [...]

On October 25th last year, I wrote the first EDA piece called Connecting the Dots Part I. After so many words, so many entries, its simplicity is striking; David Oddson used to be prime minister with Geir Haarde the current prime minister as financial minister representing the Independent Party where Kjartan Gunnarsson used to be [...]

Who’s got a seat at the table when the government decides how to tackle household debt? Is it you? No, it is a group of middle aged economists and officials whose livelyhood has been dependent on looking out for the interests of industries and corporations. Then they drive off in their SUV’s to their comfortable [...]

Eva Joly is back in Iceland today. A few things for her to consider: 1) Don‘t trust anyone in Iceland. Even the people you are working for. We are all too interconnected. Everyone has an agenda. Be open for sources that don‘t want to go through the filter around you. Set up a simple website [...]

I’ve thought a lot about theory economist Gudmundur Olafsson’s attempts to divert the public’s attention from the injustice of price-indexation of loans. He uses the analogy of when a man borrows ten horses from him, he expects ten horses back. He makes no mention of the responsibility bestowed upon him as the lender to provide [...]

My life and the life of so many of my friends has taken an extreme turn in the last year. Now we can safely say with the benefit of hindsight that the economic collapse of Iceland has been a life-changing event for just about everyone. Old truths have been demolished, new governments have been formed, [...]

I have written almost daily about the economic disaster since last November. Things have largely gone as predicted. - The mess just gets messier as the nation learns that the banks were just tools for amassing personal wealth by an elite that is so corrupt it absolutely believes it isn’t. - The election this spring [...]