I feel that the Icelandic government is now desperately trying to save its nation and I am ready to help with all my might. The fall-out from the economic disaster is not going to be easy – we knew that. Now it is time to pay. We have no other way out except to start [...]

The owners of the Icelandic banks were not afraid to take a London cab to the Money Train. Landsbankinn in the UK made loans of 730 billion ISK. The highest loan to an individual business was 205 million pounds to Novator, Bjorgolfur Thor’s company which used the money to buy pharmaceutical company Actavis. Actavis itself [...]

At this moment 19,101 Icelanders have signed up for the Facebook group “We refuse to pay debts that we are not responsible for” (IceSave). It has become the online forum for those who want to support the protests in front of Althingi this week. This would be similar to 19 million Americans, adjusted for population. [...]

Sigurjon Arnason, the CEO who lead Landsbankinn into the IceSave fiasco is confident that if the sale of the banks assets are done correctly then they will cover the 650 billion the state has to assume because of the disastrous savings account. Maybe the state could ask Sigurjon to organize the sale? But there is [...]

Bjorgolfur Thor laughed all the way to the bank and is now laughing all the way from the bank. He made his money from beer in post-Soviet Russia and was given Landsbankinn as a gift from the Independence Party of David Oddson and Geir Haarde for the small price of arranging high-paying jobs for people [...]

The economic crisis in Iceland is a banking crisis. The national banks were privatized by politicians who got them into the hands of favorable businessmen. The businessmen then proceeded to use the banks to make severely leveraged acquisitions at home and abroad, while extracting as much cash as possible for themselves in the form of [...]

Since this spring I have been trying to get my head around understanding how the Central Bank figures that a third of homeowners are now experiencing negative home-equity. Home equity is the cash you’d end up with from selling your home and paying up your home loans. So the bank is probably assuming a market [...]

His friend wasted the last ten years doing drugs, drinking, partying, travelling and spending money left and right, basically ending up left with nothing.  He had saved for a rainy day himself, spent his money sensibly, bought a home, bought a cheap car, worked hard and invested.  When he realized that they were pretty much [...]

“The rebuilding of the banks must be an absolute priority. For the business sector to work, it must be supported by banks that work. But it will be expensive. I don’t think Icelanders realize how expensive that is going to be, around 85% of gross national product. “ Mats Josefsson to Swedish newspaper Uppsala Nya Tidning [...]