What the company actually said was that it can no longer compete with Icelandic fast-food joints that rely on local produce – and which make delicious beef samlokas, as I discovered at a stand in downtown Reykjavik in August. McDonald’s imports its supplies from Germany. It is being undercut. Simple as that. The weak krona [...]

The new American way: Barack Obama has announced that he will publish a “guestbook” of those who come to see him in the White House, claiming that it is the voters’ right to know who he is talking to before making decisions. The new and old Icelandic way: Johanna Sigurdardottir has refused to publish a [...]

From a speech given by Sigurdur Einarsson, Kaupthing boss at a conference held by the Financial Authority in January, 2005. “…There is a reaction, in Iceland as in many other countries, to the corporate scandals that recently shocked the world, but adding more detailed regulations and penalties will not help against those who are willing [...]

Julia Staples is a photographer who has done a series called Free Market: Since 2003 I have been witnessing the unregulated, unfettered growth of Iceland’s economy and now I am part of its tragic collapse which occurred in October 2008. The suburbs of Reykjavik practically doubled in size in less than a decade and currently [...]

Last month Joaquín Almunia, the EU’s commissioner for economic affairs, highlighted foreign-currency mortgages as the sort of danger that the newly formed European Systemic Risk Board would be looking for. More succinct is the verdict of a senior official at Austria’s financial regulator: “We don’t want millions of people acting like little hedge funds.” From [...]

EVER since the cod wars of the 1970s, when the British lost the right to fish within 200 miles of the Icelandic coast, Britain’s gift to global gastronomy—battered fillets of fish and chips sold by takeaway restaurants—has relied on Icelandic trawlermen. Most of the cod sold by chip shops in England and Wales (the Scots [...]

Throngs of unanswered questions and intense circulation of rumours surround the Magma Energy deal. Halldór J. Kristjánsson and Finnur Ingólfsson (there’s a name that should ring a bell for those familiar with Icelandic corruption and shady deals) are thought to be involved, and some even suspect Ross Beaty of just being the face of a [...]

Price of alcohol is now 36% higher than it was at the same time last year. The result has been a decrease in alcohol sales by 14%. Which, honestly said cannot be an altogether bad thing. But then again, somehow we have to weigh up against the almost 20% increase in the daily shopping basket.

He calculates that the so-called Icelandic “financial elite” consisted of no more than 30 people. The new banks funded the politicians who had privatised them and global expansion came to follow a familiar pattern: “1) Icelandic bank with dubious credentials bids for established foreign bank using borrowed money; 2) targeted bank eagerly takes the offered [...]

Iceland’s most controversial banker, Sigurdur Einarsson, the former executive chairman of failed bank Kaupthing, has been made an official suspect by fraud prosecutors examining alleged market manipulation relating to an investment in the bank by Qatari royal Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa al-Thani weeks before its collapse a year ago. Einarsson, who lives in Chelsea, west [...]