So the guy who destroyed his old house has been attracting some headlines in the last couple of days.
His actions have been met with great sympathy from many directions, some calling him a hero for going through with some serious “up yours” to the system that has screwed its citizens royally over.
Others have critisized him for destroying someone else’s property (mostly right-wingers who consider properties to be above people), and many have pointed out the fact that he lost his house in November last year, which means he must have been going under well before the economic crash.
He was on Kastljos yesterday, calm and calculated like a man who knew all to well that he had gone to extreme lenghts but intentionally so.
Then visir.is reported on a couple who say he screwed them over on a house they ordered through him. They lost 10 million ISK doing business with him. He claims the same he did on TV when asked about why he’d found himself in that quagmire of debt, that once his debtors stopped paying, he was unable to pay his own.
Regardless of this particular man’s situation, it is one many businesses and individuals can sympathise with in Iceland. The rapid accumulation of interest payments and currency loans has sucked them dry of cash and squeezed them to a breaking point. In a normal economy you would say it was the way it was supposed to be, bad companies going under because they’d overextended.
But you need not have been a “bad company” to take the heat in Iceland. Interests are high because of very questionable macroeconomic decisions by previous governments. But it is SME owners and the public who get to pay for the whole deal.
I don’t recommend anyone to go out and destroy their properties, or those they’ve lost. I would on the other hand like to see an investigation into the lending practises of Frjalsi Investment Bank from 2004-2008. It was supposedly easier to get a foreign currency loan with the bank than to find ice in Antarctica.
Again, while the government is busy bailing out every bank in sight, someone should ask why borrowers are made to shoulder all the damages?
Meanwhile, you get the sense that more and more people have nothing to lose. So brace yourself for some more fun stuff.
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Vilhjalm A.
2 years ago
Homeless people in Iceland?
In a — former — cradle-to-grave social welfare state with thousands of vacant houses, many of which are owned by the state?
A middle aged women has settled in a tent and lived for there for the past five weeks in a tent, due to her very limited options and fortune.
http://newsfrettir.com/community-in-crisis/people/1043-has-settled-in-a-tent