Remember this man. He is one of the faces of Iceland who has been cast aside by his society.

The District Court of Reykjavik yesterday declared that the borrower of a currency loan was responsible for paying his loan fully, even if it had doubled in one year. The Court really had few other options, the agreement between lender and borrower is one where the bank lends foreign currency and it was the customer’s choice whether to take that option or one of a loan in ISK.

So much for the imbalance between the lender who is supposed to know more about finance and the borrower who is not an expert.

The Courts and society has determined that Iceland is a country built for banks, not people.

This probably means that all those who have been waiting to hear about the outcome of this court case and have loans in foreign currency can say goodbye to their former lives. Tens of thousands of Icelanders are going to become bankrupt or heavily strapped.

Meanwhile, us who didn’t take the risk of currency loans even if they were offered are also being thrown to the wolves. What choices did we have? Not choices similar to people in countries around us of loans that go down as you pay.

Force majeure anyone? Is it unfair to compare the financial collapse of Iceland to anything but a natural disaster, an extraordinary event?

Meanwhile the governor of the Central Bank has assured Icelandic MP’s that even if the IMF has come out and said that Iceland’s debts were even larger than 310% of GNP, then it is OK because included in that number are all private foreign debts which are going to be written off, making the picture much brighter.

So the government, the banks and the largest companies will all see write offs that they will not grant to their citizens themselves.

A tragic story has emerged of Olafur Jon Leosson, a roughly sixty year old truck driver who bought himself a new truck on a foreign currency loan when jobs were everywhere for him to put it to use. Then the jobs started disappearing, and then the currency dropped. He tried to negotiate with the banks, the financing company Lysing, everything. He took his own life recently as he had found the door shut everywhere.

Great is the shame of the government, Althingi and the financial institutions. Did they ever read Grapes of Wrath?

Related posts:

1. In All Fairness: The Currency Loans And What Now
2. The Currency Loans: Iceland’s Great Shame
3. Loans of the Icelanders
4. Will there be a fair solution?
5. Iceland In The Desert – The Dark Side Of Dubai