This is Iceland today.
A man in Alftanes, a suburb of Reykjavik destroyed a house he and his family lived in until his bank repossessed it after the economic collapse.
The man in his fifties said he’d lost everything. He also buried his car in the back garden and left before police arrested him for property damages.
His home loans were in a foreign currency and he tried negotiating with his bank to no avail. The man said he didn’t care if he owed 60 or 120 million ISK, “I have lost everything”.
He got a film crew to film the demolition and we await to see the footage posted somewhere soon.
A bit drastic but I think many will understand the man’s position living in a society that is designed for banks and tax-evaders.
Channel 2′s reporters showed this footage of his house – Watch here.
Related posts:
Hans
2 years ago
http://www.mbl.is/mm/frettir/innlent/2009/06/17/bankinn_fekk_ekki_lyklana/
Frjalsi Investment Bank bought the house in an auction in November 2008. So this can’t be blamed on the collapse. He’d already lost the house by the time the economy “died”.
sebastian
2 years ago
Hello, it started in USA, here is one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzACsGrumEU&feature=related and second http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvrc7x3Amps
Dadi
2 years ago
Hansi, I suspect this would be one of those guys who would have lost everything anyways, although I don’t know.
Frjalsi was the bank that seemed to be most willing to hand currency loans out like candy (you’d nag but get them eventually).
Although the guy took a risk and lost, we should stop and think about the responsibility of the lenders in these cases. Why did the man get such a massive loan in the first place?
Dadi
2 years ago
Sebastian this could become a trend…
Tony
2 years ago
Holy mama, if it becomes a trend it will go out of control and banks will lose even more money…
Allan
2 years ago
No truer words have been related than a Western Society designed for only the benefit of banks and tax evaders–read–corporations!
Bill Black
2 years ago
Judeo-Masons have engineered another Zio Depression.
Strap on your Crash Helmets, its coming.
Planned for Decades.
Jay
2 years ago
You have to remember banks don’t lend out real equity, meaning no human or groups of them worked with their sweat and blood to create the ‘money’ that is ‘lent’ out from the banks. All loans and credit nowadays are created out of thin air and never come from depositors or bank assets. This is the shell game they play with us making us believe they lent out something that had real value when in truth they are just printing presses. And here is the rub…this is how they gain real equity that you and I really worked for and they turn around to invest it to make more money after we give it to them through our monthly payments and such. This man happened to get in a situation where he could not make the payments so they possessed the asset. It doesn’t matter if it happened before the economic downturn or not, the whole system is rigged by these banks so that there is a steady stream of defaults that they can rake in…and they control the bust and boom economic cycles the maximizes this theft of theirs. Good for this guy for doing what he did…at least there’s one little piece of asset they’re not going to fraudulantly get.
Yah-Svenska
2 years ago
Yah,Svenska,
Husker-du!
Moses
2 years ago
man, Bro i can totally understand and before you condem this man look at the banks and how much they have made. I hope they let this man free and do go after him. I on his side!!!
Thetruth
2 years ago
I LOVE it! everyone should do it!
Freeman
2 years ago
I would do the same
laura
2 years ago
Where was his bailout?? The banksters have destroyed our economies and ripped off all our money and are destroying the average man. Quite a protest there.
shawn grover
2 years ago
i am truely sorry as american
truely sorry
Richiemagoo
2 years ago
He couldn’t pay his mortgage- but yet he could hire a backhoe, or whatever machinery did that damage and dug the hole.
enemyofNWO
2 years ago
I would do the same in that situation . The laws are made to protect the criminal bankers and assorted parasites .
Rob O'Loughlin
2 years ago
Jay is right. It’s the biggest robbery ever. The economy is a total fraud and scam designed to transfer all real assets, land and resources, to the banker elites and associates. For some insane reason most people buy into this scam known as money. It’s TOTALLY unnecessary and things could be organised completely differently, work far far better and no debt for anyone… ever. Until you realise this, suffering will rule the day. NEEDING money to live IS the root of the scam. And easily changed. But don’t look to the fraudsters and conmen you currently keep voting for to do anything other than protect their proceeds of crime, murder and genocide. You are choosing this. Wise up. Let’s arrest these psychopaths and put this world back together again.
Bromley86
2 years ago
> look at the banks and how much they have made
Well, we’re talking about Icelandic banks here. So, ignoring any misappropriation by management/owners, the banks in Iceland have made nothing. They are insolvent and their shareholders have lost everything.
The people in Iceland on the other hand are having to borrow from the IMF to recapitalise those banks. For any IMF-haters out there, they had a choice, but as the other choice was the total and abrupt collapse of their current economy, they’ve chosen to avoid that.
So if he goes postal and destroys the bank’s asset, then not only was he more reckless than most back when times were good, and not only are the people of Iceland having to absord the loss on the original loans, but he’s now destroying the only asset left.
Tony
2 years ago
Revelation 18:17 It will not get better, if anyone say it will. Revelation 20:8 Psalm 83:18
Mahaz
2 years ago
Very good, & is very brave man he set good example to truly show we not worry for your corrupt greedy way of living F U.
Bromley86
2 years ago
It’s like talking to a wall. An angry, angry wall
.
bonanzaman
2 years ago
Banks are bulldozing their own foreclosures in California. They don’t see a market in the future, they don’t want to pay taxes, and don’t want to pay for security. Besides they got the house free so they’ve got nothing to lose. That is, the money created for the mortgages was created by the borrower at the time of signing the promissory note.
Truth Man
2 years ago
Take your nations back from the illuminati. Stop playing their games. Preserve your cultures. Preserve your race. Preserve your religion. Resist in thought, word and deed.
fatmanscoop
2 years ago
kudos to bonanzaman for being on the money on the last sentence…Truth Man, what race? The white race, mother of all tyrants, liars, land snatchers and fake supremacy?
How about the HUMAN RACE?
Stop blaming conspiracies, the real conspiracy are you, the parents of these idiots that encourage COLLEGE, MATERIALISM and other bullsh*t.
Keep working on that 9-5 and lemme know how that goes for ya! Keep voting too, because, you know, it counts and all…
Hilarious how America is blamed, little brother, meanwhile, Europe is the mother of it all…
By the way, I am mid 20′s from NYC…the day I realized adults pay 200k to 1million on USED HOUSES i laughed so hard I actually went and got my real estate license exam.
I guess you should never trust teachers, priests and anyone over 30!!!
Emma
2 years ago
We need to see more of this. Ja!
sol
2 years ago
It wouldnt have happened to him if he didnt deserve it.
Joe in JT
2 years ago
Hey my house is in forclosure too. I want to wreck it too but I don’t have the strength. Could you come over and smash my house for me, I’ll pay you. But when you do can you be sure that my fat wife Brenda is “in the house” while your wrecking it. She’s a bitch that can’t cook worth the beans, and I’ve decided to forclose her big ass.
rober
2 years ago
What an Idiot. If you don’t have the money then don’t buy it. Debt is out and Retained earnings are back. By the way – Iceland sucks.
jude
2 years ago
Hey Rober – what goes around comes around. Your turn may be next.
HE’s is the victim you dolt.
He could afford it, until the ROBBER BARONS with their LYING Triple AAA ratings, insurance (LIE) A.I.G; set up their own shadow banking system (hedge funds, credit swaps, derivatives) after they REPEALED (firewall) the Glass Stegall Act. Hey where’s Sen (former) Gramm author of this heist (bill) and Bill Clinton, (now a multimillionaire) who signed it? Congress sits back like they know nothing/ buffoons the lot of them. Meantime the BANKS are the ones (the crooks) getting trillions in bailouts (European just got voted 100 billion via the IMF/ meantime Iran distracts) while citizens are left homeless and penniless. And yes, now the banks, rather than lowering the principle/ putting a moratorium on foreclosures are bulldozing under their toxic assets. Oh and Gramm got himself a job (thank you from Wall Street) as UBS/ after he and his wife cleaned up on ENRON. The whole world is run by crooks and the citizens who’ve worked hard their entire lives are being made to pay for the largest HEIST in world history with none of these CRIMINALS in jail. And they want to charge this guy? I hope everybody does this.
Tankyou
2 years ago
He does a good job.
ashton
2 years ago
Poor Icelanders should all get together and form a corporation… 1 buck a share. The Corporation of Icelanders should then ask the govt for a bailout to the tune of 500 billion. The govt prints the money, the corporation gets the money, each shareholder gets a cut, and the central bank will be forced to raise interest rates to avoid inflation getting out of hand. Foreign investment will flow into Iceland because of high interest rates, and Iceland will become the envy of Europe. Problem solved. This isnt exactly rocket science people.
OhIngardail
2 years ago
I think this DIY demolition expert is doing the bank a service.
As ‘bonazaman’ states, in the US, foreclosed homes are sometimes being bulldozed. However, in the US, banks have been known to refuse to accept the foreclosure, because by the time they get around to taking control of the property many months later, it has become a worthless slum. The local authority may then demolish the property for safety reasons and then sends the bill for demolition to the owner – that is, the mortgagee now living in a rented shack with no job who couldn’t afford the mortgage in the first place!
On a different economic problem, but the same underlying corruption, I give you my second piece of evidence – health insurance rescission (the retroactive cancellation of health insurance) in the USA. During the US government hearings on this problem, a CEO of a health insurance company said that this only affected 0.5% of the people they cover – a tiny number. However, on a bit more digging it becomes apparent that the only people who they rescind are those who are diagnosed with serious and expensive illnesses; that is, the issue naturally doesn’t affect anybody who just pays in their health premiums, but it actually affects about 50% of people who claim for costly treatment. So, after paying your health insurance for 30 years or more you are diagnosed with a brain tumour. Your health insurance company then cuts you off and, of course, no other health insurance company would take you on with a known condition. You die, and the insurance company pockets a good profit (see http://tauntermedia.com/2009/07/28/unconscionable-math/).
In the UK, senior bankers have insisted that they get paid their multimillion salaries and bonuses this year even though their companies have actually *failed* and only continue to exist because taxpayers are forced to pay for them, stating that their employers, the banks, have a contractural obligation to pay them these bonuses. Yet the same senior staff have laid off thousands of their own staff, thus breaking employment contracts. Not to mention breaking pretty much every social contract about embezzling public funds and sucking money out of the mouths of generations yet to be born.
Iceland has no monopoly on evil. At the risk of sounding like I want to start a moral crusade, I have to state that in democratic countries such as my own (the UK) and Iceland, we the people have not only the responsibility but the power to identify this kind of heedless and avaricious behaviour and stop it. All too often we get bamboozled by the pretty lights these sociopathic confidence tricksters spin for us and believe that if we ‘deregulate’ we can create wealth for ourselves. Its a form of economic Stockholm Syndrome.
If we don’t shoulder our democratic responsibility soon, then I really think that what we laughingly refer to as ‘western civilisation’ is heading for the dustbin.
Heide-Rose
2 years ago
He surely was frustrated y e t LIFE is like that some times UP or DOWN
James
1 year ago
well this man stood against the man,kudos to him and everybody who stands against this kind of capitalism.