‘Customers would come in and we would apply for credit online for them, a 100 per cent loan, and they can drive away in their new Range Rover. It took ten minutes, it was very easy. But 60 to 70 per cent of those loans were in foreign currency, Japanese yen or Swiss francs, and [...]

Of all the OECD countries, Iceland is the country where taxes have increased most in the last decade. Taxes relative to GDP went from 31% to 41% from 1995-2006. So the truth is out about the Independent Party’s real agenda, same as the Republicans’ managed to do, to make Big Goverment into Huge Governement, to [...]

1) Don’t save your money. Borrow as much as you can. Fiscal policy rewards the borrowers. 2) Never ever allow price indexation into your country. 3) Become a business. Put all your debts into your business, keep your assets personal. 4) Don’t trust banks that pay their CEO’s absurd wages and whose owners are big [...]

Global financial instability has sparked a surge in “monetary nationalism” — the idea that countries must make and control their own currencies. But globalization and monetary nationalism are a dangerous combination, a cause of financial crises and geopolitical tension. The world needs to abandon unwanted currencies, replacing them with dollars, euros, and multinational currencies as [...]

The fact that the Icelandic government has not been willing to put the issue to the test in accession negotiations indicates that there might be something else, rather than the economic interests of the fisheries sector that has kept Iceland out of the EU. Eirikur Bergmann’s article in the Guardian

Today the economy is in unbelievably horrible shape: The three banks – Kaupthing, Landsbanki, and Glitnir – are in receivership. The stock market has lost 90% of its value. The central bank is technically insolvent, its modest pile of assets dwarfed by a mountain of liabilities. The currency, the krona, has lost more than half [...]

“Almost 1,200 years after Viking chief Ingolfur Arnarson left Norway to found Reykjavik, the crisis engulfing Iceland is forcing his descendants home.” Bloomberg’s article As if Icelanders today considered Norway “home”.  Bloody hell!

“Iceland either has to move backwards to the time of capital controls or forwards into the EU. It needs to choose the latter option if it wants to stand a chance at keeping its well-educated young people from emigrating.” Economist Gylfi Zoega. 

Today, the student unions from the Icelandic colleges and universities have been drawing attentions to much needed initiatives that benefit students.  A few years back I was asked to be a board-member of the Union for Icelandic Students Abroad. I was opinionated, although I wish I had been more active and more enlightened at the [...]

Because of my girlfriend’s studies, I have been travelling back and forth to Glasgow, UK quite a lot in the last two school-years. I have been here since Thursday and it is a whole new experience.  Last year the exchange rate hovered around 120-140 ISK per GBP. Icelandair offered tickets for 23.990 ISK, a cup [...]