Excerpts from a farewell letter from someone who’s been in regular touch throughout the year. A foreigner living and working in Iceland, someone who’s been working hard and taking the time to study the language, whose first emails showed as much bewilderment as the rest of us,  ”I went from living in one of the world’s richest countries [...]

…is the most corrupt time in the history of Iceland… …not 2002… ..not 2007.. but right now

A brilliant recap of 2009 by reporter Magnus Geir Eyjolfsson from Pressan.is The IceSave issue finally closed yesterday with the historic vote of Althingi, ending one of the most humiliating year for politics ever, in an appropriate manner I must say. Never before has such a large group of people embarrassed itself as thoroughly and [...]

Bjorgolfur Thor was handed Landsbankinn through privatization because he was supposed to have made a mint abroad and re-investing it in the Icelandic economy was seen as a positive move. Landsbankinn’s bankruptcy within six years then turned out to be one of the biggest in history. Not just in Iceland but anywhere. The bank’s IceSave [...]

Of course nobody in Iceland WANTS to pay the IceSave debt accumulated by Landsbankinn. Neither do we WANT to pay the cost of the Central Bank bankrupted by the Independence Party. But those organizing “national votes” or petitions denying responsibility appear utterly silly. The debt won’t go away just by saying no, we don’t WANT [...]

Posting will be infrequent in the next few days. Here is the “good” stuff from Wikileaks. Wikileaks IceDebt Negotiation Emails Basically the email issue shows that once Icelandic political parties are in government they stop caring about openness and transparency. Wikileaks Landsbankinn’s Russian Connection Look, a bankrupt businessman goes to Russia in the nineties to set [...]

If debt forgiveness benefits both equity and debt holders, why do debt holders not voluntarily agree to it? ·     First of all, there is a coordination problem. Even if each individual debtholder benefits from a reduction in the face value of debt, she will benefit even more if everybody else cuts the face [...]

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 [...]

The case of Baldur Gudlaugsson, the secretary of the Ministry of Education who quit yesterday because of an investigation by the Special Prosecutor, is intriguing to say the least. Baldur is being investigated for selling his shares in Landsbankinn, after attending a meeting late in the summer of 2008 with Alistair Darling, the British Chanchellor of [...]

If Hannes Holmsteinn Gissurarson and Milton Friedman were right and capital flows  like a river to wherever it is put to the best use possible, then someone must have built a dam somewhere on the way to float 1 billion ISK into the safe haven of the curious company Lamba ehf. Lamba which is officially [...]