With no hint of irony the lobbyist group InDefence which has fought vehemently against the payment of the IceSave debt to Holland and the UK, accepted an award this weekend. The award is called the Kjartan Gunnarsson Freedom Award and it was presented by the youth association of the Independence Party at the party’s headquarters. [...]

It is quite amazing how successful the Independence Party has been at projecting two of their own larger problems onto others. In classical psychology, projection is always seen as a defence mechanism that occurs when a person’s own unacceptable or threatening feelings are repressed and then attributed to someone else. An example of this behavior might be blaming [...]

So the cat is out of the bag… or the book is heading for the printers. I met Gerard Van Vliet in December 2009 after he contacted me because of this blog. He had found it extremely difficult to get anybody in Iceland to talk to him, be it officials or ordinary people. I met [...]

I stumbled across this comment from Thorolfur Matthiasson on Paul Krugman’s blog. It explains the current situation in Iceland perfectly: Finally, there are many big unsolved problems that face the government and people of Iceland. First, the Icelandic Krona is not a viable currency in the world of free movement of capital. The Euro seems [...]

As the government celebrates the fact that the British and Dutch governments appear to be willing to talk about IceSave again, an interesting theory has not received the attention it should. A member of the fishing industry reform committee has wondered out loud whether the opposition’s silence on IceSave and the government’s sudden halt in [...]

Well this is what happened…. …apart from the UK and Holland not showing any signs of rushing into negotiating… ….nothing.

Are you confused as to why the Independence Party is now topping the polls with 40,3% and adding 11 new members of Althingi if the vote were today? Don’t be. Voters are illogical, as is evident by this excellent summary from an article in Time. They would even vote for the party which caused the [...]

The Icelandic government’s economic advisor Tryggvi Thor Herbertsson, on a leave from his post as CEO of Askar Capital Investment Bank and two years after his whitewash report on the Icelandic economy with Columbia professor Mishkin, with some interesting promises to the BBC on October 4, 2008. What happened next? The Independence Party’s voters elected [...]

It is self explanatory that there is not much sympathy worldwide for a country which first behaved irresponsibly and then tried to export its problems to other countries. Like other countries which have run their economies into the ground – including Greece as a good example -  Iceland must take responsibility for itself. So even [...]

With a smug grin he revealed last night and today what he had wanted all along. It wasn’t a national referendum on IceSave. It was for the government he opposes to resign. Steingrimur J. Sigfusson asked the nation how it thought an agreement could be made with a saboteur on our very own negotiating team. [...]