From Wikileaks.nl TREASURY FOR MYERS AND NORTON NSC FOR HOVENIER E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/13/2019 SUBJECT: INDEPENDENCE PARTY LEADER SEEKS MEETING WITH WHITE HOUSE TO DISCUSS IMF Classified By: CDA SAM WATSON FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D) 1.(C) Summary. Charge d'Affaires (CDA) met Bjarni Benediktsson, leader of the opposition Independence Party, to discuss a range [...]

Why does Iceland need the EU? A comment from this post expressed wonder at the current situation in Iceland. Somehow many people expected things to be much worse for the general population by now. People are still going to coffee shops even if the latte is approaching the price of a pre-crash beer, there are [...]

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 [...]