Protester arrested following demonstrations outside the IMF’s temporary office in Reykjavik today

Remember this man. He is one of the faces of Iceland who has been cast aside by his society. The District Court of Reykjavik yesterday declared that the borrower of a currency loan was responsible for paying his loan fully, even if it had doubled in one year. The Court really had few other options, [...]

Third, regarding the origins of Iceland’s crisis. I agree that they lie in the financial sector. Banks took outsized risks, and supervision and regulation failed to rise to the challenge. Privatization did set the stage for this, but this was not a matter of following IMF policy: we did not then and do not now [...]

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the IMF has told a group of Icelanders who requested a meeting with him that the IMF had not made any demands regarding a solution to IceSave, but the Nordic countries had made it a condition before committing loans to Iceland. There is a a grave misunderstanding in Iceland [...]

A good question from Lara Hanna’s blog, one of the most active ones in pointing out corruption in Iceland. What on earth are Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and Hoskuldur Thorhallsson of the Progressive Party, doing in Norway? The official spin is that they are explaining the economic situation in Iceland, and perhaps fishing for a loan [...]

Ms Sigurdardottir said that it was “unfair” that the IMF and Nordic donors had made access to additional aid conditional on Iceland’s resolving the Icesave issue. But the prime minister voiced hope that the IMF review would start “within the next few weeks”. In written answers to FT questions, she said that the UK and [...]

The Progressive Party is currently the laughing stock in Icelandic politics, a title for which there is hard competition. Then again, a bunch of clowns is bound to tickle the funny bone once in a while. Party chairman Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and MP Hoskuldur Thorhallsson rode like knights in shining armour into an audience with [...]

Iceland can’t afford to wait any longer for its International Monetary Fund review and the transfer of the second tranche of its IMF-led bailout loan, Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said. From Bloomberg

On August 11, I wrote this to the IMF representative in Iceland, Mr. Franek Roswadowski in light of comments made by Icelandic banks and ministers that the IMF was the entity responsible for debt reorganization. Unlike Icelandic officials, Mr. Roswadoswki answers his emails and today I recieved this from him: Dear Daði, No, the IMF [...]