Worrying himself sick every night over the household’s finances, he decided that the correct and responsible thing to do would be to talk to his bank. The bank’s friendly customer representative brought out a spreadsheet and started entering information about his earnings and spending. “This is what you have to do”, she said. “You have [...]

It is clear as dayligth that the political and financial elites which control the “four parties” decided early in the economic collapse to sacrifice the indebted households in the country. This was done while a fortress was erected around owner of capital and the criminals who bankrupted the country. Most things indicate that the politicians [...]

If the typical Icelander owns 1 million ISK in a bank account and loses 200.000 then he will experience it as if he’s lost that money. If the typical Icelander owes 1 million ISK in his property and 200.000 is added to the capital because of price indexation and inflation then he will not experience [...]

Now that the IceSave agreement is throught Althingi and Olafur Ragnar Grimsson has signed, sealed and delivered it onwards, the focus is increasingly pointing towards the so-called “fortress” that the government promised to build around Icelandic households during the parliamentary campaign last spring. It is now almost one year since the economic disaster with the [...]

So what is the bank going to do? Atli Steinn Gudmundsson, a journalist at visir.is and Bylgjan stopped paying off his mortgage in March. “I would have to be a CEO of a large company to manage all those payments. It came to the point where I saw no sense in continuing to pay” he [...]

August 11, 2009 Reykjavik, Iceland To the attention of Mr. Franek Rozwadowski, IMF Resident Representative to Iceland Mr. Rozwadowski I write to you on behalf of a small group of friends who have bought their first home in the last five years. Through an accident of birth, it so happened that all of us were [...]

I heard a good story this weekend. It was about my personal finances. The story told of how I’d been gambling around with money in the good times and lost it all in the economic collapse. Therefore I am supposed to be bitter and therefore I am supposed to be keeping this site going, going [...]

I learned a lot. The one fact that angered me most is that Icelanders that took out loans with domestic banks have had those loans ‘indexed’ to inflation –  by law it appears. Clearly, Iceland was another bank-owned-state, governed in the interests of creditors. If their new government is to represent the interests of the [...]

  A storm is brewing in Iceland. Homeowners have waited since October for words from the governments of Geir Haarde and then Johanna Sigurdardottir on how the state is going to tackle their problems.  They are still waiting and they are getting angrier every day.  The thing is that pretty much all home loans in [...]

For foreigners wishing to understand more about the perils of the Icelandic situation, these four opinion columns that have appeared in Frettabladid in the last few weeks are a must read.  1) The Economics of the Devil Published in Frettabladid on April 15 by Gunnar Tomasson, economist Inflation depreaciates the real value of money and [...]