Iceland: A great example for the rest of the world

[Thor]

Just had to post this since I keep seeing it pop up on FB, its being shared like crazy and its completely untrue. Not only did the President not say this, our President is like Canada's Governor General, a symbolic posting with very little power, he did though put our icesave debt repayment up for a referendum 2 times so he´s quite popular now even though he was the biggest hawk for those "financial vikings" who destroyed us when they were at their peak.

[Thor]

Also if anyone is interested in a article speaking the truth on what its been like for Iceland since there is soooooooooo much propaganda being spread about what Iceland did, a lot of it utterly untrue, check this article:

http://grapevine.is/Features/ReadArt...ing-Revolution

Last night, ‘Shock Doctrine’ author Naomi Klein tweeted: “#Iceland is proving that it is possible to resist the Shock Doctrine, and refuse to pay for the bankers' crisis” with a link to an article called, “Iceland’s On-going Revolution,” by Deena Stryker.

This article is full of factual errors, so we tweeted back: “@NaomiAKlein We are fans of yours, but we are sad to say that your tweet and the article it cites are both dead wrong. #Iceland”

She replied: “@rvkgrapevine tell me and i'll correct”.

So here it is, a deconstruction of that error-ridden article, “Iceland’s On-going Revolution,” which is unfortunately making rounds in the Twitter-sphere.

In the first paragraph, the article states: “Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion.”

There are two errors there. One is obvious. Namely, Iceland is not a member of the European Union. The other one is perhaps less obvious, but it is nonetheless an important point. That is, Iceland did not go bankrupt. This factual error was heavily criticised in 2008 when Iceland’s banks collapsed and news spread that Iceland, the country, had gone bankrupt. This is as wrong today as it was then.

[To Be Quite Honest]

I was going to post the pic as well, but I don't know much about the politics TBQH. However, I do believe what Iceland has done is great stuff. Re-read this thread about the doom and gloom.

As far as I know they have changed the way they use currency no? There is no mass printing?

A currency video I edited should be up soon and it is pretty interesting for the most part. It talks about the world and it's currency, and why we are in trouble.

40 billion dollars of currency has been printed every month since September in the USA and all countries but New Zealand and now Iceland follow suit. That amount will increase in December to 80/85 billion and the banks will take that currency and use fractional reserve banking to create approximately $360 Billion which will be used as an economic "stimulus", but for banks not the people.

Iceland and New Zealand are awesome!

[Thor]

A GREAT article on what has actually been going on in Iceland, a response if you will to all the nonsense pro Iceland images and articles being spread on social media.

However I take one exception to his conclusion, about where are these lies coming from, he thinks a group of Icelanders, I think its people with an agenda politically who are taking fast and loose fact checking and trying to spread it as a counter to mostly US politics and its handling of the crash.

FINALLY, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
Why are these myths being spread about Iceland? Why do people think that Iceland is a progressive paradise when in actual fact its a Thatcherite’s wet dream? Why is Iceland being paraded by the occupy movement as an example of how things should be done?
I don’t know. My theory, born out by the names of those who seem to be the sources of the biggest myths, is that there is a group of Icelanders who are blatantly lying to foreigners.
Possibly they are doing this to balm their wounded nationalistic pride, have convinced themselves that it’s true and that Iceland really is great and unique. Possibly its because they see profit in lying to gullible foreigners. The latter was a national sport during the banking bubble and has been a standard Icelandic tactic throughout the ages, but I can’t rule out the role of idiotic nationalism in this nonsense.
I don’t know. The only thing I know is that you are being lied to and that Icelanders are very good at lying to themselves. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
ETA: This isn’t a blog post on economics. Pointing people at the public record, what legislation was actually enacted and what wasn’t, what court cases were won and lost, who was prosecuted and not, what actions the government took and not, is not economics and not open to interpretation. You can debate about the long-term effects of the legislation that was enacted (and there’s a debate to be had there) but you cannot debate the basic facts of what was actually done and what wasn’t.
The only thing debatable in this blog post is whether you think the growth numbers are positive or not. (If you do think the growth numbers are promising, that only tells me you don’t understand the pension system crisis in Iceland, the imminent collapse of the national housing fund, or the burgeoning housing bubble, but I’ll acknowledge that you can debate these things. The rest, no, they are not up for debate. There are things that the Icelandic government did and there are things it didn’t do. Its actions are on the record.)

http://studiotendra.com/2012/12/29/w...on-in-iceland/

[Daradon]

Read the article and did my best to understand most of it. I guess the conclusion is that Iceland isn't out of the woods yet, and that there may even be tougher times ahead? There is still money to pay and the interest rates haven't even been decided on yet.