Iceland to have referendum on Bank Bail out.

oscarBravo

adalstef wrote: »

Anyway, this explains the whole matter pretty well :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK2P78yP5ic

Can you summarise it for people who are not in a position to watch online video?

seclachi

adalstef wrote: »

I´m Icelandic and know the situation pretty well.
The point is, we are not interested in paying dept for crooked bank shareholders.
These were private own banks and the shareholders are responible.
Eaqually, UK is responsible, they shoul have controlled the branches in UK.

Anyway, this explains the whole matter pretty well :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK2P78yP5ic

I found that a very one sided video, which is to be expected really. Its hard to blame the uk or dutch, they have paid alot to cover there own banks, let alone foreign ones, and when it comes to other countries (namely small ones) politicians are willing to play hard ball. I find the reference to nato funny, its not an economic treaty..

Sand

Its basically a slideshow.

Argument runs as follows:

1 - Icelandice taxpayers are not Icelandic bankers as a general rule
2 - Brown didnt bailout RBS in Isle of Man because RBS paid their taxes in Isle of Man there (? Im a little puzzled there tbh...I thought Isle of Man was a UK possession?)
3 - Icelandic banks were private banks, not state banks.
4 - Icelandic bankers moved their assets to tax free UK possessions (?) and many are resident in UK - pick your fight with them, not us. ( Isnt West Ham United owned by an Icelandic banker? Maybe they should be nationalised and become the UK national team?)
5 - 320K Icelanders means 160K actual workers at best after children and the elderly and otherwise disabled are considered. Trying to lump them with 5 billion reparations is cruel/excessive/slavery.
6 - Icelanders want your moral support, not your money.

I'm a little hmmmm on the argument, but Im happy to praise the Icelandic fighting spirit. The so called fighting/rebel Irish could learn a little "Im mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" spirit from our Icelandic cousins. Our spirit around bankers/politicians can be pretty much summarised as pathetic

@Fratton Fred

sold to who? considering that a huge number of mortgages are now risky, who is going to buy them, seeing as that is how this whole thing started.

A - Banks that arent terribly run and thus able to expand?
B - Loans would need to be performing. Banks would be buying them at a discount. The rate of job losses is slowing, so even if a fraction of those bought at discount fail, the majority should still return a healthy profit especially given the discount received in a buyers market.

The UK and Dutch voters have taken it up with their elected representatives. fortunately they used rather extreme measures to freeze the assets of the bank before they could take them out of the country, now those elected representatives are trying to get their tax payers money back.

Where is the problem?

Essentially you cant get blood out of a stone, and whilst the UK/Dutch might think they have some leverage over Iceland currently I dont believe they have enough as they think they do ( The IMF will do a deal, the EU is not that big an objective) and tbh, the UK and Dutch look like **** trying to shackle a small nation of 160K workers with the debts of UK/Dutch depositors too greedy to keep their deposits with local banks, and too stupid to question if Icelandic banks were a good bet given their leverage.

If such terms were presented by anyone to Ireland to cover the losses of those who invested in Anglo Irish Id happily tell them to get ****ed. If the UK or the Dutch were leaned on in such a way, theyd happily tell the offender to get ****ed too. 5 Billion is barely 1.5 weeks of the current UK deficit alone and the effort and goodwill expended to bleed that out of the Icelanders over several years, who had no ownership of the private banks previously has to be weighed in perspective to that 178 billion loss.

The Icelandic guys fufilled their obligations under the EEA. They had a deposit insurance scheme in line with the requirements of the law. Its still there, its just not big enough to face the losses of a systematic collapse where the financial sector's balance sheet is many times the size of the nations GDP.

lets get sensible here, this is an online bank with massive assets we are talking about, not a loan shark or a south seas type company.

No, its an insolvent bank. It has no assets that arent matched or outmatched by liabilities.

incidentally, where did all the tax revenuse Landsbanki generated go to? where were the majority of share holders?

Tax revenues probably went to Iceland? I dont know what the UK charged to depositors placing funds into foreign banks.

The majority of shareholders I couldnt begin to guess. I wouldnt assume they were Icelandic though. Small holders of most banks tend to be a tiny minority verus the institutional holders - AGMs are something to be endured by most bankers where they have to spend a couple of hours listening to a tirade from some pleb who owns 0.00000000000000000000000001% of the bank itself when theyd rather be dealing with the guys who own 25% of the bank in a boardroom.

adalstef

I admit, the video is one sided. But its true. The reason for it being one sided is, noone has spoken on our behalf.
People thrughout europe seemed to think we were all crooks and simply stole this money, similar to the ancient vikings. At least that´s how British propaganda has been.
Well, we the public dont have the money.
Most of it is in frozen assets in UK and huge amounts the bankers transferred to the Isl of Tortola, taxheaven in Virgin Islands under the UK krown. The irony is, most of the bankers are living in luxury in London.
So no wonder we are mad as hell and are seeking moral support because we are being bullied by bigger nations.
And we dont like being bullied !

seclachi

adalstef wrote: »

I admit, the video is one sided. But its true. The reason for it being one sided is, noone has spoken on our behalf.
People thrughout europe seemed to think we were all crooks and simply stole this money, similar to the ancient vikings. At least that´s how British propaganda has been.
Well, we the public dont have the money.
Most of it is in frozen assets in UK and huge amounts the bankers transferred to the Isl of Tortola, taxheaven in Virgin Islands under the UK krown. The irony is, most of the bankers are living in luxury in London.
So no wonder we are mad as hell and are seeking moral support because we are being bullied by bigger nations.
And we dont like being bullied !

The people of Iceland are mad as hell, and they have every right to be, they have been screwed over by the banks and there politicians (much like everywhere else) but now it looks like the EU and IMF are going to have a go too.

Sad thing is though Iceland is between a rock and a hard place, on one hand they have a crippling debt that was not there responsibility and on the other hand they have the eu and imf withdrawing loans, which I`m sure would be economic Armageddon. Who knows, maybe theres a chance they may get clemency due to public opinion, but I think its unlikely. Politically its easy to point the finger at another country, nobody is going to vote against you for it, on the other hand covering the losses of these "foreign" banks with tax payers money would deeply unpopular.

The EU adds another dimension to it, I`m sure many in the Eu Government are eager to try and demonstrate what happens to country's who arent in the safety net of the EU, as it would surely quieten some euroskeptics. I think the main factor again here though is us V them.

adalstef

It is not a question wether we pay or not, we always inteded to pay. It´s mostly a question of terms and amount.
We suggested to have this settled in EU court or some other nutural cort but Britain refused.
I wonder why.
The terms were so steep that we could never meet them and Britain wanted to have a clause saying: if we cant pay, they can claim our natural sourses.
Smells fishy . .
And fishy it is because we belive they dont want us to be able to pay so they can claim our fishing grounds.
I guess they are still soar about the cod war.