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Saturday, December 12, 2009
Why did Iceland melt down?
I never quite know what to make of John Perkins. Even so, his argument that Iceland was targeted by economic hit men is worth pondering.
7 comments:
Zee
said...
Is there any published article regarding this? I don't watch youtubes for "theories." The entire 9/11 nuttery was youtubes, starting with a mockumentary which the film-makers scrambled to make "real" after they discovered they were overnight cult leaders.
"As the new prime minister of Iceland, Geir Haarde [Brandeis] ’73 holds sway over a land full of colorful contrasts. He hopes rising immigration and economic development will make those colors even brighter."
"...he encourages immigration, which he says will contribute to 'an even more colorful Iceland,' with new cuisines, new cultural activities, and an important influx of skilled laborers to enrich the economy"
And here's the best part. The "before" picture:
"A NORTHERN UTOPIA? Home ownership, for example, is close to 90 percent. The literacy rate is 100 percent [but apparently they are "unskilled" or untrainable as laborers!], and medical care is free to all. Hospitalization and higher education are entirely state-supported. Clean, natural sources of renewable energy abound. Unemployment hovers between 1 percent and 2 percent. According to figures compiled by the International Monetary Fund in April 2006, Iceland has a gross domestic product per capita of $35,586, positioning it fifth in the world in per-person purchasing power—trailing only Luxembourg ($69,800), Norway ($42,364), the United States ($41,399), and Ireland ($40,610)."
He may be right to a degree. Those types of predatory practices need to stop and now but I remember seeing something about Iceland being the victim of bad trading due to 1 or 2 guys investing all their money in very high risk/high reward kinds of things. I seriously doubt that having a huge hydroelectic power plant is what bankrupted them. On the contrary, it provides every person in Iceland free electricity. Didn't their monetary system collapse as well? Fortunately, I don't follow all this bad stuff so much especially when it doesn't directly effect people in my country.
2) The Robert Tchenguiz connection. He and his friends emptied Kaupthing of all the money they could. Interesting article here. As a result, the British government paid out 7 billion pounds. Tchenguiz is well connnected in London. For a time he even owned Millbank Tower. British readers will recall that that building contained the Labour Party's HQ for several years. (Tchenguiz both bought it and sold it when the Labour Party was resident).
3) The Simon Halabi connection. Like Tchenguiz, Halabi is (or was!) a big property tycoon in London. And together with Tchenguiz, he paid himself a large amount of money from Kaupthing before it collapsed. Anyone got any idea where he is now?
You've probably read the piece in Vanity Fair, Joe. The one that blames the collapse on Icelanders from big fishing families who learnt the Black-Scholes derivatives-pricing formula and talked the international-finance talk but couldn't walk the walk.
Possibly correct, but not with the mechanism he's familiar with and postulates.
More of a pump and dump fraud. It looks good going up, using the leverage and compounding interest for you. Smart insiders get out with the cash, and leave the deleveraging and eventual harm of the compounding interest to be picked up by those late to the game but eager to participate in such a sure thing.
"My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvements system and a high tariff."
He wasn't referring to three separate national policies, but a principle. Nowadays we don't even have a recognized name for it. "The American System" of Political economy, as it was called by Henry Clay (might have been John Quincy Adams, but Clay, I think; Adams understood it.)
Perkins is somewhat helpful, but he's making good money cleansing his conscience with books and appearances. He never seems to get past "capitalISM."
Sun-yat-Sen said "capital" wasn't money, it's machinery. Worth pondering. Try to find the principle, the intention.
Nation states that have the power to regulate the transnational financiers and grow beyond their putrid manipulations are the hated enemy and target of the oligarchy.
Right now, the way to defeat the oligarchy and its apparatus is for China, Russia, and India along with the necessary U.S.A. (others will join) to get together and put Bretton Woods back together the way FDR intended, and put this horrific soon to be genocidal mess through bankruptcy reorganization. Fixed exchange rates allowing stability for long-term treaty arrangements between nations for the purpose of nation-building. For the General Welfare. Building infrastructure and building minds. Human beings are not Hobbesian beasts and there are no limits to development, Goddammit.
We don't know diddly squat about history because the oligarchy wants it that way: Griffin interviews 83 year old Norman Dodds... the video seems to be all over the place; a transcript is here:
7 comments:
Is there any published article regarding this? I don't watch youtubes for "theories." The entire 9/11 nuttery was youtubes, starting with a mockumentary which the film-makers scrambled to make "real" after they discovered they were overnight cult leaders.
"As the new prime minister of Iceland, Geir Haarde [Brandeis] ’73 holds sway over a land full of colorful contrasts. He hopes rising immigration and economic development will make those colors even brighter."
"...he encourages immigration, which he says will contribute to 'an even more colorful Iceland,' with new cuisines, new cultural activities, and an important influx of skilled laborers to enrich the economy"
And here's the best part. The "before" picture:
"A NORTHERN UTOPIA?
Home ownership, for example, is close to 90 percent. The literacy rate is 100 percent [but apparently they are "unskilled" or untrainable as laborers!], and medical care is free to all. Hospitalization and higher education are entirely state-supported. Clean, natural sources of renewable energy abound. Unemployment hovers between 1 percent and 2 percent. According to figures compiled by the International Monetary Fund in April 2006, Iceland has a gross domestic product per capita of $35,586, positioning it fifth in the world in per-person purchasing
power—trailing only Luxembourg ($69,800), Norway ($42,364), the United States ($41,399), and Ireland ($40,610)."
- brandeis.edu / magazine / 0611 / pages / haarde.pdf
He may be right to a degree. Those types of predatory practices need to stop and now but I remember seeing something about Iceland being the victim of bad trading due to 1 or 2 guys investing all their money in very high risk/high reward kinds of things. I seriously doubt that having a huge hydroelectic power plant is what bankrupted them. On the contrary, it provides every person in Iceland free electricity. Didn't their monetary system collapse as well? Fortunately, I don't follow all this bad stuff so much especially when it doesn't directly effect people in my country.
Three areas for study:
1) the Icelandic president's wife and where he went with her, on a "private visit", in Sep 2008. A month later, the country broke down.
2) The Robert Tchenguiz connection. He and his friends emptied Kaupthing of all the money they could. Interesting article here. As a result, the British government paid out 7 billion pounds. Tchenguiz is well connnected in London. For a time he even owned Millbank Tower. British readers will recall that that building contained the Labour Party's HQ for several years. (Tchenguiz both bought it and sold it when the Labour Party was resident).
3) The Simon Halabi connection. Like Tchenguiz, Halabi is (or was!) a big property tycoon in London. And together with Tchenguiz, he paid himself a large amount of money from Kaupthing before it collapsed. Anyone got any idea where he is now?
You've probably read the piece in Vanity Fair, Joe. The one that blames the collapse on Icelanders from big fishing families who learnt the Black-Scholes derivatives-pricing formula and talked the international-finance talk but couldn't walk the walk.
Possibly correct, but not with the mechanism he's familiar with and postulates.
More of a pump and dump fraud. It looks good going up, using the leverage and compounding interest for you. Smart insiders get out with the cash, and leave the deleveraging and eventual harm of the compounding interest to be picked up by those late to the game but eager to participate in such a sure thing.
XI
Did Berlusconi do a 'Francois Mitterand' and arrange the attack on himself?
"My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvements system and a high tariff."
He wasn't referring to three separate national policies, but a principle. Nowadays we don't even have a recognized name for it. "The American System" of Political economy, as it was called by Henry Clay (might have been John Quincy Adams, but Clay, I think; Adams understood it.)
Perkins is somewhat helpful, but he's making good money cleansing his conscience with books and appearances. He never seems to get past "capitalISM."
Sun-yat-Sen said "capital" wasn't money, it's machinery. Worth pondering. Try to find the principle, the intention.
Nation states that have the power to regulate the transnational financiers and grow beyond their putrid manipulations are the hated enemy and target of the oligarchy.
Right now, the way to defeat the oligarchy and its apparatus is for China, Russia, and India along with the necessary U.S.A. (others will join) to get together and put Bretton Woods back together the way FDR intended, and put this horrific soon to be genocidal mess through bankruptcy reorganization. Fixed exchange rates allowing stability for long-term treaty arrangements between nations for the purpose of nation-building. For the General Welfare. Building infrastructure and building minds. Human beings are not Hobbesian beasts and there are no limits to development, Goddammit.
We don't know diddly squat about history because the oligarchy wants it that way: Griffin interviews 83 year old Norman Dodds... the video seems to be all over the place; a transcript is here:
http://www.supremelaw.org/authors/dodd/interview.htm
Step beyond the "isms" and see what the soulless ones have done to us.
It's time to take back our language and our history from the hands who have too long been allowed to mold it.
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