Icelanders Vote on Predatory Bailout: Nyet




Will Iceland Vote "No" on April 9, or commit financial suicide?


A year ago, in March 2010, Iceland's economy was so small that it did not warrant much attention when 93% of its voters rejected the Social Democratic-Green government's surrender to Gordon Brown and the Dutch, the European Union (EU) bureaucracy and IMF demands that it impose austerity as penance for believing the neoliberal fairy tales about how bank deregulation and "free markets" would make it the richest, happiest country in the world. Indeed it seemed to be, according to United Nations data.

Iceland, fight this injustice


Saturday's referendum is a chance for Icelanders to strike at the conspiracy that leaves us all bailing out financiers

On Saturday the Icelandic people vote in a referendum on whether the Icelandic state and thus the citizens should guarantee the so-called Icesave claim. Icesave was a bank deposit account that promised market-leading interest rates. When the bank failed, the question arose if the Icelandic depositors' guarantee fund - a private institution financed by the banks - should have taxpayer backing. Instead of letting depositors lose their money or even wait for compensation from the bankruptcy estate, the governments of the UK and Netherlands (where the Icesave products where marketed) decided to reimburse depositors from their own countries. The reimbursement included the full principal, while the recklessly high-interest profits of the risk-seeking depositors were thrown in as a bonus.

Letter from Iceland on IceSave



Letter to Dominique Strauss-Kahn and José Manuel Barroso ahead of Iceland national referendum


Thanks to Helga Thordardottir for sending a copy of a letter sent to Dominique Strauss-Kahn and José Manuel Barroso ahead of the national referendum in Iceland on April 9th.

Questions for the ECB ahead of the Icelandic Icesave Referendum


A copy of the following letter has been sent by a small Icelandic group campaigning in advance of theforthcoming referendum on the terms of the Icesave deal with Britain and the Netherlands to several officials within the EU and EFTA as well as to the ministeries of Britain, Holland and Iceland to whom this case belongs. The letter has also been sent to several European newsmedia.

Reykjavik 18.03.2011

Mr Herman Van Rompuy
President of the European Council
European Council
Rue de la Loi 175
B-1048 Brussels

Dear Mr Van Rompuy

Manifesto on the crisis of the Euro

Introduction: Europe at the crossroads

The Euro is in danger. This danger comes from those who claim to be its saviours in the current crisis – from the German government, the parties supporting it, and most of the German media. They believe that responsibility for the crisis lies mostly with those members of the Eurozone that have trouble servicing their debt, and have therefore been forced to subject themselves to the EU’s as well as the IMF’s socalled ‘conditionalities’. In a rerun of the last decades’ debt crisis in the countries of


The debt restructuring is the foremost issue in Iceland, with the so-called Icesave issue on the top of the agenda right now. The government has made a deal with Great Britain and Holland, called Icesave III, in which Icelandic taxpayers are supposed to pay for the irresponsible behavior of the international financial oligarchy regarding the Icesave accounts. This is a very unpopular deal and a national referendum is being called for. We hope the president answer the loud calls for this, but the parliament has already passed the deal.

Iceland can refuse debt servitude

Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, Iceland's president, has created uproar with his decision to block legislation that would have repaid €3.9bn ($5.6bn) lost by British and Dutch savers in a failed Icelandic bank, triggering a referendum that the government is expected to lose. The initial response by credit rating agencies was to downgrade Icelandic bonds, as if Iceland were repudiating its debts, Argentina-style. But opponents of the bill have no intention of reneging on their legal obligations.

Capitalism and the Useful Nation State

"With the global collapse of credit, trade, production, employment, and public finances unfolding since 2007, the typical scramble commenced over who would finally have to bear the burden of the immense social costs flowing from that collapse. Enter the usefulness of the nation state. The state's "national debt" becomes everywhere the means to socialize the costs of private capitalism's crisis. It becomes clearer by the day that it is the mass of the citizenry that is being positioned to bear most of those costs."

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