Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.10.2010, Qupperneq 12

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2010
After the events of the past few days,
it is hard not to think of Goya’s painting
of Saturn Devouring His Son. Iceland
is still in shambles and its children are
devouring the government that they
voted for to clean up the mess. After
watching our country suffer a melt-
down induced by half-witted Gordon
Gekko wannabes, I sense that a large
majority of Icelanders think that the
Independence Party can offer a sooth-
ing return to blissful ignorance. The
robber barons and fishing industry ty-
coons want a return to Icelandic capi-
talism: crony capitalism.
And while benches were being
burned, not on a bonfire of vanities,
but on a bonfire of misdirected anger
and ignorance, Morgunblaðið and oth-
er “respectable” media outlets claimed
that this was a mass showing of ordi-
nary citizens that were demanding a
new government. However, last time
there were similar protests it was be-
cause dangerous communists and ex-
tremists sought to threaten Iceland’s
stability and economical recovery.
Bjarni Benediktsson, chairman of the
Independent Party, better known as
The Ken Doll, put on his Janus perfor-
mance. He praised the protests since
he was not in power, since Bjarni is far
too busy to dare sully himself and his
silver spoon by showing up.
These benches have been the
homes of Reykjavík’s derelict and
downtrodden, the people we walk past
every day downtown. These protesters
complain of a lack of income for basic
needs such as food, and yet they have
enough disposable income to buy egg
cartons, juice bottles and other items
to throw at the government that ac-
tually may not be doing the greatest
job in the world yet it is still cleaning
up the mess that the distinct Icelan-
dic crony capitalism created, which
enabled Jón Ásgeir and others to buy
up the whole country, bleed it, torch
it and then lie to the Icelandic people
on television; on the same flat screen
televisions the children of the boom
years bought while the Progressive
Party created a housing bubble with a
cheerful face in ads.
The protests seemed to be com-
prised of a generation of “me first” Ice-
landers: teenagers that prefer reading
text messages to books, suburbanites
that lived in a bubble and believed the
lies perpetuated by Morgunblaðið and
the Independence Party—people that
actually use words like communist
with a straight face and thought that
Iceland was somehow more special
than every other country in the world.
However, the most pathetic part of the
protests had to be the Neo-Nazis and
their symbols. Instead of focusing their
rage on the individuals that created an
oligarchic society made up of crony
capitalists, we now have people spew-
ing their hatred on others. After suf-
fering from a severe case of capitalis-
tic affluenza, we now blame foreigners
for our problems instead of looking
within. Shortly after the crash it was
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling,
then the IMF and other countries for
not lending us money. Now it is “The
Other”.
Ironically, this makes sense in Ice-
land. The farcical perversity of our
society is so immense that it seems
like Iceland is a cosmic joke. One of
the architects of the Iceland’s current
problems is Björgólfur Guðmundsson,
who is married to the former wife of
Norman Rockwell, a prominent Ameri-
can Nazi. Thanks to Björgólfur and the
rest of the ship of fools, Iceland is now
dealing with the aftermath; nonethe-
less people seem to have forgotten
him. I guess he is too busy trying to run
Iceland into the ground again for the
protesters to notice while they keep on
filling the pockets of the oligarchs.
Opinion | Marvin Lee Dupree News | Iceland in the International Eye: September
The Silver Spoon Revolution Jungle Drums and Tribal Justice
“…Iceland’s misadventure in
imitating the banking ex-
cesses of bigger countries
has let it to imitate their ju-
dicial excesses.” Christopher Caldwell,
Financial Times
Public patience has once again
reached breaking point. Although cur-
rent protests may have been ignited by
Alþingi’s recent debacle—a surpris-
ing event which vindicated former
ministers of Finance, Foreign Affairs
and Business Affairs of all blame in
Iceland’s economic collapse, but sin-
gled-out ex-PM Geir Haarde, voting to
indict him for gross negligence—the
question Icelanders are asking is: Can
anyone here get our house in order?
Commenting on the indictment of Geir
Haarde, the Financial Times noted: “In
large countries a crusading judiciary is
either the sign of a feeble political class
or the modus operandi of a corrupt one.
Maybe, where everyone knows every-
one else, statesmen can be disciplined
ad hominem without creating damag-
ing constitutional precedents. Maybe
the prosecution of Mr Haarde is more
tribal than political.”
In an interview with Bloomberg
Television, Geir stated that his indict-
ment was absurd. “The crisis,” he said,
“was not due to political decisions.
It was partly the banks’ own doing.”
Without pointing fingers, he admits
that there were mistakes made within
his own government, but for him, this
indictment is a case of “political op-
ponents settling their scores.” Geir H.
Haarde, the first political leader to lose
power as a direct result of the economic
crisis, is also the first—and potentially
only one—to be indicted. He told the
Financial Times that he and his col-
leagues “did not cause the crisis any
more than George Bush in the US or
Gordon Brown in the UK.”
Geir may be on to something here.
Hoping Geir’s indictment could set
precedent other former political leaders
are being singled-out for the chopping
block in the UK and even the US. In
fact, the Daily Telegraph proposes the
UK government mount a similar case
against Gordon Brown: “…he failed to
control the recklessness of the banks…
he stripped the Bank of England of its
powers…and gave them a…wholly inept
regulator…he misled parliament over
the state of the public finances…” The
Wall Street Journal concurs whole-
heartedly, but it’s highly unlikely that a
major political leader could be brought
to court either in the UK or the US due
to negligence any time soon. Set up in
1905, Iceland’s Landsdómur, a special
chamber to try ministers accused of
crimes, appears to be a rather unique
institution.
In the US, Foreign Policy Magazine
had a look at the legal framework cov-
ering a potential indictment of former
President George W. Bush and for-
mer Federal Reserve Chairman Alan
Greenspan, but found that “it's not
against the law for [US] politicians to
screw up.” Apparently mistaken regu-
latory decisions and lax oversight are
not grounds for criminal charges, and
in fact even civil charges are highly
unlikely. “Unless U.S. regulators were
purposely colluding with companies
to defraud investors, they can't be held
responsible. Iceland's law is pretty
unique, but countries under the West-
minster system—those based on the
British parliament—traditionally op-
erate under a principle of ‘ministerial
responsibility’.” The Financial Times
points out that, “A simple-minded ide-
ology, foolishly imposed is not the same
as a crime. Negligence, no matter how
gross, is not corruption.”
To make matters worse, progress in
charging former Icelandic ‘oligarchs’
and their ‘banksters-in-crime’ appears
to be geriatric to say the least. The Daily
Mail states: “The Financial Services
authority, as Kaupþing's UK regulator,
does not appear to have been in a great
hurry to release regulatory material to
the Serious Fraud Office.” And here
in Iceland, despite a year and a half of
evidence-accumulation, not a single
‘bankster’ has been brought to justice.
Meanwhile, despite all the current gov-
ernment’s promises to the contrary,
and at the behest of the IMF, homes
are being repossessed, taxes are higher
than ever, and social benefits are being
cut left and right. One wonders who re-
ally governs the country.
This last month the FT noted that
Ágúst Guðmundsson, founder of Bak-
kavör and one of the largest share-
holders in the now-defunct Kaupþing,
settled a London lawsuit filed against
him. He was charged with acquiring
an unprecedented 10 million USD loan
from his former bank in 2007 for a
holiday chalet in the French Alps. In
the US, Glitnir’s ongoing 2 billion USD
lawsuit with Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson
appears to be nowhere near reaching a
close. Quoted last month in the Daily
Telegraph, he says: "For Glitnir to sug-
gest that the overseas incorporation of
these [my] companies is evidence of a
complex web of international interests
designed to conceal my assets is clearly
nonsensical."
On the surface, it seems—with the
exception of Geir Haarde—that no one
is guilty of a single thing. For a frus-
trated Icelandic nation there appears to
be only one thing to do: Crack out those
pots and pans and get banging again.
MARC VINCENz PáLL HILMARSSON