Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.02.2012, Page 8

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 2 — 2012
Opinion | Marc Vincenz Opinion | Hildur Lilliendahl
According to the figures on the table,
things in Iceland are looking up. Yes, I
know we’ve heard this numerous times
before, and it seems that some of our
politicians and statisticians have a pro-
pensity to play up the good numbers
and play down the bad ones. So is there
any truth to it?
Standard & Poors recently upped
Iceland’s outlook from negative to sta-
ble, didn’t it?
In its January global property in-
vestment guide, NuWire Investor, says
yes, “Iceland’s Real Estate Market is
Warming Up.” Since October 2011,
real estate transactions have surged
more than 60% since October of 2011
and the house price index rose 6.28%.
“House prices are now just below levels
seen in Q1 2008.”
The Washington Post (WP) states in
a January 17 article that Iceland’s inf la-
tion has fallen, consumers are spend-
ing more cash, that there are new in-
vestments in geothermal projects, and
that there’s no lack of Audis, Mercedes
or BMWs on the streets. It reports that
Iceland’s exports last year were appar-
ently 11 percent higher than the year
before—and yet, as we were recently
made aware of by Bloomberg and other
sources, corporate failures rose by 11
percent. Ingólfur Bender, an economist
at Íslandsbanki, told Bloomberg: “The
huge number of company failures indi-
cates that the economy is still severely
impaired after the crisis.”
Meanwhile, Julie Kozack, chief of
the IMF mission in Iceland, is optimis-
tic. She says, “For a country whose en-
tire financial system collapsed, Iceland
is doing remarkably well.” But there
is a note of caution in her voice as she
concludes that the country is “not out of
the woods yet.”
One of the problems appears to be
these darned capital controls. I mean,
who wants to invest in a country where
you can’t convert assets to free-f lowing
cash? Investment Europe, an online
fund investment publication, recently
cast quite a shadow over the current
investment environment, saying that
Iceland is presently not much of an
option. Capital controls represent “by
far the biggest challenge as it stops all
additional allocation to foreign assets…
if money is repatriated [to Iceland], it
cannot find its way out again.” This
accumulation of domestic funds is not
scheduled to ease until 2020, and all of
this “threatens to create an asset price
bubble.”
Is there someone out there carefully
thinking all of this through?
In a story featured in the Sydney
Morning Herald, Australia’s Assistant
Treasurer and Minister for Financial
Services and Superannuation, Mr Bill
Shorten says: “…Comparing us [Aus-
tralia] to Iceland…Walt Disney couldn’t
have dreamed that one up…the idea
that we are becoming like Iceland when
we can buy three times as much Icelan-
dic króna as we used to…the only thing
we have in common with Iceland is we
are both an island.”
Obviously Mr Shorten doesn’t see
Iceland in a particularly optimistic
light. I guess he has too many of his
own woes to consider our tenderfoot
‘successes.’
And it’s here the WP story steps in
again. “Beneath the façade, real prob-
lems and deep uncertainty remain.
Late in 2010 an Icelandic couple made
the news. A surrogate mother in India,
paid for by the couple, had given birth
to a baby boy but Icelandic law prohibit-
ed them from bringing the baby home.
Surrogacy isn’t legal in Iceland so the
couple could not be considered the
baby's legal parents. It took them three
to four months to gain citizenship and
a passport and all the other legal docu-
ments needed for the baby. Up until
this point, surrogacy as a topic had been
somewhat ignored by the media and
parliament. This was about to change.
In early 2011, a parliamentary reso-
lution was proposed to legalise altruis-
tic surrogacy (as opposed to commer-
cial, meaning the surrogate mother
is not paid beyond reimbursement for
occupational and/or medical expenses).
Subsequently, comments were sought
from various companies and public
offices (including those dealing with
human rights and children’s rights),
as well as loads of unions (nurses and
doctors), associations (almost all of the
formal women’s movements) and lo-
cal as well as global organisations (the
Icelandic division of The Red Cross and
Save the Children). Long story short, al-
most all responses were either negative
or highly sceptical.
Apparently, parliament doesn’t care.
Last month, on January 18, a resolution
was passed stating that a bill shall be
written “as soon as possible” (for real)
to legalise surrogacy, regardless of the
opposition of various experts. The bill
is more than likely to pass through par-
liament without much opposition.
Now, I don’t want to waste more
space writing about legal issues or the
history of research on surrogacy in this
part of the world or any other. What I do
want to address is the moral aspect, my
reservations, my opposition, as a wom-
an and as a human. The first question
we automatically ask ourselves (or at
least I did) is: how can it be a bad thing
in a prosperous society for healthy
women to help out some poor barren
person or persons, by lending our body
if we feel up to it and want to do it?
Here is what I came up with:
I feel the idea in itself reduces women
to machines of reproduction. I sense
objectification:
Waiting To Thaw WHy I bOTHER, PT. IV
Opinion | Crooks
The Watergate scandal was both a
low point and a high point in Ameri-
can politics. The downside was
that the President turned out to
be a crook. The upside was that it
showed that no one was above the
law, not even the President himself.
Nixon was forced to resign in 1974,
but the results were not as one might
have hoped. Bright young people did
not rush into politics to prove that they
could do a better job than Nixon did.
Instead, people who wanted change
seemed to have largely lost faith in the
system. Arguably, American politics
never recovered, leading to Reagan,
the Bushes, the Tea Party and (God
help us) Newt Gingrich. Perhaps Ford’s
decision to pardon Nixon as soon as he
succeeded to office played a major part
in this disillusionment. The former
President, it turned out, was above the
law after all.
THE RESULTS OF A REVOLUTION
Much the same now seems to be taking
place in Iceland. The economic collapse
in 2008 laid the f laws of the crony-
based Icelandic political system bare.
Many rushed to the streets to demand
change, others wrote columns, blogs,
even books, made comments, analysed
and tried their best to understand what
had happened. Prime Minister Geir H.
Haarde was forced out of office along
with the government he presided over,
but change has been slow in coming.
A committee was set up by Parlia-
ment to find out the roots of the col-
lapse. The findings were seen as au-
thoritative and laid the blame equally
on the political and financial systems.
Eventually, the MPs themselves were
forced to act, voting on whether to in-
dict four of its own members, two from
the Alliance Party and two from the
Independence Party, including the for-
mer PM himself.
THE TRUTH WILL COME OUT…
The results of the vote were a disap-
pointment to anyone expecting change.
Parliament failed to rise above its
squabbles, largely voting along party
lines. The result was that only one
man, the former Prime Minister, was
indicted. This made it easier for Geir’s
supporters to portray the indictment as
politically motivated.
Nevertheless, he was undeniably
the man in charge in the years lead-
ing up to the collapse, and if someone
was to be held accountable, it seemed
reasonable to start with Geir Haarde.
Even more importantly, the trial would
force many of the most powerful people
in Iceland to take the stand, and this in
itself might force much valuable infor-
mation on the reasons for the collapse
out into the open.
…OR MAybE NOT
Of course, much of this information
would be sensitive, if not downright
incriminating, for many of those still
in Parliament. Small wonder then that
Independence Party Chairman Bjarni
Benediktsson recently put forth a mo-
tion to suspend the trial. This requires
a double vote, first on whether his mo-
tion is to be submitted to a vote, and
then the vote itself. So far, Parliament
has voted in favour of putting his sug-
gestion to a vote. Whether they then
will vote in favour of suspending the
trial, remains to be seen.
What is clear, however, is that if
Parliament votes to shield the former
Prime Minister from accountability,
then this will lead to further disillu-
sionment with the political system as
a whole. Our elected leaders will have
proven to be truly above the law, and
those desiring change will want noth-
ing to do with such a system. Perhaps
this is exactly what the Independence
Party is counting on, for it is the best
way to make sure that nothing will tru-
ly change.
A Watergate Of Our Own
VALUR GUNNARSSON
Parliament to dismiss criminal charges against former PM Geir H. Haarde?
NOT A CROOK
Continues on page 18 Continues on page 18
Parliament to write a bill legalizing surrogacy “as soon as possible”Iceland in the international eye - January
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