Many residents of Reykjavik lost their savings overnight. Above, a woman waiting for the main branch of Landsbankinn Bank to open in Reykjavik. (Bob Strong/Reuters)
Posted on 11/10/2008 7:01:30 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
For Icelanders, shock and anger over a dizzying fall
By Sarah Lyall
Sunday, November 9, 2008
REYKJAVIK: The collapse came so fast it seemed unreal, impossible. One woman here compared it to being hit by a train.
Another said she felt as if she were watching it through a window.
Another said, "It feels like you've been put in a prison, and you don't know what you did wrong."
Iceland, as modern and sophisticated as it is geographically isolated, still seems to be in shock. But if the events of last month - the failure of banks; the plummeting of currency; the first wave of layoffs; the loss of reputation abroad - felt like a bad dream, the country has now awakened to find that it is all true.
It is not as if Reykjavik, where about two-thirds of the country's 300,000 people live, is filled with bread lines or shanties for the homeless or looters smashing store windows. But this city, until recently the center of one of the world's fastest economic booms, is now the unhappy site of one of its great crashes. It is impossible to meet anyone here who has not been profoundly affected by the financial crisis.
Overnight, people lost their savings. Prices are soaring. Once-crowded restaurants are almost empty. Banks are rationing foreign currency, and companies are finding it dauntingly difficult to do business abroad. Inflation is at 16 percent and rising. People have stopped traveling overseas. The local currency, the krona, was at 65 to the dollar a year ago; now it is at 130. Companies are slashing salaries, reducing workers' hours and, in some instances, embarking on mass layoffs.
"No country has ever crashed as quickly and as badly in peacetime," said Jon Danielsson, an economist for the London School of Economics.
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
Ping!
I feel so sorry for the Icelanders, they are good people. They could apply for statehood, then we could bail them out...........
I am grateful that my family lives in a moderate climate which is able to produce food year round. We might go broke but we will not go hungry, nor will we freeze to death.
At least we have a climate that will allow us to grow our own food. The Icelanders have to rely on outside food and have no money to buy it.
Atlas Shrugged. Stupid economic and political policies can be pursued for quite a long time, with the expectation that someone will always rescue the people who create the problems. But when the day comes that no one wants to, or no one can save the situation, then it all goes to smash.
Before they became hot shot bankers they were decent fishermen.
Unbelievable. I, too, feel so very sorry for them.
The article says they are predicting a 10% unemployment rate next spring in Iceland. We will be slightly lower than that. The current situation we are in is correctable by the free market, whereas in Iceland, it is not correctable so quickly.
Our future economy at this point in time depends more on Obama's economic plans than the bursting of the credit bubble. More bail outs, tax hikes, payouts to individuals, energy policies (gas at $4 and cap & trade policies) and socialized medicine will hurt far more than any bursting of any bubble. This could drive us to a situation that is far worse than is in Iceland over the next 2 to 3 years.
You said — “The Icelanders have to rely on outside food and have no money to buy it.”
Which is why the Vikings pulled out of Iceland, a long while back... LOL...
I hope they like fish!
I’ve met only one Icelander in my lifetime, a former girlfriend of a friend of mine. She was very beautiful. But she was so naive it was astounding................
Many residents of Reykjavik lost their savings overnight. Above, a woman waiting for the main branch of Landsbankinn Bank to open in Reykjavik. (Bob Strong/Reuters)
Our situation to a large part was caused by two people, Barney Frank and Criss Cox neither of which has been held responsible.
They ride funny little horses.
There’s only 300k people in their whole country. We have about that many in the Panhandle of Florida, west of Panama City. If it become necessary we could support them with all kinds of food aid.................
I'd say you've called it about right. It's what I expect to happen.
Posts like that are no good without phone numbers.
This was 20 years ago.......
So, are you saying that she is no longer beautiful, or she is no longer naive?
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