Iceland Kicks Netherlands and England Off Their Financial Island

We hesitate to judge others when it comes to being a deadbeat and not paying all debts as quickly as possible -- let them without sin cast the first stone-- but you have to wonder what's gotten into our Icelandic friends as they sit eating their holiday hangikjöt while refusing to pay off Britain and the Netherlands. These would be the same two nations that loaned Iceland several billion dollars, and saved some 400,000 investors in Icesave, an internet banking branch of Landsbanki. Granted these "savers" in Icesave were overseas (as in continental Europe), so one can see the average Icelander perfectly willing to stiff them, and especially when you are all up in your own island feeling winter cozy what with your snacks and stuff.

The Treasury expected Reykjavik to rubberstamp the terms of repayment for the loan extended by Britain and the Netherlands at the height of the financial crisis. The loan meant that 400,000 savers with deposits in Icesave did not lose their money. 

President Ólafur Grimsson stunned the world’s financial community by refusing to sign the repayment schedule into law. Instead, he said that the matter would be decided in a referendum among Iceland’s 243,000 voters.

(Times, U.K.)

This is bad, given the broader support in the range of $12 billion that Iceland accepted from the E.U., I.M.F. and other nations, and while they are saying they will make good on their debts, coming up with an actual method that keeps the average Icelandic citizen smiling, or cracking a smile, seems unlikely.

Aside from the politicians at the top perhaps trying to displace voter anger by letting the citizens vote via referendum on the payments to Britain and the Netherlands, one wonders if this is just a back door method to avoid moving toward E.U. membership. Somewhere, maybe, someone with some clout is saying, "Hey, if we pee on the walls, they won't let us in!"  But it's more than that. They are killing their hopes of any broadly financed economic support and that will certainly delay recovery. Half of having decent credit has nothing to do with money... it's reputation, which often enough can replace money, or the need for it.

Maybe the average person does not care. After all, you are living on an island. You have geothermal baths and energy independence , a small population and plenty of fish and Bjork. You don't really need money. And if you do, you can just immigrate to the U.S. or some other place that likes really attractive people (or confuses you with the hotter people in Sweden).

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