"Icelanders Force Accountability For Banks - Why Can't We?" by George Lakey at Waking Times

[applegrove]

Icelanders Force Accountability For Banks - Why Can't We?

by George Lakey, Contributor Waking Times

http://www.wakingtimes.com/2012/06/07/icelanders-force-accountability-for-banks-why-cant-we/

"SNIP...................................................


For decades, Iceland was part of the “Nordic model” of social democracy, with the high standards of living, free university education, universal health care, full employment and other benefits. Like Norway and Sweden, in the late 1980s the Icelanders flirted with neoliberalism, but unlike their Viking cousins they went all the way. The right-wing party privatized banks, cut regulations and lowered the corporate tax rate. The banks, in turn, created a bubble through hysterical foreign borrowing, and the bubble broke in September 2008. Banks failed. Unemployment and inflation shot up, and crisis reigned.

In mid-October, the singer/songwriter Hörður Torfason stood in the public square in the capitol of Reykjavik with an open microphone, inviting passersby to speak. Every Saturday people gathered to speak and protest, to the point where 2,000 people gathered outside the parliament building on January 20. They banged pots and pans to disrupt the meeting of parliament – the “Kitchenware Revolution,” they called it.

The crowds grew to 10,000 — out of a total population of 320,000! — and the increasing turbulence forced Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde to announce that he and his cabinet would resign and new elections would be held. Although politicians responsible for Iceland’s financial life were resigning, the campaigners didn’t stop there; they demanded — and won — the resignation of the governing board of the Central Bank.

The social democrats came back into power and started to clean up the mess, with help from Sweden and Norway. Iceland was hurt and people had tough times. However, the social democrats refused to do what capitalist wizards expected. Instead of trying to pacify international investors, Iceland created controls on the movement of capital. Instead of initiating an austerity program, the government expanded its social safety net.

................................................................SNIP"

[MannyGoldstein]

1. The people of Iceland are Firebaggers, unrealistic and

increasingly irrelevant.

Only austerity can provide the proper purification needed to bring back the Job Creators.

Austerity Now! Austerity Forever!

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. Oh Manny, you're my hero.

What were they thinking?

[Chan790]

5. Austerity should be a four-letter word.

Fuck the prophets of austerity. Fuck the Monetarists. Fuck the neoliberals. Fuck the tax-cut pushers, the supply-side economists, the free-traders and the corporatists. Fuck the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, Austrian and Chicago school economists.

Við erum öll íslensk!

[Egalitarian Thug]

2. It's not that we can't, it's that those we have granted power will not work for the greater good.

They do as they are told by those they fear and they do not fear us at all.

[snot]

4. K&R'd!!!