Iceland
Iceland never wanted to join the European Union because it was doing so well. The 320,000-strong population had the highest per capita income on earth. Those who opposed membership argued that the country got what it needed through forming part of the European Economic Area, which gave it access to the single market, with none of the burdens of membership. Those who favour membership argue that using the euro will shelter Iceland from the mad fluctuations of the Icelandic currency, the krona. One Icelandic minister, who must have been made in the same mould as the Malta Labour Party, suggested before the current disaster that Iceland should try to join the eurozone without joining the European Union. I look at what is happening there and I feel a shiver of empathy. Like us, the Icelandic people have to import everything, and now they have no foreign currency to do it. People are panic-buying food before it all runs out. If things carry on this way, they will have to go back to surviving on puffin, with health problems in the long dark winters because of the lack of fresh fruit and vegetables – which used to happen until fairly recently. On the positive and selfish side, now is the time to take a holiday in that stunning country, because the Icelandic currency is almost worthless, and your holiday will cost you little more than the flights. Read this article which tells you what is happening.
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Good thing they didn’t join the EU too – or Gordon Brown would have already bullied the Council into making them cough up the 20 Bn pounds of UK companies’ accounts in their country in cash by now!!!
EU membership has nothing to do with what the Icelandic banks did. They went on a derivative spree, thinking they can cater for the world’s loan requirements, believing their patron bankers across the pond would never stop lending them more money at low interest rates.
Now they seek a €4 billion loan from Russia, itself in a very bad shape as foreign investors are pulling out. Explaining this strange move, the Icelandic PM said that when friends don’t help, new friends are sought.
The independent nation state of Iceland is now insolvent. €4 billion would hardly help. British depositors alone are owed £8 billion! (Imagine that for a population of 313,376)
It seems independent Iceland was given enough rope to hang itself. I will not venture further as that would provoke tin-foil cat-calls. I will leave you to the words of the dark baron himself, David Rockefeller:
“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But now the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
If you’d like to know more about corporate fascism, consult Mussolini.
This Switzerland in the Atlantic is being left out in the cold.If they will ask Russia for help they will go from the frying pan to the fire.
Alfred’s contribution on the Independent is good: http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=76532
I hope it won’t have repercussions on our pharmaceutical industries.
The temperature in Iceland at the moment is 3 degrees centigrade at night and 6 degrees centigrade during the day:do you still think it is a good time to go on holiday there!
Seriously,Iceland’s financial problems are the result of pure greed and trying to box above their weight:thankfully we were much wiser in Malta.They are trying to get a loan from the Russians or the IMF:imagine what the Russians will ask in return going by what it costed us with the six timber carriers!
@ John Schembri “Alfred Mifsud’s contribution is good” I beg to differ, clear case of mixing apples and pears BIG TIME.
While his part about Iceland is correct, and figures being mentioned about Iceland’s default could top £8 billion (Eur 11 billion), Malta’s energy problem is about a shortfall of some Eur55 million. I doubt that our friend Alfred has a problem with numbers, but to put the Icelandic problem in perspective it is THREE times Malta’s national debt
Then he goes on to say that the the government is irresponsible for keeping the surcharge at an articially low level of 50 percent to see it through the elections. Has he forgotten that the MLP’s promise was to reduce it to 25% irrespective of the price of oil
I thought the caped crusader had finally lightened up. It seems it was just a temporary blip.
One interesting fact is emerging out of this financial crisis, where Malta is concerned. It seems that this country’s banks have remained, as they always were, almost exclusively local banks, confined to the shores of these islands. For all the talk that now we have “opened up” and that “we are now part of Europe” and “gone are the bleak Mintoff days when we were locked up”, Malta’s banks carried on their business exclusively locally, as they always have.
Some actually blame Mintoff of encouraging an insular mentality, especially with those bans on imports and with import substitution. Well, it seems now that this closed and insular mentality, which despite all bla bla bla to the contrary is still firmly entrenched in the Maltese psyche, has saved the day for us.
Love him or hate him, Mintoff’s policy was to make Malta as self-sufficient as possible, in such a way as to be sheltered form the turbulant world outside. This policy seems to be showing its usefulness only now.
Up to a few days ago it was admirable in the financial world to be aggressive and to grow larger and larger portfolios. Take the Icelandic banks. Now, suddenly, the hero is the tiny island which remained closed within its shores.
We live in interesting times. Times in which we are going to have to rethink the liberal ideas of these last 20 years. Ideas that had become as dogmatic as Catholicism, but which now sound totally outdated and hopelessly useless.
One interesting aspect is that, if anything, banks are becoming more wary on the types of loans they mete out: How many of you have heard horror stories of companies getting facilities only to be partly used by their owners to buy boats and other perks?
We’ve had our own share of close shaves here in Malta and this is one of them: I look forward to the day, however, when local banks are held accountable on the real value of the securities they have lodged on their loan portfolios… particular in certain client sectors – most notably of which is the property development sector where one needs only see the number of completed and unsellable properties in certain notorious parts of our small islands.
On a more general and wider aspect, this meltdown brings into question the value and scope of business ventures worldwide where people with no productive skills, employed by loss-making enterprises (such as investment banks) end up doing millions and then the real entrepreneurs and productive professionals end up surviving on a pittance.
Albert Farrugia: There is a difference between isolationism and self-sufficiency. Unless we all live in caves and forage for food, we won’t ever be self-sufficient because we lack the necessary resources. Even then there wouldn’t be enough caves to go round and we could hardly survive on caper picking, one of Mintoff’s less absurd economic innovations.
We import much of the food that is essential to our survival, and to the survival of one of our major industries (tourism), and use imported energy to drive the machinery needed to produce the food we do grow ourselves, to power our homes and to ensure we have water in our taps.
Need I go on?
Incidentally, Malta’s banking sector includes HSBC, Volksbank, Fimbank, Banif…none of those banking brands are Maltese or deal solely with Maltese-owned businesses in Malta. I can’t imagine their boards getting together and planning not to do business with ‘forriners’. Can you?
Corinne, soon you will be singing glories to a world currency being proposed by the same people who created this global ponzy scheme, well aware, of course, how ponzy schemes invariably end. These are the same people who have now taken over the US Treasury (and not just the Federal Reserve and the IMF and World Bank) and would like to take over all the world’s treasuries in collusion with the international banking cartel spread across the globe. The Elites are the true internationalists – read globalists – not the socialists who sung the Internationale in bygone years (although some historians relate the two).
You would also be singing praise to digital money with no sound basis except for the trust you are forced to afford to people you don’t know and never will.
The real power is in the hands of those who control the monetary system, not the marionettes you elect into government.
Albert Farrugia
Are you implying that HSBC is a local bank? It does sell itself as ‘the world’s local bank’ but that’s just an advertising slogan.
Your eulogy of Mintoff’s narrow-mindedness is too ridiculous to merit an answer but, for your information, besides HSBC and the three local banks, there are other 8 offshore banks operating in Malta. (http://www.worldoffshorebanks.com/Malta.html)
I do, however, agree with that bit where you confess to having an insular mentality and blame Mintoff for it.
Kevin Ellul Bonici: What are you on about? I don’t see you picking capers back home in Lilliput in the name of self-sufficiency.
Digital money with no sound basis, eh? As opposed to what? Bank notes that are worth the paper they’re printed on? Gold bars under the bed? Conch shells and steel axes in a multi-centric Stone Age economy?
And what’s this about trust you are forced to afford to people you don’t know and never will? Do you really grow your own tofu and recycle your own sewage with your bare hands?
I think you need a new hobby. Your current one’s wearing you out.
Corinne, paper money is not sound money unless it’s backed by precious metals. Digital money is much worse, because when your banker/state switches your card off you cannot use beads, coins or paper to buy your requirements. And if the bank card is reduced to a chip that’s inserted into our bodies, then you can only imagine what tyranny becomes possible.
But you are the one who could not even understand how banks lend money they don’t possess (to collect interests they don’t deserve). So if you are at that stage, I’ll opt not to waste much time here – to the bull you wrote, I suggest the following shit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgMx2F41XD0
And if you see no connection with what’s going on, then tough! Clap your hands and praise the leaders you trust.
Kev
“And if the bank card is reduced to a chip that’s inserted into our bodies, then you can only imagine what tyranny becomes possible.”
You’ve been living too long in Brussels. We’re having a hard time here getting micro-chips inserted in dogs’ bodies, let alone human ones.
I can understand your anguish (not being sarcastic, honest) if you’re imagining a sci-fi world where people are controlled by chips inserted in their bodies. Reminds me of The Prisoner (starring Patrick McGoohan and way before your time).
In the real world we inhabit that doesn’t happen and I cannot see it happening any time soon. We’ve hardly even started to have an e-ID.
Kevin Ellul Bonici: Oh dear. Upset you, have I?
You pop up from time to time to enlighten the savages and then can’t understand why they don’t appreciate the riches you bring. So you gather your skirts about you and flounce off in a huff, flinging down your beaded necklaces and brass rods on the way out.
It doesn’t seem to occur to you that you might not be the first explorer the savages have encountered and they see you only as a source of temporary amusement. Has it occurred to you that your beaded necklaces and brass rods have no more value than the ones the savages have already appraised and discarded rather than piling them up in their longhouse?
I agree that it’s tough call for you, but you really need to relax. Frankly, I can’t understand why you’re so excited about this bumf anyway. It all sounds like a school essay on unsecured value that I wrote nearly thirty years ago. Have you only just discovered it yourself, perhaps when you stumbled across Naomi Wolf?
At this rate, you’ll be rattling on about the panopticon next. Now that’s a conspiracy theory you’d relish.
I think some of you are too quick to knock down Kev. And what’s worse, your replies are not very convincing. This blog doesn’t seem to attract many people open to interesting debate, which is a pity. Too often issues are not discussed at all but simply condemned or supported, vigorously. Not very enlightening is it? In the long run all you’re doing is strenghtening your own prejudices and self assuredness, without any possibility of open your minds a little further. Personally, I do not trust anyone who has an answer to everything, especially when it comes to international finance and politics. As if we all know what’s what, from a to z, without any possibility of being wrong, or partly wrong, or not aware of the bigger picture (something many Maltese on both sides of the social divide seem to suffer from). This attitude (dualistic, us vs them, call it what you will) will do us no good, and in the end it will even destroy us. What pisses me off is that there seems to be no real awareness of this self-destructive streak in our culture. Ridiculing the Maltese language, spoken and written, and making out that the population in general is stupid will not get us anywhere either. Don’t you think so?
Oh, look, I had forgotten about you, Corinne.
You have not upset me, but your empty assumptions annoy me somewhat. For example, I brought Naomi Wold into the scene only because I thought she spoke your language. Evidently, you lurk in some past age and there you will remain. Otherwise, let me assure you that Naomi is newer to this field than I am.
@ Antoine – you must be much older than Corinne. Do you jump high from inside your trench in order to capture your worldview, or do you use WWII periscope?
Kev
“Do you jump high from inside your trench in order to capture your worldview, or do you use WWII periscope?”
Neither. I use a micro-chip inserted inside my body by the EU secret police.
Regarding your other comment, I’m much older than Corinne but I have another chip which keeps me young.