Is Iceland the anti-Ireland?

 Here's the counterpoint.

Iceland is supposed to have told the IMF to get lost? He says the IMF country page on Iceland shows that Iceland actually "followed the IMF's advice to a tee".

As for flipping off the creditors, he says yes and no:

What is actually going on in Iceland | Studio Tendra

Iceland didn't bail out the collapsed banks, but that wasn't for the want of trying. If you read through the Report of the Special Investigation Commission you'd find out that the Icelandic government tried everything it could to save the banks, including asking for insane loans to pay off the banks' debts.

A summary of the report he cites is available in English.

The true story, according to Bjarnason, is that Iceland did everything it could to save creditors. "The only reason why we didn't is that the Icelandic government, then and now, is completely incompetent." There follows a list of stupid things attempted or done by the Icelandic government. And some that were corrupt.

Nationalisation of the banks? Bjarnason says two out of the three major collapsed banks are now owned by the (supposedly shafted) creditors (the third, Landsbanki, is involved in litigation concerning Icesave and is still government-run). Nationalisation itself, he suggests, is in any case a misnomer for the emergency control process used.

Debt relief?

What is actually going on in Iceland | Studio Tendra

There has been plenty of debt relief here. The the top 1% has had almost all of their debt written off, for example. Wasn't that nice of the banks?

For the rest of us, the picture is a lot more complicated.

Strong Icelandic growth? He admits there may be discussion on this point, and goes into it in some detail. His take is that growth is at 2.7% but inflation at 4-5%. But of course you could always have inflation at 2% and no growth at all.

All in all, he backs his arguments up fairly solidly.

What is actually going on in Iceland | Studio Tendra

This isn't a blog post on economics. Pointing people at the public record, what legislation was actually enacted and what wasn't, what court cases were won and lost, who was prosecuted and not, what actions the government took and not, is not economics and not open to interpretation. You can debate about the long-term effects of the legislation that was enacted (and there's a debate to be had there) but you cannot debate the basic facts of what was actually done and what wasn't.

Sweden is a country that is also often featured in the mythological realm. I had a strange experience reading Catch 22 in the aftermath of the FRA legislation, when parliament despite public outcry voted for mass surveilliance. In the end of Catch 22, Yossarian has a vision of one of the other soldiers reaching a well-organised, rational and above all sane place: Sweden. And I felt I wanted to go to that Sweden instead of the one I was living in.

Anyway, I think the myths are spread because the myths are needed. All relation to actual places are entirely coincidental.

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

Iceland denies death of EU accession talks | EurActiv

Iceland's ambassador to Brussels has denied reports that accession talks with the European Union were dead, telling EurActiv that only the thorniest negotiating points are on hold until after upcoming elections.

"The correct message is that we are slowing down the negotiations, and we are not disbanding them. That has never been an issue," Ambassador Thorir Ibsen told EurActiv on Wednesday (16 January).

bound to be controversial, and so it remains, on both sides of the ideological fence. I confess that it took me a long time to see that what they were doing was the correct path, in large part because even if my ideological sensitivities are a bit to the left, my economics training was very conventional.

And still...I am sceptical, though all the same hopeful that the math will prove itself in a larger economy. Fortunately, Japan appears to be voluteering to be the next guinee pig.

I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from them Eugene Debs