The people of Iceland have not finished with their outrage at what they were suckered into, they are absolutely right to refuse to impoverish themselves in order to honour criminal banks’ debts. Of course the threats are coming thick and fast and expect the media to be full of negative stories of Icleandic evil but what they are doing is actually good for all of us, the free insurance we provide for banks, (keep your profits while we pay your losses) is nothing but theft. The full weight of global capital will be brought to bear on Iceland, if one country gets uppity and gets away with it the whole system might not seem so assured of its hegemony. It will not be easy and great economic violence will be done to Iceland if they hold firm and yes UK creditors will suffer (but all could be saved if instead of bailouts we had investment in the public commons) but if we let them be attacked it simply means our supine, submissive status to our own financial institutions will become even more entrenched, we may as well just open up a vein and offer them their fill. Michael Hudson has covered this over the last year, much better reading than the UK media manage, their unexamined nationalism and deference to orthodox neoliberal religion does not make for good journalism-
Make Iceland Pay for Incompetent British Bank Deregulation! Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF
Ten Percent 
5 January, 2010 at 10:31 pm
There’s always Bork (or is that the Swedish Chef?).
5 January, 2010 at 10:52 pm
Yes, Bjork is Icelandic, maybe she will be barred from the UK as a dangerous element, inspiring defaulting and general non conformity… and Swan dresses.
6 January, 2010 at 3:58 am
yo peeps, main main Michael Shedlock (known to the blogosphere as Mish…highly popular finance bloggah) has done the rundown on the “Iceland no pay u go fukky yourselfy British foolz” malarkey.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/01/icelands-president-effectively-tells-uk.html
Mish knows his bananas (also knows how to explain weird finance stuff in a language we can all understand) and here’s how he nails it:
“…This case is easy. There is no free lunch. Extra yield comes with risk. If you take risks, you pay the price. Irish citizens should not have to bear the brunt of this folly. I commend Iceland for telling the UK and Netherlands where to go….”
6 January, 2010 at 11:07 am
Well Grimson is obviously mad! Look at what he says about democracy (via otto’s link – thanks)
“It is the cornerstone of the constitutional structure of the Republic of Iceland that the people are the supreme judge of the validity of the law. It is…the responsibility of the president to ensure that the nation exercises this right.”
Quick – somebody tell Obama!
6 January, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Y’know…i’m a bit nervous about pointing this out at 10%, but this kinda stuff does make a good case for continuing with Mrs Lizzy Queen as head of state.
6 January, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Thanks Otto for that link (surely Icelandic citizen’s typo?!?!) , predictably here nationalism is being used to harness outrage so British people do the bidding of the govt and banks thinking it is in their interests. As Hudson detailed Brown has a lot of the blame here and the standard neoliberal deregulated casino and slick salesmanship to bedazzled punters sealed the fate.
Sod the Queen! I don’t see why we need a head of state but if we must at least one that does not symbolise privilege by virtue of birthright. But also not some washed up pol, otherwise yes the nightmare Pres Blair would turn up, as they would simply have ceremonial function and continuity of state I say we need a consummate charmer with wide approval and varied talents and interests not politicians, eg. Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Vanessa Redgrave, Judi Dench or Michael Palin, wouldn’t that better represent the people of Britain instead of our inbred and vicious establishment elite? They wouldn’t plot wars behind closed doors to enrich themselves (hopefully). Plus the photo ops would be much less awkward and far more glamorous!