Saturday, Aug 15, 2009
Iceland banks stone flipped over
Telegraph: Iceland: what ugly secrets are waiting to be exposed in the meltdown?
The stone has begun to be turned over for the Iceland banks. Apparently, or I should say "allegedly", a few used the ability to create money fraudulently. I tried to tune out reading "allegedly" in this article. At the heart of all this banking mess we are in is fraud IMO. But no prosecutions. I saw the unedifying spectacle of Blair with rolled down sleeves and Tom Cruise style shades sunning himself with Larry Ellison on board a 150mill yacht in the metro. Stupidity isn't a crime but has the harshest punishment (about the UK population not Blair). We will see but I don't hold up much hope for prosecutions.
Posted by stillthinking @ 08:46 PM (799 views) Add Comment
8 Comments
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1. str 2007 said...
I think it's disgusting that any saver should loose their savings because of a bank collapse.
Never mind limits, all savings should be safe.
Banks should have to go to the FSA or who ever to have a saving rate approved before they advertise it, to show they can afford to offer the said rate.
Given the current circumstances any Director of a Bank that has collapsed should be stripped of every single last penny they have, house everything, until such time every last saver has been fully re-imbersed.
2. mander said...
I am not trying to sound smart but would have Landsbanki bank added a few zeros in their books and been able to buy House of Frazer?
3. japanese uncle said...
str2007
Private/personal savers are one thing, while corporate savers including councils that can and do hire professional treasurers are totally different story. Council bosses must reduce their undeservedly high salaries by half before cutting services.
4. little professor said...
They were involved in all manner of scams, such as lending people money to buy their own shares.
5. uncle tom said...
I was blowing the whistle on Iceland a long time ago. What was so magical about a sparcely populated rocky outcrop that enabled them to play financial games in the premier division? Answer - no banking regulation. Was banking regulation unreasonably hindering the banks in the UK & US - patently not; so Iceland had to be playing with fire.
Not exactly rocket science to conclude that, but a lot of supposedly wise heads seemed incapable of realising there was a big problem brewing.
As of now, there is probably little to be learned from raking over the ruins of the Icelandic bust. More important is what is - exactly - going on in places like Lithuania, and the former soviet bloc generally? I have a strong suspicion that dubious Russian outfits have duped some western banks on a stupendous scale, and that the banks themselves are running scared of 'fessing up.
You heard it here first!
6. paul said...
Personally, I got Iceland completely wrong. I saw a conspiracy from some newspapers, envious of the superb rates the banks were offering and wishing to repatriate the savings back to beleaguered blighty banks.
However, I have to say that if the UK's base rate was accurately combatting the level of inflation at the time, UK savers (and local councils) wouldn't have bothered chasing overseas bank rates.
7. stillthinking said...
I don't see that the Icelanders should pay for this, and that we have so blithely accepted the idea of forcing them to pay, greedy as ever, leads us straight into the situation that we ourselves pay in pretty much an identical situation. Iceland was a good test case for the taxpayer to stand firm and reject the financial needs of the banks i.e. let them default and accept restructuring.
What happened instead is that an unbelievable level of blackmail has been applied to a group, literally we are pressuring the Icelanders with a trade blockade. This is such a bad precedent for the UK to set, because our "obligations" are also terrible. When the financial services offloaded their liabilities to the people, nobody stood up and said no in the UK, and nobody will stand up and say no for us. What is worse, after collectively approving the actions against Iceland we don't really have any moral authority to reject the banks demands.
Surely the whole point is that the taxpayer must not be involved with funding privately owned banks.
That the Iceland banks seem to be riddled with fraud makes the defense of the taxpayer more important, not less. The country is suffering from emigration now purely because the only way to avoid a coercive life damaging payment.
8. Peter Hun said...
"I don't see that the Icelanders should pay for this, "
You think UK taxpayers should pay for it instead? thats the only alternative.
The only people who could have prevented the massive fraud were Icelandic -so whu shouldn't they pay the consequences of their actions?