Bjork on Iceland's financial smeltdown.

[Cronopio]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5026175.ece

After touring for 18 months I was excited to return home a few weeks ago to good, solid Iceland and enjoy a little bit of stability. I had done a concert there earlier this year to raise awareness about local environmental issues and 10 per cent of the nation came to it; but I still felt it wasn't enough.

So when I returned I decided to contact people all over the island who had attempted to start new companies and bring in new greener ways of working but had not succeeded. For a long time Iceland's main income was fishing, but when that become uneconomic people started looking for other ways to earn a living. The ruling conservatives thought that harnessing Iceland's natural energy and selling it to huge companies such as Alcoa and Rio Tinto would solve the problem.

Now we have three aluminium smelters, which are the biggest in Europe; and in the space of the next three years they want to build two more. The smelters would need energy from a handful of new geothermal power plants and the building of dams that would damage pristine wilderness, hot springs and lava fields. To take this much energy from geothermal fields is not sustainable.

A lot of Icelanders are against the building of these smelters. They would rather continue to develop smaller companies that they own themselves and keep the money they earn. Many battles have been fought in Iceland on these issues. One resulted in the Environment Minister insisting for the first time that an environmental impact assessment should be carried out before any smelters or dams were built.

And then the economic crisis hit. Young families are threatened with losing their houses and elderly people their pensions. This is catastrophic. There is also a lot of anger. The six biggest venture capitalists in Iceland are being booed in public places and on TV and radio shows; furious voices insist that they sell all their belongings and give the proceeds to the nation. Gigantic loans, it has been revealed, were taken out abroad by a few individuals and without the full knowledge of the Icelandic people. Now the nation seems to be responsible for having to pay them back.

...

Edited out paragraphs.

[Dennis Donovan]

1. Rec for Bjork...

Damn, can you believe it's been over 20 years since the first Sugarcubes record came out?:wow:

[The Doctor.]

4. Had such a crush on her...

now I'm feeling really old.

[Duncan]

8. Shit.

I just realized I was still thinking of Bjork as new and young. Time to adjust.

[crikkett]

2. Another battlefront against Disaster Capitalism

I wish them well. I wonder if an Obama administration will help.

[unblock]

3. what's the capital of iceland?

about $1.99.

ba-dum-cha!!!! thank you, i'll be here all week!!!



seriously, it's absolutely astounding what's happened in iceland.

[fedsron2us]

5. They can thank Milt Friedman and his chums for this catastrophe.

They persuaded country's politicians and its financial elite to sell out their nation to the freemarket looters.

[fedsron2us]

7. And here is the fateful moment

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1107486496526618897

[Lautremont]

11. Thank you for posting that. It's going to be very helpful to me.

[bluesmail]

6. Classic Disaster Capitalism. Manipulating the markets

by the filthy rich wanting even more, sickens me.

[cliss]

9. Some comments ~

Re: Iceland going "under".
I agree, the situation looks really bad for Iceland. I just read that they went to Russia, looking for a $2 billion dollar loan. The article said that the Russians would be drooling over an abandoned military base, formerly from the U.S. They would demand to take it over, no doubt. I'm not sure if they got the loan.

Either way, the IMF will step in to save their butts.
When the Icelandic banks defaulted, they caused a cascade of problems, namely in England. There were all kinds of depositors in Icelandic banks which got cut off, lots of building projects got frozen. Even Gordon Brown was furious with Iceland, and called them skam artists.

Either way, the Icelanders will not freeze to death. They've got geothermal heating. All their radiators are connected to the geothermal hot water, and it's free.

The Icelanders need to go back to their sheep herding they have beautiful wool.

[Lautremont]

10. They might not freeze, but they could well starve.

There's not a lot of farming there, and fish stocks are noticeably dwindling. The answer for Iceland is not in exploiting its geothermal and hydro potential, by, say, powering giant aluminum plants, but in trying to develop the post-industrial economy Björk talks about in her article. For a rock star she has some good ideas.