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Almost a quarter of voters in Iceland have signed a petition against plans to repay money lost by foreigners when an Icelandic online bank collapsed. The petition urges the president to veto the bill that allows the move, and calls for a referendum on the issue. Iceland's parliament has approved the plans to reimburse 3.8bn euros (£3.4bn) lost by Dutch and British savers when the Icesave scheme failed in 2008. Many taxpayers say they are being made to pay for the bank's mistakes. The compensation amounts to some 12,000 euros for each citizen on the island nation of 320,000. Staggering...

Per Fox News... The person who owned the bags stayed behind.

REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - Thousands of Icelanders lined up at McDonald's restaurants to order their last Big Macs before the U.S. fast-food chain abandons the crisis-hit island at midnight Saturday due to soaring costs. The world's largest fast-food company said earlier this week that all three of its restaurants in Iceland, operated by franchisee Jon Ogmundsson, would shut down October 31. The outlets have been packed since the announcement, with lines at one restaurant on the east side of the city backing up out the door and onto the street. At lunchtime Friday the outlet's parking lot was full and staff...

REYKJAVIK (Reuters) – McDonald's Corp (MCD.N) will shutter its business in Iceland because it is too expensive for the franchise to operate after the country's financial crisis. The world's largest fast-food company said on Monday that all three of its restaurants in Iceland, operated by franchisee Jon Ogmundsson, would stop operating at midnight on October 31. Ogmundsson has run the McDonald's restaurants since 2004. He told Reuters that the decision to close the restaurants was mainly due to the severe depreciation of the Icelandic krona and high taxes on imported food. Instead, he

A year ago this month, Iceland went bankrupt. We explain how it went from being the world’s happiest nation to one with a bleak future

Mon Oct 5, 7:53 am ET PARIS (AFP) – Norway takes the number one spot in the annual United Nations human development index released Monday but China has made the biggest strides in improving the well-being of its citizens. The index compiled by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) ranks 182 countries based on such criteria as life expectancy, literacy, school enrolment and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Norway, Australia and Iceland took the first three spots while Niger ranks at the very bottom, just below Afghanistan. -snip- The top ten countries listed on the index are: Norway, Australia, Iceland,...

For months rumours of share-ramping, market manipulation, excessive loans to their owners and unusual transfers off-shore have been circling Kaupthing, Glitnir and Landsbanki, whose failure last October left 300,000 British customers unable to access their money. It has now become clear that this was no ordinary crash. Iceland's special investigation into "suspicions of criminal activity" at the three banks is likely to stretch from Reykjavik to London, Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands.

In the build-up to the global crisis of 2008, tiny Iceland was a canary in the mine, a leading indicator of wider vulnerabilities. Now, amid growing optimism about global recovery, Iceland may again be a leading indicator of trouble ahead. In the space of a few days last October Iceland’s whole banking system collapsed and was taken into public ownership, including the three banks which went from nowhere in 2002 to rank among the world’s 300 biggest by 2007. These three now make it into a less glorious league – Moody’s list of the 11 biggest financial bankruptcies in history....

American economist Michael Hudson predicted in his article “Iceland’s debt repayment limits will spread” published in The Financial Times yesterday that other nations will follow Iceland’s lead on Icesave and limit the repayment of their states’ debts in accordance with their payment ability. Audio link to interview. Listen to this interview, Iceland is now refusing to meet the demands of the charlatan resident in Westminster

OK, I'm just being lazy this week.

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) - The second richest man in Icelandic history has filed for bankruptcy, his spokesman said Friday. Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, the brewer-turned-billionaire and former owner of the West Ham soccer club, applied for bankruptcy protection at Reykjavik district court, 96 billion Icelandic kronur ($759 million) in debt, Asgeir Fridgeirsson said. It is the largest bankruptcy filing in Icelandic history. Gudmundsson was the elder half of a father-and-son pair of billionaires whose success was synonymous with the country's debt-fueled economic miracle. But their fortunes faltered when the Icelandic economy imploded last year under the impact of the credit crunch. Gudmundsson,...

Iceland's krona is working its magic cure. Well-heeled Japanese tourists – once a rarity – can be seen these days sampling halibut at Reykjavik's Siggi Hall, or buying Gymur jackets at the 66°North store on Bankastraeti. The krona has fallen by half against the euro since the `New Viking' trio of Landsbanki, Glitnir, and Kaupthing strayed out of their depth and brought down Iceland's financial system. Nothing is cheap, but prices have come within reach. Reykjavik's cafés are packed with euro-youth, at last able to afford a taste of all-night dancing at this Arctic Ibiza. Out in Iceland's Eastern fjords,...

<p>Bess writes: Surely Icelanders don't believe in Elves? It's a matter of earnest debate on the New York Mag where John Moody, who lives in Iceland responds to this Vanity Fair article on the country's financial meltdown. The debate centres on this VF claim that Alcoa, Iceland's largest aluminium company had to "defer to a government expert" in 2004 while scouring a potential site for a smelting plant to "certify that no elves were on or under it." The writer, Michael Lewis reports "It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, “we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people.”</p>

I feel sorry for Icelanders, really I do. What has happened is that private companies (banks) have behaved in a reckless manner in their own interests and when it all went wrong they managed to unload their debts onto the entire population of Iceland, who now have to pay it off. Yes I know in America some were forced through the CRA to give loans to those who were not qualified our own government has admitted this yet the banks themselves went beyond and infected everything from 401K's to insurance agencies by packaging this toxic waste all in the name...

Last October, Iceland's economy tanked. Its bailout? A two-mile geothermal well drilled into a volcano that could generate an endless supply of clean energy. Or, as Icelanders will calmly explain, it could all blow up in their faces. It's spring in Iceland, and three feet of snow covers the ground. The sky is gray and the temperature hovers just below freezing, yet Gudmundur Omar Fridleifsson is wearing only a windbreaker. Icelanders say they can spot the tourists because they wear too many clothes, but Fridleifsson seems particularly impervious. He's out here every few days to check on the Tyr geothermal...

Iceland took a significant step towards European Union membership when a leftwing coalition was voted into power three months after the conservative government was toppled by protests over the island’s economic meltdown. Johanna Sigurdardottir, Social Democrat party leader, celebrates the election victory The weekend victory for the Social Democrats of Johanna Sigurdardottir, caretaker prime minister, means Iceland is expected to apply for EU membership by July, as it struggles to rebuild an economy battered by the global financial crisis. The result marks a sharp swing to the left for Iceland after voters punished the conservative Independence party which had held...

It is said that radical times call for radical thinking, but even by my own standards this is a controversial proposal: perhaps there is merit in an argument for the creation of a second Jewish state – not to replace Israel, but in addition to it, to embarrass it in front of the world. For more than 60 years the state of Israel has been publicly operating objectionable policies such as land grabs and collective punishment largely sheltered by certain western governments from international criticism and UN resolutions. In addition, some Israeli politicians have been accused by western academics of...

An article on Iceland's de facto bankruptcy in the April issue of Vanity Fair notes that a "large number of Icelanders" believe in elves or "hidden people." This widespread folklore occasionally disrupts business in the sparsely populated North Atlantic country. Before the aluminum company Alcoa could erect a smelting factory, "it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it." How do you find an elf? With psychic powers. According to a poll conducted in 2007, 54 percent of Icelanders don't deny the existence of elves...

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland200904Cannot post Vanity Fair material at Free RepublicIceland was run like a hedge fund. They looked at Wall Street and said "We can do this" Iceland was ranked number one in 2008 by the United Nations’ Human Development IndexIcelanders are supposed to be cool and rational so what went wrong?For smart Icelanders the economics of financial engineering took over the economics of fishing which had served Iceland wellhttp://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland200904Protesters in Reykjavik, some holding signs reading Stop The Corruption, are seen outside the parliament building during a demonstration Saturday by several thousand people against Iceland's economic meltdown.

Under the terms of the deal, Kaupthing, which was Mosaic's previous lender, swapped Mosaic's £400m of debt for around 90pc of the equity of Aurora. The remainder of the equity is held by management. Kaupthing has injected working capital into Aurora. Mr Lovelock said: "We look forward to our continuing relationship with Kaupthing and to the end of a difficult chapter in our history." He thanked the retail group's suppliers for standing by the chain. "I would like to thank our employees and our many suppliers and partners for their understanding and unswerving support. Our recent past has been difficult...

Editor’s note: This is the second of two parts. There are many stories of “Qalunaat,” white-skinned strangers who were encountered in Inuit occupied lands in times of old. Much of the traditional life had changed by the 1840s when Hinrich Johannes Rink went to Greenland to study geology and later became the governor of Greenland. Johannes was soon drawn to a new interest in the Inuit language and folklore, which he viewed as national treasures. He published old stories collected in 1866 “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo” in which he included some early contact stories with the Qalunaat. In...

Iceland, ravaged throughout history by volcanic eruptions and natural catastrophes, is struggling with a man-made disaster so overwhelming that the women are taking over. It is, they say here, the end of the Age of Testosterone. Next week a newly minted left-leaning Government led by Johanna Sigurdardottir will start to tackle the tough agenda of cleaning out the old-school-chum networks that have led Iceland to the verge of bankruptcy. Half of her Cabinet will be women; female advisers carrying briefcases move in and out of the Prime Minister's whitewashed office, a former jailhouse in the middle of Reykjavik. Two women,...

EUROPEAN DIARY: A continent-wide sense of injustice leaves Europe vulnerable to an explosion of unrest ONE MILLION workers on the streets of France, wildcat strikes in Britain, rioting in Greece and the Baltic republics and sit-in protests by glass workers in Waterford: social unrest is spreading throughout Europe and no one knows where it is all going to end. Last week the worst economic recession in at least 30 years claimed its first political victim in Europe when on Monday Iceland’s beleaguered prime minister Geir Haarde tendered his resignation following weeks of street protests. The collapse of the country’s banking...

One of the popuations most severely hit by the worldwide rise in anti-Semitism that's followed Operation Cast Lead has been one of the easiest to overlook: the minuscule Jewish community of Iceland. "In Icelandic, 'Zionist' is a derogatory term," said Dr. Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, a Danish professor who has studied the history of Iceland's Jews. "It's a criminal emblem." Now, a bicycle repair shop owner in Reykjavik has refused to serve Jews, despite condemnation from the Icelandic government. The shop owner's stance may reflect a coming shift in the public face of anti-Israel feeling in the country. In the midst...

Icelanders have donated an entire shipping container full of woolly jumpers, socks and blankets to British pensioners, as winter’s chill increases their chances of dying in under-heated homes. The Sun newspaper reports that Icelanders were spurred to action after a radio programme revealed that as many as one in 12 British pensioners are at risk of dying in the winter cold. The container is due to arrive on Monday. So when Icelandic DJ Heimir Karlsson launched an ‘Icelandic Wool to England’ (Islensk Ull til Englands) campaign the donations flooded in. The campaign started when an Icelander living in Manchester called...

The world's first openly gay leader is poised to take power in Iceland with the appointment of a lesbian former flight attendant as Prime Minister following the mass-resignation of the country's government. Johanna Sigurdardottir, 66, is to become interim leader until new elections are held in May following the fall of the administration of Geir Haarde amid huge public protests about the country's economic crisis. The country's social affairs minister, Ms Sigurdardottir has been installed as head of an interim centre-left coalition featuring her Social Democratic Alliance and the Left-Green movement. "Now we need a strong government that works with...

REYKJAVIK, Iceland - The woman expected to become Iceland's interim prime minister is an openly gay former flight attendant who rose through the political ranks to lead a new leftist government. Johanna Sigurdardottir, the country's 66-year-old social affairs minister, began as an union organizer for flight attendants and is now among the country's longest-serving legislators.

The first government collapse of the global crisis is about to yield the world's first openly gay prime minister. Johanna Sigurdardottir, a former air hostess, is expected to be sworn in as Iceland's prime minister by the end of the week. Her moment in the international spotlight comes at the most horrendous moment in her nation's recent history: As the global credit crisis broke, the collapse of Iceland's grossly over-leveraged economy was followed smartly by the implosion of its currency and banks. Now its government has gone the same way, the first in the world to succumb to the backwash...

REYKJAVIK, Iceland – Iceland's coalition government collapsed on Monday after an unprecedented wave of public dissent, plunging the island nation into political turmoil as it seeks to rebuild an economy shattered by the global financial crisis. Prime Minister Geir Haarde resigned and disbanded the government he's led since 2006. Haarde was unwilling to meet the demands of his coalition partner, the Social Democratic Alliance Party, which insisted on choosing a new prime minister in exchange for keeping the coalition intact. "I really regret that we could not continue with this coalition, I believe that that would have been the best...

STOCKHOLM, Jan 26 (Xinhua) -- Iceland's Prime Minister Geir Haarde said Monday talks between the coalition partners in his government broke down and the government had to resign immediately, news reports from Reykjavik said. "I'm here to announce that the leader of the Social Democrats and I have decided that we will not continue with the coalition," Haarde was quoted as saying in the capital of Iceland. Haarde handed in his government's resignation to President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson. He also proposed forming a national government pending the election comprising all the parties holding seats in parliament, said news reports. The...

(CNN) -- Iceland's ruling coalition resigned Monday, three months after the collapse of the country's currency, stock market and several major banks, and following months of public protests, Kristjan Kristjansson, a spokesman for the prime minister told CNN.

Iceland's Minister of Commerce Bjorgvin Sigurdsson has resigned, two days after the prime minister announced his own departure due to pressures from the island nation's economic collapse. Mr Sigurdsson, a member of Iceland's junior Social Democrat coalition party, made the announcment at a news conference this morning. 'I have decided to do this to take responsibility,' he Prime Minister Geir Haarde shocked the country on Friday when he said he would not seek re-election and called for a general election on May 9. The government of Iceland became the first in the world to be effectively brought down by the...

Special forces rescue Icelandic prime minister from furious credit crunch rioters By GRAHAM SMITH An angry mob surrounded the car of Icelandic Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde yesterday, throwing eggs and cans at the vehicle and demanding an immediate election. The breach of security came as protesters, furious about Mr Haarde's failure to prevent the country's catastrophic financial crisis, trapped the PM as he sat in his car outside Reykjavik's government offices. The seething crowd spattered the building with paint and yoghurt, yelling and banging pans, hurling fireworks and flares at the windows and even lighting a fire in front...

The National Energy Authority of Iceland announced the First Oil and Gas Licensing Round in Icelandic Waters today, Jan. 22, 2009. Applications for hydrocarbon exploration and production licenses on the Dreki area are now being accepted.   In the Atlantic Ocean, the Dreki area, translated "Dragon" area, is northeast of Iceland on the Jan Mayen Ridge, between Iceland and the island of Jan Mayen. With water depths ranging from 3,280 to 6,562 feet (1,000 to 2,000 meters), the area up for bids covers more than 10.5 million acres (42,700 square kilometers). In December 2007, the Icelandic government approved a proposal...

REYKJAVIK, Iceland – Protesters hurled dairy products and rage at their elected leaders here during increasingly violent demonstrations this week over the handling of the country’s collapsing economy. Parliament was suspended Wednesday and the prime minister’s limousine was attacked with snowballs and eggs. Demonstrators are calling for immediate elections, but the prime minister appeared on television Wednesday night, saying his government has no intention of stepping down. Both sides, it seems, are digging in for a fight. As the Monitor is reporting today, protesters have been gathering regularly – and, until recently, peacefully – following the country’s economic implosion in...

Icelandic police fired pepper spray on Tuesday to control protesters demanding that the government resign for overseeing the country's economic collapse. A crowd estimated by police at more than 1,000, some hammering on pots and pans, gathered around the Althing parliament building in the capital Reykjavik. "About 20 persons have sought assistance from medics, stationed by the Althing, to get treatment after having been sprayed with pepper spray," Icelandic police chief Sigurbjorn Jonsson told Reuters. State radio said 20 people had been arrested. Jonsson said police would comment on arrests once the protest was over. Iceland's currency plunged and its...

The time has come to deliver, but, will he? The ECB rate decision is what we have been waiting for all week. Maybe the downgrading of Greece yesterday and the potential downgrades of Spain and Portugal could put Trichet and Co. under further pressure to justify deeper cuts rather than the widely expected 50bp (2.50%). With the FX market trading on interest rate expectations, one would expect the EUR to gain major traction with 50bp ease or more, just like Cable last week. But, we are talking about the ECB and historically they have a tendency to disappoint! The US$...

Iceland is, for many of us, the waist of the hourglass: the narrowest point in the flow of culture and commerce that buoys modern life, a place where the First World is winnowed and exposed. This is why we call its financial collapse a "crisis." It's the reason some of us with no clear stake are keen to learn what happened. And it's why, one afternoon not long ago, I stood in Austurvöllur Square in Reykjavík and watched a group of Icelanders rally against their government. The protests have been a Saturday affair since mid-October, when the dust of the...

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — A nationally televised meeting between Iceland's prime minister and other political leaders was forced off the air Wednesday night when angry protesters disrupted the broadcast. For more than two decades, the leaders of Iceland's political parties have met every New Year's Eve over champagne and spiced herring to talk about the year ahead on Iceland's Channel 2 television. But this year's show with Prime Minister Geir Haarde was cut short 45 minutes into the program when a torch-wielding crowd stormed Reykjavik's Hotel Borg in an attempt to get to the studio.

Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, former chairman and a large shareholder in Landsbanki, Iceland's second largest bank, saw the firm seized in October as the worst of the credit crisis tore through the island nation. The failure wiped out his $1.1 billion fortune. He has since had to put his holding company, Hansa, into voluntary liquidation and is selling his U.K. soccer team, West Ham.

Icelandic singer partners with financial services firm to launch sustainable investment fund. The quirky singer and actress Bjork is hunting for investors to inject capital into her economically troubled country, whose financial system collapsed in October. Nominated for 13 Grammy awards, an Oscar and two Golden Globe awards, she has become a venture capitalist, teaming up with Reykjavik-based Audur Capital to raise money to invest in sustainable businesses in Iceland. Fundraising won't commence until January, but Bjork's involvement in the project has triggered such interest that the fund, which carries the 43-year-old singer's name, is expected to raise as much...

REYKJAVIK, Iceland -- A boy charged to the front of an angry crowd here recently and tossed a carton of skyr, a popular local yogurt-like snack, at the Parliament building. It splattered on the rough-hewn stone. He and thousands of Icelanders were protesting one of the strangest economic failures of the global financial crisis. This past fall, every bank that matters in this tiny nation -- that is, all three of them -- failed. Iceland's currency, the krona, became worthless beyond its shores. The country's financial system stopped working. "We are pissed off at the government," said one young man,...

FOR centuries, Icelanders earned a living from the sea, setting out in small boats to haul cod, haddock and herring from the North Atlantic waters. But in recent years these proud descendants of Vikings found new fish to catch, scooping up businesses around the world with the help of light financial regulation and expansive banks. "There was some banker who said we didn't need the fishing industry," said Helgi Mar Sigurgeirsson, the chief engineer of a fishing trawler moored in Reykjavik harbour. "He said we could make money with the banks. I'd like to speak to him now." Fishing is...

Six months ago, Iceland was one of the world’s richest nations. Now it’s bankrupt. AA Gill visits the first victim of the economic ice age. In the summer of 1783, there was a volcanic eruption in the southeast of Iceland that vomited lava into the Skafta river, which boiled and ran with fire like a mythological Nordic curse. The volcanic gases were toxic and poisoned animals in their byres. Seething clouds of opaque ash plumed into the sky, blotting the sun. Everything that photosynthesised withered and died. There was a famine that killed a fifth of the population — a...

"All financial innovation involves … the creation of debt secured in greater or lesser adequacy by real assets,” wrote the economist John Kenneth Galbraith in 1993. And “all crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.” Iceland’s neophyte bankers no doubt wish they’d paid more attention to this warning. In the past two months, many countries have seen their banks brought low by excess leverage, but none has been punished so thoroughly as Iceland, where the currency and the government’s credit rating have joined...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Kaupthing Bank hf (KAUP.IC), Iceland's largest bank, has sought bankruptcy protection from its U.S. creditors. The Reykjavik-based lender filed a Chapter 15 bankruptcy petition on Sunday with the U.S. bankruptcy court for the Southern District of New York.

Thousands of Icelanders marked the 90th anniversary of their nation's sovereignty with angry protest Monday, and several hundred stormed the central bank to demand the ouster of bankers they blame for the country's spectacular economic meltdown. Tiny Iceland has seen its banks and currency collapse in just a few weeks while prices and unemployment soar — leaving a country regarded as a model of Scandinavian prosperity in a state of shock. "The government played roulette and the whole nation has lost," writer Einar Mar Gudmundsson told a noisy but peaceful anti-government rally of several thousand people in downtown Reykjavik. After...

Thousands of Icelanders took to the street in violent protests in Rekjavik, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and central bank governor David Oddsson in the wake of the country's complete financial collapse. REYKJAVIK - Thousands of Icelanders demonstrated in Reykjavik on Saturday demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and Central Bank Governor David Oddsson for failing to stop a financial meltdown in the country. It was the latest in a series of protests in the capital since the financial meltdown that crippled the island's economy. Hordur Torfason, a well-known troubadour in Iceland and the main...

THOUSANDS of Icelanders have demonstrated in Reykjavik to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and Central Bank governor David Oddsson, for failing to stop the country's financial meltdown. It was the latest in a series of protests in the capital since October's banking collapse crippled the island's economy. At least five people were injured and Hordur Torfason, a well-known singer in Iceland and the main organiser of the protests, said the protests would continue until the government stepped down. As crowds gathered in the drizzle before the Althing, the Icelandic parliament, on Saturday, Mr Torfason said: "They don't...

Is Britain simply a bigger version of Iceland? Certainly the City of London is starting to look a bit too much like Reykjavik, but with taller buildings and fewer cod. It is an exaggeration, but not that much of an exaggeration, to liken the UK to the broken, bankrupt North Atlantic island. Like Iceland, we boast a huge banking industry out of all proportion to the overall economy. Like Iceland, we have an unfunded depositor lifeboat scheme totally unequipped to grapple with failing banks. Like Iceland, our national output is dwarfed by the vast liabilities of our banks. Like Iceland,...