Once again Iceland is leading the way in how to deal with the cancerous banking corruption. Declaring odious debt and prosecuting the crooks involved is what ALL impacted nations should be doing right now instead of using "austerity" to further steal from the citizens to pay off criminal bankers.
Icelandic Anger Brings Debt Forgiveness in Best Recovery Story
Icelanders who pelted parliament with rocks in 2009 demanding their leaders and bankers answer for the country’s economic and financial collapse are reaping the benefits of their anger.
Since the end of 2008, the island’s banks have forgiven loans equivalent to 13 percent of gross domestic product, easing the debt burdens of more than a quarter of the population, according to a report published this month by the Icelandic Financial Services Association.
The island’s steps to resurrect itself since 2008, when its banks defaulted on $85 billion, are proving effective. Iceland’s economy will this year outgrow the euro area and the developed world on average, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates. It costs about the same to insure against an Icelandic default as it does to guard against a credit event in Belgium. Most polls now show Icelanders don’t want to join the European Union, where the debt crisis is in its third year.
The island’s households were helped by an agreement between the government and the banks, which are still partly controlled by the state, to forgive debt exceeding 110 percent of home values. On top of that, a Supreme Court ruling in June 2010 found loans indexed to foreign currencies were illegal, meaning households no longer need to cover krona losses.
Iceland’s special prosecutor has said it may indict as many as 90 people, while more than 200, including the former chief executives at the three biggest banks, face criminal charges.
Larus Welding, the former CEO of Glitnir Bank hf, once Iceland’s second biggest, was indicted in December for granting illegal loans and is now waiting to stand trial. The former CEO of Landsbanki Islands hf, Sigurjon Arnason, has endured stints of solitary confinement as his criminal investigation continues.
That compares with the U.S., where no top bank executives have faced criminal prosecution for their roles in the subprime mortgage meltdown. The Securities and Exchange Commission said last year it had sanctioned 39 senior officers for conduct related to the housing market meltdown.
As for Ayn Rand, she may have written books that gave the impression of promoting personal responsibility, but in fact she was a hypocritical intellectual elitist. She would be cheering on the current corporatism because it is being carried out by those smart enough and with the resources pull it off over the "less intelligent" peasants.
Ayn Rand took government assistance while decrying others who did the same
An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand's law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand's behalf she secured Rand's Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O'Connor (husband Frank O'Connor).
As Pryor said, "Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out" without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn "despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently... She didn't feel that an individual should take help."
But alas she did and said it was wrong for everyone else to do so.
Even her biggest mouthpieces are hypocrites:
Ayn Rand Fanboy Paul Ryan Used Social Security “Hammock” to Put Himself Through College
Here’s what fiscal fraud Paul Ryan (R-WI) said about Social Security in his State of the Union rebuttal.
This is a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency.
Turns out, when Ryan was an able-bodied young lad, he used that hammock to pay for his college education. (h/t Gottalaff)
On the day Paul Davis Ryan was born in 1970, President Richard Nixon unveiled his record-setting $200.8 billion federal budget proposal for the upcoming year – a budget that included a large increase in Social Security payments. [...]
One day as a 16 year old, Ryan came upon the lifeless body of his father. Paul Ryan, Sr. had died of a heart attack at age 55, leaving the Janesville Craig High School 10th grader, his three older brothers and sisters and his mother alone. It was Paul who told the family of his father’s death. [...]
With his father’s passing, young Paul collected Social Security benefits until age 18, which he put away for college.
College costs have skyrocketed since Ryan entered Miami University in 1988, yet Ryan wants to slash the very system that he benefited from because it produces “dependency.”
Figures. This is a guy who requires his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged, and we now know that Ayn Rand was a big welfare queen herself.
When I hear Ayn Rand being used by libertarians as some sort of figurehead it just makes me cringe. She loathed libertarians accusing them of plagiarising her "philosophy" but then calling them cranks, hippies and anarchists. She also believed in voting for the "lesser of 2 evils" b.s. to perpetuate the crooked 2 party system. If an election was lost, she said the blame should be placed on those who voted for libertarian candidates instead of her political party's incompetency for not drawing in more voters. In simple terms if she were alive today she would be known as a neo-conservative.
Here are Rand's views on libertarianism from her very own institute:
Ayn Rand’s Q & A on Libertarianism
-- -------- Post added 08-May-2012 at 06:28 PM ---------- Previous post was 07-May-2012 at 07:23 PM ----------
The biggest case of financial fraud in global history and the conflict of interest merry go round of corruption keeps on spinning.
Why No Prosecutions on Wall Street? Goldman, JPMorgan, Citi, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, are All Clients of Holder’s Law Firm.
Yeah, that might have something to do with it. Maybe.
In the wake of the financial disaster in 2008, which is still unfolding in case you haven’t noticed, federal prosecutions of financial crimes are at a 20 year low. That is a remarkable stat.
Could the fact that financial firms dumped piles of $100 bills on Obama’s head in 2008 have anything to do with the lack of prosecutions? No way. Attorney General Eric Holder says simply that though Wall Street may have acted stupidly, he just can’t seem to find any fraud.
And that all the big banks are clients of Holder’s law firm—a law firm that at least partially specializes in financial crime defense? That has nothing to do with the lack of prosecutions either.
There are just too many pot dispensaries in California to bust, and Mexican drug lords to arm, for the American people to expect the enforcement of financial crimes from their attorney general.
-- -------- Post added 09-May-2012 at 11:45 PM ---------- Previous post was 08-May-2012 at 06:28 PM ----------
It seems to just keep getting better and better. These crooks knew their ponzi scheme was on the precipice of failure, but still no indictments, arrests or prosecutions- just golden parachutes.
Lehman E-Mails Show Wall Street Arrogance Led to the Fall
If one wants to understand the full complicity of Wall Street in the Great Recession, look no further than the voluminous package of pre-collapse Lehman Brothers documents that have been made available by the law firm Jenner & Block LLP, which has acted as the coroner in the Lehman post-mortem.
Most important, the cache dispels the myth that Dick Fuld, chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and his close associates were unaware of the risks their business faced in 2007 and 2008. That would be bad enough, but the more devastating reality is that Fuld and his sycophants were warned repeatedly but were blinded by their hubris.
The records confirm, yet again, that the “forces-out-of- our-control” argument we hear from Wall Street leaders is bunk. It is the ill-advised behavior of one banker after another, day in and day out, that leads to the sort of devastating financial crisis we are only now emerging from.
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Originally Posted by krisvds
ah, you've just made my week.
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