Thread: What We Can Learn From Iceland - BANKSTERS

Sunday, June 17, 2012

What We Can Learn From Iceland



Activist Post: What We Can Learn From Iceland

Iceland economy grows at fastest pace since crash

Posted on 16 June 2012.



Increases in domestic consumption, tourism and exports have seen the Icelandic economy expand in the year’s first quarter at its fastest pace since the 2008 banking crisis. According to statistics released on Friday June 8, annual economic growth for the first three months of 2012 was at 4.5 percent while GDP grew 2.4 percent, the highest rate since the first quarter of 2008. Annual growth for 2011 was also up 2.7 percent, while the fourth quarter was up 1.9 percent on the same period of 2010.

“It shows that the economy is growing rather rapidly, at least in an international comparison, at the moment,” Islandsbanki Chief Economist Ingolfur Bender said in a report by Reuters. “The increase is broad-based, driven by consumption, investment and exports,” he added.

Last year Iceland completed an IMF bailout programme following the collapse of the country’s banking sector, which came along with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Since then the economy has been helped by a combination of returning investment and an increase in tourists, lured by the relative weakness of the Icelandic currency.

According to Islandsbanki, the number of foreign tourists staying in Icelandic hotel rooms rose by 17 percent on the year to April. Investment was also up 9.3 percent on the first quarter, while consumption grew by 4.2 percent.

Iceland economy grows at fastest pace since crash | IceNews - Daily News

Iceland Dismantles Corrupt Gov’t Then Arrests All Rothschild Bankers

Submitted by sumwoman on Tue, 06/19/2012 - 15:07
Current Events

GLOBAL ELITES THROWN OUT OF ICELAND:

Iceland Dismantles Corrupt Government Then Arrests All Rothschild Bankers

Last week 9 people were arrested in London and Reykjavik for their possible responsibility for Iceland’s financial collapse in 2008, a deep crisis which developed into an unprecedented public reaction that is changing the country’s direction.

It has been a revolution without weapons in Iceland, the country that hosts the world’s oldest democracy (since 930), and whose citizens have managed to effect change by going on demonstrations and banging pots and pans. Why have the rest of the Western countries not even heard about it? - read more at link below

Iceland Dismantles Corrupt Gov’t Then Arrests All Rothschild Bankers

Iceland Dismantles Corrupt Gov

Icelanders REBUILT their economy WITHOUT the Banksters.

ICELAND BOOMS AS THE WORLD STRUGGLES

July 9th, 2012 | Author: The Meister


REYKJAVIK, Iceland – For a country that four years ago plunged into a financial abyss so deep it all but shut down over­night, Iceland seems to be doing surprisingly well.

It has repaid, early, many of the international loans that kept it afloat. Unemployment is hov­ering around 6 percent, and fall­ing. And while much of Europe is struggling to pull itself out of the recessionary swamp, Ice­land’s economy is expected to grow by 2.8 percent this year.

“Everything has turned around,” said Adalheidur Hedin-sdottir, who owns and runs the coffee chain Kaffitar, the Star­bucks of Iceland, and has plans to open a new cafe and start a ■ bakery business. “When we told the bank we wanted to make a new company, they said, ‘Do you want to borrow money?’” she went on. ‘We haven’t been hear­ing that for a while.”

Analysts attribute the surpris­ing turn of events to a combination of fortuitous decisions and good luck, and caution that the lessons of Iceland’s turnaround are not readily applicable to the larger and more complex econo­mies of Europe.

But during the crisis, the country did many things dif­ferent from its European coun­terparts. It let its three larg­est banks fail, instead of bail­ing them out. It ensured that domestic depositors got their money back and gave debt relief to struggling homeowners and to businesses facing bankruptcy.

Iceland also had some advan­tages when it entered the cri­sis: relatively few government debts, a strong social safety net and a fluctuating currency whose rapid devaluation in 2008 caused pain for consumers but helped buoy the all-impor­tant export market. Govern­ment officials, who at the height of the crisis were reduced to beg­ging for help from places like the Faroe Islands, are now cau­tiously bullish.

“We’re in a very comfort­able place because the govern­ment has been very stable in fis­cal terms and is making good progress in balancing its books,” said Gudmundur Arnason, the Finance Ministry’s permanent secretary.

But not even Arnason says he believes that all is perfect. Infla­tion, which reached nearly 20 percent during the crisis, is still running at 5.4 percent, and even with the government’s reliefWindow shoppers stroll in Reykjavik, Iceland, on June 21. Iceland’s economy is expected to grow by 2.8 percent this year, and the jobless rate is 6 percent and dropping. programs, most of the country’s homeowners remain awash in debt, weighed down by inflation-indexed mortgages in which the principal, disastrously, rises with the inflation rate. Taxes are high. And with the country’s currency, the krona, worth between about 40 and 75 percent of its pre-2008 value, imports are expensive.

Strict currency controls, imposed during the crisis, mean that Icelandic companies are forbidden to invest abroad.

ICELAND BOOMS AS THE WORLD STRUGGLES

Related: http://www.alipac.us/f19/top-economi...-wrong-263198/