Iceland is Very Nice!

From Bloomberg.com: Icelandic Anger Brings Debt Forgiveness In Best Recovery Story

Ahh, Iceland. Home to platinum blond super-models, Lord of the Rings-esque landscapes, and a peaceful yet proud people. Also, Iceland apparently holds the title as the only first world nation to retain a whit of common sense in the managing of its political and economic affairs. The Ride salutes you, Iceland!

As you may or may not remember, there was a lot of media coverage looking into the economic collapse of Iceland that paralleled the housing market bubble here in the states. Now as I'm sure most of my regular readers have gathered, my understanding of economics essentially boils down to crude stick figure drawings of subjects engaged in stick-rape, but basically the idea is a bunch of bankers stormed into Iceland on armies of marauding elephants and stole every coin in the coffer. Eerily familiar to the events we've been struggling to recover from here in America.

Here's where the story gets interesting. For once, fucking finally, there is a government protecting its people, defending the innocent for the rapacious actions of the world banking cartels. Instead of bailing out the failing banks and allowing the CEOs to receive ludicrous bonuses, Iceland is actually laying criminal charges against those involved in the scandals! That's right, folks! Good ol' fashioned prison sentences! Commit fraud, and you actually go to jail, what a novel concept!

In addition to their hard-line stance against coddling financial criminals, the Iceland government is also taking the method of allowing aid to bubble up from the victims instead of trusting it to trickle down from the offenders. And the result is that the Iceland economy is jumping back with such a bang that the tiny country is now in strong enough a position to respectfully want to keep its economy free from the debilitating integration with the European Union, preferring to make a stand on their own.

Of course, the dust is still settling and the jury is still out on what faces the dice will show when they stop spinning. But maybe if the Icelandic trend of success and solvency continues we will start to get the idea here in America. Even if you believe in the banks and corporations being "too big to fail", that doesn't mean the executives wrists' are too big to be put in cuffs.



Three Monkeys Say: Gonna catch me a criminal!!