Having had a bit of trouble with my internet-connection, I´m back now for a very small report on my country´s troubles, which isn´t so different from American troubles, I think.

We are equally broke.

Today the new financial plan has come out. It´s about large cut-downs of at least 10% in health- and other services, over 50% in road-repairs, while at the same time tax-rises of 30% on all incomes are proposed, as well as another 10% on several goods and fuel, some “global warming” taxes on energy, how much isn´t quite clear, so are a lot of other things. Sure is only unemployment will rise further and buying power will shrink.

The Ice-save-Ice-slave situation is still the main issue. Britain and Holland have rejected the conditions set by the Icelandic Parliament for paying the debts, that Iceland would only pay as much as it´s economic situation allows on the Ice-save debts. And for that reason the IMF is refusing any loans to Iceland.

Yesterday the minister who was opposed to giving in to the Brits and the Dutch has resigned from the government. At the same time one Norwegian government party offered a Norwegian loan that would enable Iceland to throw the IMF out of the country.

Today the other government party of Norway retracted the loan-offer saying if Icelanders would ever ask for a loan from Norway, they would only get it under the supervision of the IMF and after the Ice-save case with Britain and the Netherlands was settled.

It looks like the Norwegian are dead scared of the IMF and the banking-establishment they represent, like every other country in the world.

And of course, the international bankers who had laid the trap for Iceland by first luring the government into privatizing the banks only five years before the collapse, and then encouraging the Icelandic bankers into over-leveraging, and then snapping the trap on the country by speculating against the Icelandic currency, could ruin Norway just as easily.

Sure Norway is rich with its oil-wealth, but if a large, ultra-productive and rich country like Japan could be set into permanent recession by foreign currency speculation attacks, which has lasted for a decade so far, Norway is surely not immune.

Talking about Japan and the Asian crisis, which started in 1997 with an attack on the Thai Baht and the ripple effect it had on other Asian nations, here is what

Professor Michel Chossudowski writes about the economic attack on Japan in 1998:

In Japan –where the yen has tumbled to new lows — “the Korean scenario” is viewed (according to economist Michael Hudson), as a “dress rehearsal” for the take over of Japan’s financial sector by a handful of Western investment banks. The big players are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Morgan Gruenfell among others who are buying up Japan’s bad bank loans at less than ten percent of their face value. In recent months both US Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright have exerted political pressure on Tokyo insisting “on nothing less than an immediate disposal of Japan’s bad bank loans — preferably to US and other foreign “vulture investors” at distress prices. To achieve their objectives they are even pressuring Japan to rewrite its constitution, restructure its political system and cabinet and redesign its financial system… Once foreign investors gain control of Japanese banks, these banks will move to take over Japanese industry…”

Those who had pressured the Japanese political class to sell out the country´s assets, industries and financial institutions to US speculators, had subsequently hindered the recovery of the country. It was far more profitable to start another round of speculation of the Japanese yen against many other currencies. This so-called Yen carry-over trade was then for instance used for those “glacier bonds”- speculations where foreign speculators bought en masse Icelandic currency in the last couple of years before the crisis.

While Japan had an extremely low interest-rate of 1,5% at that time, the Icelandic central bank, in order too cool down the then overheated Icelandic economy, had raised the interest-rates to 15%. So borrowing in Yen and investing in Icelandic Kronur was profitable until all of a sudden the very same big speculators withdrew their money and started to short-sell the Icelandic currency.

This had a ripple effect on those smaller speculators on the bandwagon, which then of course was the main-reason for the cash-deficit of the Icelandic banks and the main reason for the crash.

All this had nothing whatsoever to do with the real productive economy of either country.

People here are only half-joking when they use the biblical phrase with each other: ” And now in these last and worst times….”

And believe me, Icelanders weren´t used to be very religious, and you could find only few Armageddon-awaiting Evangelicals on our rock in the Northern Atlantic.

What bugs me is the government, supposedly a left one, combining Social-Democrats and Left-Greens. It´s like all of them have gotten a personality change operation.

The left-greens were so opposed to the IMF, they wanted to throw them out before they even set foot into the country. And now they, or at least the ones in the government, are so subservient to the organization, it would be truly obscene to use any kind of fitting allegory, so I won´t.

The left-wing Icelandic government is trying to push the British and Dutch demands through the Icelandic Parliament against the opposition of nearly all other Parlamentarians including the members of their own party and against the opposition of practically all of the Icelandic people.

And they won´t tell us clearly why.

It´s political suicide for their parties, in the long run it´s economic suicide for the country, it´s suicide for any form of Icelandic sovereignty. It will lead to a sell-out of anything and everything, the country and its citizens own, to foreign bankers.

We are more indebted than Germany after the Versailles treaty of 1918. Making the repayment conditional to economic stability and as a percentage of what we earn, would be the only way to ever reasonably pay without self-destruction.

I don´t believe our government has been infested by body-snatchers, so the only other explanation must be, that there have been enormous threats leveled at them, what would be done to the country, if it doesn´t comply.

The left-green finance minister once mentioned that not complying with the Ice-save demands was considered (by whom he didn´t say) as a declaration of war.

My guess is, if he would get into details, the mainline media would declare him insane. The media seems to be far more powerful than any politician and the mainline media´s task is to “protect” the ordinary people from knowing too much about what is really going on.

We get to know everything about what the corrupt Icelandic bankers and businessmen have done wrong. However, the connection between the Icelandic and the British bankers, and that the British part of the Icelandic Landsbanki, including Ice-save was actually controlled by a British banker, a British citizens, a member of a British banker´s affiliation is never, ever mentioned in our media.

The fact that this man came originally from the HSBC, one of the largest British banks, which also happened to be the “advisors” of the Icelandic government when they got suckered into privatizing those banks in the first place, is never mentioned either.

My guess is, the whole Ice-slave matter has nothing to do with any debts we as a country might be responsible for by any international law (or they would allow us to go to court over it). It´s nothing else but the sneaky British take-over of the country with all it´s resources, land and sea-area.

After only having been independent since 1944 (having been treated with deep disdain by the Danish before that), Iceland is being recolonized, disdain and all.

notsylvia.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/news-from-the-icelandic-home-front/