G.O.O.D

Source: The Associated Press

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.

Protesters inside and outside the hotel clashed with police, who fired pepper spray to disperse the 500-strong crowd. Some demonstrators threw water balloons, while others tossed firecrackers.

At one point, the broadcaster’s television cables caught fire, interrupting the live broadcast. The program cut to commercials, followed by an announcement that Channel 2’s equipment had been damaged and the show would be suspended.

Outside the hotel, a policeman hit on the head with a brick had to be hospitalized. Three protesters were arrested.

The disruption was the latest in a series of demonstrations that have rocked Iceland since the country’s economy imploded this fall under a mammoth load of bad debt. Unemployment has increased and inflation has soared.

Demonstrations have been largely peaceful — some protesters were reportedly invited in for coffee when they showed up at President Olafur Grimsson’s home earlier this month.

But other events have been violent. Icelandic authorities used tear gas for the first time since 1949 when a huge crowd tried to storm a police station in Reykjavik in November, and on Dec. 18, protesters smashed the windows of the country’s financial watchdog agency.

Technorati Tags: Iceland, riots, protests, demonstrations, inflation

Source: monstersandcritics.com

What began Monday as a celebration of Iceland’s 90th birthday since its independence from Denmark in 1918 turned into protests by several hundred people who stormed to the central bank in anger over the government’s handling of the financial crisis.

The protests were a continuation of demonstrations over the weekend that drew several thousand people despite freezing conditions.

Monday’s protestors pushed into the Central Bank foyer, loudly demanding the resignation of Central Bank chief David Oddsson. Over the weekend, angry Icelanders demanded that Prime Minister Geir Haarde step down. Similar calls for the two men to step down have punctuated recent weeks.

The two men are being held accountable for the financial breakdown, bank collapses and accumulation of huge debt in the country of 320,000 on the island nation in the icy North Atlantic. The crisis followed on the US financial crisis that started unravelling in earnest in mid September.

The Icelandic krone has lost three-quarters of its value over 12 months. The government has only been able to ward off bankruptcy through credits from the International Monetary Fund and other governments.

Iceland is in for a tough year in 2009 as the economy is expected to shrink by 10 per cent, unemployment to quadruple, and inflation to hit 20 per cent.

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Perhaps a glimpse of things to come…

Source: inthenews.co.uk

Protesters in Iceland have clashed with police during a demonstration against the country’s economic woes.

Over the past year Iceland’s currency, the Krona, has fallen by 50 per cent as the Scandinavian country nationalised its three biggest banks to prevent their collapse.

It has also received emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its neighbours to help it deal with the financial turmoil.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside parliament on Saturday demanding government resignations over the worsening economic climate.

A small group then broke off and headed towards the city’s main police station to call for the release of a man who had been detained after failing to pay a fine over previous protests.

Police used pepper spray as the group tried to storm the building and managed to bring the crowd under control. The detained man was later released.

Iceland was the first country to seek financial assistance from the IMF as the turmoil in the credit markets in October made trading conditions difficult for the country’s biggest financial institutions.

The UK government used anti-terror legislation to freeze money deposited by UK savers in Icelandic banks in order to ensure that their money was protected.

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Source: NYTimes.com

This country, as modern and sophisticated as it is geographically isolated, still seems to be in shock. But if the events of last month — the failure of Iceland’s banks; the plummeting of its currency; the first wave of layoffs; the loss of reputation abroad — felt like a bad dream, Iceland has now awakened to find that it is all coming true.

It is not as if Reykjavik, where about two-thirds of the country’s 300,000 people live, is filled with bread lines or homeless shanties or looters smashing store windows. But this city, until recently the center of one of the world’s fastest economic booms, is now the unhappy site of one of its great crashes. It is impossible to meet anyone here who has not been profoundly affected by the financial crisis.

Overnight, people lost their savings. Prices are soaring. Once-crowded restaurants are almost empty. Banks are rationing foreign currency, and companies are finding it dauntingly difficult to do business abroad. Inflation is at 16 percent and rising. People have stopped traveling overseas. The local currency, the krona, was 65 to the dollar a year ago; now it is 130. Companies are slashing salaries, reducing workers’ hours and, in some instances, embarking on mass layoffs.

“No country has ever crashed as quickly and as badly in peacetime,” said Jon Danielsson, an economist with the London School of Economics.

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Source: The Associated Press: Iceland’s banks falter

Iceland’s banks face a battle for survival Tuesday after government introduced emergency legislation to give itself sweeping new powers over its collapsing financial sector.

Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde warned late Monday that the heavy exposure of the tiny country’s banking sector to the global financial turmoil was raising the specter of “national bankruptcy.”

The government’s attempt to gain control of the increasingly dire situation and restore some confidence in the country’s hard-hit banking sector followed a day of panic Monday that saw trading in shares of major banks suspended and the Icelandic krona shrink in value against the euro.

Iceland is paying the price for an economic boom of recent years that saw its newly affluent companies go on an acquisition spree across Europe and its banking sector grow to dwarf the rest of the economy. Bank assets are nine times annual gross domestic product of 14 billion euros ($19 billion).

Investors are now punishing the whole country for the banking sector’s heavy exposure to the global credit squeeze — its currency has gone through the floor, imports have fallen and inflation is soaring.

A major fear is that the government will struggle to rescue any other failing banks after last week coming to the rescue of the country’s third largest bank, Glitnir.

“In the perilous situation which exists now on the world’s financial markets, providing the banks with a secure life line poses a great risk for the Icelandic nation,” Haarde said in a televised address to the nation. “There is a very real danger, fellow citizens, that the Icelandic economy, in the worst case, could be sucked with the banks into the whirlpool and the result could be national bankruptcy.”

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Source: Reuters

Iceland’s financial authorities took over the country’s second largest bank Tuesday and shares in some of Britain’s biggest banking names tumbled, the latest victims of the global financial crisis.

Western governments and central banks faced demands for coordinated action after Australia responded to the growing crisis by cutting its interest rates by 100 basis points.

Iceland, a country of 300,000 in the North Atlantic, is battling to stave off national bankruptcy after its banks took on massive debts in expanding overseas.

The country’s market authority took control of Landsbanki using sweeping new powers introduced overnight. Russia would provide a loan of 4 billion euros ($5.44 billion), the Icelandic central bank said.

In a further sign of the fear gripping markets, shares in some of Britain’s biggest high street banks fell sharply again on reports of funding talks between the government and banks.

Royal Bank of Scotland was the biggest loser, with its shares down more than percent to a 13-year low.

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