Meltdown

Mostly Harmful

A new constitution has been drafted.

This draft would not have passed in the 18th century.

Platitudes about elected ‘representatives’ only being bound by their ‘consciousness’ is a contradiction in terms.

Delaying referendums up to a year, is a pathetic attempt to separate power from the people.

No attempt is made to curb the powers which are the dictates of modern societies, where governments, parliaments, and courts are but office-workers for transnational money powers.

E.g. article 58 is just dandy, It prevents the nation from defending it self against financial warfare.

This is all the more peculiar as it was the workings of these monetary powers that instigated this work.
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The first words of our constitution are, –

“Ísland er lýðveldi…” – “Iceland is a republic” which means a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of its citizens.

The miserable sods that concocted the current text have failed to understand this.
–
…
Finally, when the State, on the eve of ruin, maintains only a vain, illusory and formal existence, when in every heart the social bond is broken, and the meanest interest brazenly lays hold of the sacred name of “public good,” the general will becomes mute: all men, guided by secret motives, no more give their views as citizens than if the State had never been; and iniquitous decrees directed solely to private interest get passed under the name of laws.
…
The Social Contract (Book 4) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712–1778

In the 21st century with it’s non-human global entities, mega corporations and their financial instruments, it is not apparent that 204 (?) magnificent constitutions are of much use in times when replacing of governments and the destruction of sovereign states is but an idle pastime.
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Already Forgotten
To Enrich and Privilege the Designers
Save the Gambling Bankers
Eurozone debt crisis
The Steady Drip
Tall fair and blond (32)
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What A Wonderful World

The Creative Evolution of Stupidity

In the early days of the meltdown we were told to be green with envy at Ireland, they had shelter in the EU and the Euro. To day curiously enough Ireland is nowhere to be found, nor any meaningful discussion of the EU-Euro “shelter” for the other PIGS.

However, we get informed ad nauseum that our own currency is more than useless, and that we will never get anywhere with it.

That the nation state is totally outdated and super Germany is the future in the new world order.

And that nationalism is one of our most ugly trades.

In short, hand over your independence.

Office workers from the Eu (elected by no one) tell us that it does not matter where the money the Banksters owe to Europe comes from, it has to be payed. Transmuting two party agreement failures onto a third party bystander is an swell legal trickery, probably invented by Rothschild who didn’t care who wrote the law, as long as he could issue the money.

The Four Horsemen
The Lost Science of Money
The Pain Caucus
Rigged Markets
Will ~ EU Central Bankers Destroy Democracy?

Impeached PM launches PR Circus

* I’m innocent of all charges.
* All the judges are disqualified
* This abomination is a grave danger to the rule of law.
* I will take my case to the European Court of Human Rights.
* Political witch hunt by lefties.
* Heavy on me and my family.

Nothing Original or New just tried and tested PR drivel.

It is miraculous how innocent the marriage partners of politics and banking are in a country which experienced a total meltdown. Not a single politician or banker bears any responsibility. – It was all some unspecified alien force.

It is becoming increasingly clear, that no one belonging to the political class will face any consequence for their actions. The people will pay as usual, having no PR Firm to fend for them.

The SIC Report
Saksóknari Alþingis (Parliaments Prosecutor)
—
Shields-up for the Political Class
Inside Job
PR Watch
Perception management
–
What’s Wrong With the News?
Not for political elites
The Front Fell Off
How does the financial system work

A Systems Analysis Perspective

 Icelandic Economic Collapse
A Systems Analysis Perspective on financial, social and world system links

“We live in a time with ever increasing complexity in society and this is reflected in our lives becoming more complex and less easy to understand. Globalization has meant that events andcausal chains span larger distances, structures are less transparent and the way the world worksis becoming more difficult to understand. The Icelandic bank crisis, the co-occurring national financial collapse and world financial crisis was part of a larger set of linked events that are difficult to overview and penetrate.”
…
“The Icelandic economic collapse was real and very serious for a small country. Only by silent intervention of its Nordic neighbours were certain basic functions of supplying the country with essentials maintained. Without this, the situation for the Icelandic population would have been noticeably bad or even dangerous”
….
“After the financial collapse of the banks and later the state, the financial transactions and transfers were mapped out in detail in a Parliamentary Special Investigative Report (2010), including who was involved and their actions described as far as possible. However, these results are all outputs from an economic system where decisions were made somewhere else in the larger societal system. To come closer to the question of how and why the economic bubble could go so far, we also need to address the social dimension of the collapse.”
…
“One issue stands out clear from the global financial crisis, and that is that the there is no way back, the old system was flawed on a fundamental level, and the international financial and policy context is still very unsustainable. The whole world´s economic system, which is based on material resource consumption forever, has reached a limit we knew would be there somewhere in time, and which will eventually stop it (Meadows et al. 1972, 1992, 2005, Latouche 2007,Jackson 2009). Growth economics on a limited planet is unrealistic.”
…

University of Iceland

Icelandic Economic Collapse
A Systems Analysis Perspective on financial,
social and world system links (.pdf)

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System dynamics
Causal loop diagram

“Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on for ever in a finite
world is either a madman or an economist” ~ Kenneth Boulding

Al Bartlett: In Growth We Trust (the simple math 1 to 8 ) and
The Essential Exponential!

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Related ?
The Four Horsemen
“The prostitution of the economics profession” [1].[2]
“not much to do with what the Constitution calls for.” [1].[2]
In the Valley of Elah

Presidential Statement.

” … Iceland has demonstrated its willingness to negotiate agreements; we have shown fairness, but at the same time stuck firmly to our democratic and legal rights.

Although a majority of the electorate has in this referendum said ‘no’ with respect to the conclusions of the negotiations which took place last year, it is necessary to emphasise that the nature of the Icesave issue is such that the British and Dutch authorities and agencies will still, notwithstanding this result, receive immense sums from the estate of Landsbanki. In all likelihood, the amounts paid to them will come to the equivalent of USD 7-9 billion, the first payment taking place within a few months.

It is therefore not correct to maintain that the United Kingdom and the Netherlands will not receive any payments. The Icesave dispute has centred on interest payments and the interpretation of the European Union’s regulations. … ”

Statement to the international media on the result of the Icesave referendum.
Moodys rating …who cares & UK Treasurys Statements Are ‘Misleading

Pimp My Ride

Selling citizenship is the latest Moral Hazard offered by Vulture Capitalists.

A group of Super Wealthy, Holy, and Wholesome foreign investors and hedge fund managers is offering easy salvation, they just want to bring loads of good money and they are definitely not coveting our natural resources, – they only want to create jobs – from the goodness of their heart.

They are all vetted by Lawyers and Kroll, and just want to bring their families (except for wives?) and become Icelanders, what else could we want?

But, “Behind every great fortune, there is a crime” ~Honoré de Balzac

Those with learning disabilities manifested by the Casino Mentality of latter days, confirm even at this late hour, that, the ‘meltdown’ was not confined to the banking sector.

“An ass is but an ass, though laden with gold” ~Romanian Proverb

Multiple citizenship
The Marshall Plan (.is)
What A Friend We Have in … money! (.is)
How Kroll Signed Off on $7 Billion Fraud

The Cost of Economic Hubris

Central Bank’s “Technical” Bankruptcy 175
Landsbanki 122
Arion (Kaupþing) 46
Icesave 35
Íslandsbanki 28

Total: 530 miljarðar ~ $ 4.4 billion ~ € 3? billion

Somehow these numbers do not reflect the priorities propagated by the powerful and moneyed interests.

DV

29 Months & Still Smiling

The impunity before the law is becoming embarrassing.

From October 2008 (865 days) the justice system has been unable to figure if anything fraudulent or illegal occurred leading up to the Meltdown. – And it’s not for the want of “suspects”.

However, – it only took days to nullify an unusually democratic election on a “possible technicality”.

We love Democracy, but the Rabble must Keep in Line.

Laterally related:
From [Legal]ography to Kinetic Typography
The Ignorant and Meddlesome Outsiders
Anonymous v. Corporate
Everything’s fucked up, and the nonjailable class
The Untouchables

No End In Sight?

Without intent, David Harvey summarizes in an RSAnimation, recurring theme’s (providing categories sorely missing in this blog), questions, and explanatory formats, we have been living through these past years, he calls these genres:

1. Human frailty
2. Institutional failures
3. Failed theory
4. Cultural origins (Vikings are pigs)
5. Failure of policy

He then goes on to these (GSQ) questions:

Is there a Systemic risk?
Are there Internal contradictions of capital accumulation?
What about Financial innovation?
Can we change our mode of thinking?

– Or are we doomed to the fate of Sisyphus?

Carl Jung is attributed to have said “What [we] resist persists.”

Not at all hopeful for us or the way in which we have been handling the “boulder”.

Another peculiar paradox in this saga is the Recovery Industry which consists of more or less the same ‘class’ that bankrupted us, – not unlike the Counter-Terrorism Industry, or even the Military–industrial complex ever securing the peace – God Forbid.

In the Divine Comedy the inscription at the entrance to Hell reads, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”.
However, in our own wacky version we get saved at the entrance by the “Great Icelandic Hockey Bailout.” because we are ‘too small to fail’, QED.

Crises of Capitalism
All the Devils Are Here:
The DIKW Problem

Defective By Design

Is Our Monetary Structure a Systemic Cause for Financial Instability?

“Why is the financial crisis of 2008 treated as if it were the first? The World Bank has identified more than 96 previous banking crises and 176 monetary crises since President Nixon introduced the floating exchange regime in the early 1970s (Caprio and Klingebiel, 1996). Even before this period, financial booms and bust cycles were, in Kindleberger’s words, a remarkably “hardy perennial” (Kindleberger, 1978); he inventories no less than 48 massive crashes between the 1637 tulip mania in Holland and the 1929 crash on Wall Street. In short, it may be tempting to consider financial and monetary instability as a given, as part of Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” of
capitalism.” –

320 crashes from 1637 (~ 0.86 p.a.).

For the last 370 years, there has been on average one crash every 14th month, and as recovery usually takes years this has been a history of continuous disaster. No wonder the Economic Priesthood is pleased with it self.

It is difficult to accept Economics as a Scientific Discipline with such a dismal record of “correction”. – “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
–
Bernard Lietaer
The Lost Science of Money
The American Monetary Act (proposed)
Religion, not a science
Barefoot Economics
Surviving without money
The Bank of Happiness
The Shock Doctrine

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