I agree, Iceland should refuse to pay the debt. UK/NL can wait for 30 years until Iceland’s economy recovers from default and then claim the debt with interest. Iceland will be ****ed for the next thirty years and will pay all its other creditors back, but the debt won’t go away and your grandchildren will still pay for it. Iceland’s choice is whether to pay the debt or be harassed politically and crippled financially until it pays the debt back.

… so the mystery of the Icelandic economic collapse remains a mystery …

http://www.pressan.is/Frettir/LesaFrett/bilainnflutningur-gaeti-glaedst-med-vorinu-luxuskerrurnar-bida-ekki-lengur-i-rodum

In light of recent news; I will reffer to a post I made on friday night:
“Because now there is something for sure, IF Iceland pays its going to be under it´s terms and conditions. And that is IF Iceland pays.”

Just to remind everyone, this is NOT a game. This matter and how it is resolved, concerns the whole economic future of our country.

If the UK negotiators are willing to start discussions again, this is a positive thing, so long as it produces acceptable results this time around. Apparently, the reason the earlier discussions broke down, was that the UK/NL negotiators were not “authorized” to review or discuss the Icelandic proposal.

There was a definite effort to keep the agreements secret from even the MP’s. Things are a bit murky exactly when each part of the agreements were shown to the MP´s, but this was clearly an issue in June 2009.

The main source I have for this is a blog entry by Lara Hanna, which is one of the most popular blogger in Iceland (she has been tireless in exposing bad politicians, business people and bankers):

http://larahanna.blog.is/blog/larahanna/entry/900581/

She attended an impromptu meeting with Steingrimur J. the Finance Minister and Indridi H. his deputy and one of the lead negotiators after one of the Saturday protests June 20th 2009.

At this meeting Steingrimur was complaining that it was not the Icelandic government fault that the Icesave agreements were not published, and this was done at the demand of the UK/NL negotiators. He gave her some emails that she then published on her blog.

The first email is from Indridi H. on June 11th (about a week after the agreements were signed):

“The agreement has been discussed in some of the committees of the parliament and THEY HAVE BEEN DEMANDING A COPY OF THE AGREEMENT as well. I think it will be very difficult not to give in to their wishes but we would ask them to keep confidentiality. What is your opinion on that?”

(the emphasis was added by me)

From this it is very clear that even a week after the agreements were signed, the MP´s were still demanding to see the actual agreements.

The answer from the British negotiator comes back same day:

“What I tend to do is to invite people to read the documents in a room but do not let them make copies. It means they will be able to tell people the content but the documents themselves are not circulated to the world. Would that work in Iceland? ”

The Dutch negotiator answer the day after on June 12th:

“If the suggestion of G(British) works, than I have no objections to it. My slight worry of making everything public, is that this MAY CAUSE LOT OF OUTSIDE-COMMENT THAT WILL MAKE THE DISCUSSION EVEN MORE COMPLICATED. If however you really feel that your only possibility lies in making the arrangements public, I would be ready to consider that. What should be clear, is that we cannot renegotiate.”

(The emphases was added by me)

The Dutch negotiator ended up being right, it did indeed cause a LOT of outside comments :-)

Lara Hanna goes on later in her blog to say that the Dutch version of the agreements were leaked to the press between 12th and 17th of June.

The settlement agreement that contains 4.2(b) [the Ragnar Hall issue] was kept secret much longer. It was not until July 28th, that it was leaked, which was actually done by Gunnar Tómasson, former IMF economist, which has sometimes participated in the discussion here on Icenews.is.

http://www.vald.org/greinar/090728.html

All these unnecessary efforts to keep the agreements secrets did cause a lot of distrust, poisoned the atmosphere, and definitely damaged the chances of agreements being accepted by the Icelandic people.

To add to that, i don’t own a flat screen TV or a fancy car…or even a car btw…;)

Not sure that is correct. My recollection (and, given that I forgot what the Ragnar Hall issue was between June and November, you should take that with a pinch of salt :) ) was that they wanted the documents to be examined in the Althingi (by the MPs and associated experts) but not taken out. So kept secret from the people yes, Althingi no.

I see that the NYT/Reuters are saying that there’s some level of talks going on again between the UK and Iceland (no NL). The Icelandic press seemed, via Google translation, to be saying that the UK blinked in the game of chicken and asked the Icelanders to return.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/02/27/business/business-us-iceland.html

I do not presume to be entitled to speak for what is best for UK/Netherlands. What I am trying to accomplish here with these comments, is explaining in the best way I can, the extraordinary developments that are currently happening in Iceland.

If the governments of UK/Netherlands feel that it is in their best interest to let the referendum go forward, because somehow the people of Iceland are going to have to “come to their senses” afterward, then so be it. But they will have to live with the consequences (as do we), if they are mistaken.

The points you were making about why Iceland cannot afford not taking on this obligation, are all well and good. In fact they are the same arguments our own government have been making for the past 8 months. The only trouble with these points, is that they are NOT accepted by majority of the people in Iceland. And since these laws are going to a referendum, the people of Iceland ARE now the ultimate decision maker on this issue, not the government.

The Icelandic constitution governs everything that our government is allowed to do. It cannot just be turned off, whenever it becomes inconvenient or if someone decides something else is in our best interest. If the referendum goes forward, it will be almost impossible politically to get ANY Icesave agreement accepted in Iceland, no matter how “good” it is. You just need to think of it from the perspective of the political parties, would they be willing to fight for an unpopular agreement against 60-80% of electorate.

That is why I said, “If the UK/Netherlands want to be paid anything from the Icelandic government in addition to the LBI recoveries (6.4B Euros), they should do everything in their power to make sure this does not go to the referendum.”