The Icelandic government is said to be angry at the approach of the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown concerning depositors of Landsbanki. (Read IceSave customers to get UK support).
Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde, who held a press conference this afternoon, compared the approach of “further action”, mentioned by Brown, to terrorist law which would be irrelevant if applied to Iceland. Haarde had a discussion with British Chancellor Alistair Darling earlier today, who seems to agree that such steps were premature and hot-headed. They both agreed that a team will be sent to Iceland to settle this matter as well as attend IMF talks this weekend.
Haarde then called for the cooperation of the governments of the countries involved.
The Icelandic Central Bank has got backup reserves available for transactions in foreign currencies. Haarde‘s governement promised that all steps will be taken to ensure that foreign nationals working in Iceland as well as employees in foreign branches will be paid.
“Many people in the banking industry will be losing their jobs and it seems people will be losing substantial fortunes as well as just shareholders’ investments,“ said Haarde. He added that the Icelandic government will do its best to minimise the losses in these difficult times of the worst financial crisis Iceland has ever seen.
Kaupthing is hoped to survive and continue normal business. Iceland’s guarantee to Kaupthing abroad will be different for subsidiaries and branches. In some cases the hosting country is responsible for such guarantees.
Some parts of Landsbanki will continue to work for import and export activities.
Haarde reassured that if the guarantee of the Depositors’ and Investors’ Guarantee Fund is not sufficient, the National Treasury will step in, as stipulated in the contract with the EU. Deposits of the assets are covered by the state.
Haarde repeatedly emphasised the fact that this is not national bankruptcy as the worldwide press has been presenting in the past days.
Read more on financial crisis in Iceland on IceNews:
IceSave to be covered by mutual agreement
IceSave customers to get UK support
IceSave customers consoled by Iceland PM agreeable solution sought
get mad people
declaring a country a terrorist it is frightening that anyone could do that and get away with it we should all find a place to hide from this insanity because we can not stop it the media aids it i think that the press is a slave to the people who do this not because they are afraid of the elite but because they are also the elite the banks will be able to do anything they want as long as they can maintain a middle class that believes the lies and a press to calm the stupid all the press are self righteous right wingers they never cover a protest unless the protesters did something wrong if they had liberal ideas then they would not have a job the business news has been feeding use pablum for years and what we see now tastes nothing like the stuff they are feeding us this Iceland news should be big shocking time to wake up news and i found it by accident these people should be able plan their own way out of this trouble they came from a democracy older than the **** England has to offer and they have something to show us
Summary:
1.gutting the good terrorist international law.
2. Crying wolf, should be / is a crime, they need to be billed for all the trouble, time they have cost everyone, then hit with stiff international penalties for misusing power for mischief.
the ploy was by britain’s banks, who used the anti-terrorist laws to kick all the Icelandic banks out of britain. they reimbursed all shareholders, with very generous sums, them charged iceland for the sums they payed out with penalties, with is farm more then Iceland can afford.
thus totally gutting the anti terrorist law and ruining Iceland’s financial structure. if Iceland gives into this.
I know in The US, we have an emergency number ,that we used when in trouble. if that number gets mis-used, the person mis-using it has to pay, for the service, and all the fire department trucks, every one’s time,services fuel. it comes to a hefty bill. they should just hand the bank of britian a bill, for crying wolf.
Terrorists? That’s crazy! The real ‘terrorists’ are the CIA and the US Secret Shadow Government. 9/11 was obvioulsy an inside job – the evidence is overwhelming. Several Trillions of Dollars are inexplicably missing from the Pantagon accounts, no doubt syphened off to pay for Black Ops, and the department where the records were kept was conveniently detroyed in the 9/11 attacks. It stinks of corruption. Bush & Cheyney are criminals.
I wouldn’t put anything past the UK government in the Big Brother Britain that Blair created. Whilst UK depositors should be protected by the Icelandic Deposit Scheme, we should not be using anti-terror laws against an ally. I am a British Citizen and I am really not proud of how our government hypes up unecessary fear in the UK to introduce what would be viewed in most democratic countries as draconian restrictions on our liberty, just look at what the Council of Europe had to say about out proposed 42 day detention law, which has now been shelved! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7645191.stm
Britain was once the beacon of freedom and democratic vaules in Europe, but we have become a different place in the last decade in that George Orwell’s 1984 was not supposed to be the blueprint for Britain in 2008!
If its appropriate for the UK Government to use anti terrorist laws to freeze Icelandic assets in the UK and to seek to recover assets from Iceland then surely it would also be appropriate to use that legil;slation to punish those who invested there. Why for example has Barbara Wilding Chief Inspector of South Wales Police invested 7m pounds sterling there? Before she came to South Wales she was the Metropolitan Police’s expert on terrorism (author of Operation Kratos by which Jean Charles de Menezes was shot). She should know better than to invest 7m pounds in a country considerd by the UK Government to be terrorist. Particularly as she is advised by Alan Fry Chief Executive of the South Wales Police Authority who was in Swansea City’s treasury department. At the very least the Criminal Records Bureau should note their records about Barbara Wilding and Alan Fry.
As a UK resident, I was appalled at the gross abuse of anti-terrorist laws for convenience. I wrote this for your amusement: http://notnews.today.com/2008/10/11/brown-no-compromise-on-icelandic-terrorism/
First of all the situation in Iceland is really bad. I look at my country as people are loosing their jobs, there is no security and the future is gloomy: analysts are saying Iceland might go back 30 years economically speaking. It is of course very sad that other people are affected as well, British, Dutch, Finish, etc. Glitnir and Landskankin were privately owned banks at the moment of their bankruptcies . In my opinion, greedy investors took the wrong decisions with people’s money , and now a hole nation is affected :”We were faced with the real possibility that the national economy would be sucked into the global banking swell and end in national bankruptcy,” Icelandic prime minister Mr Haarde said. But my county is trying it’s best to cope with the crisis.
In my opinion the act of the British government to declare a terrorist law against Iceland by freezing other Icelandic companies is socking. What does other Icelandic firms have to do with this 2 particular private banks? Or the government of Iceland, as the British prime minister has putted into word: “We will take further action against the Icelandic authorities wherever that is necessary to recover money.”
Is this the best road to a peaceful collaboration into solving this huge financial crisis? I believe other countries might have answered with war. After saying this about war, i have to confess i am glad we are a tiny nation without an army, peaceful, hard working people, with the main occupation of fishing before the crazy bankers and investors came along. Now it seems we are going back to the fish factories. Does the Us government back up all the private banks that might get bankrupt with all the mes that can create?
In a BBC report was putted this question: ” Why didn’t the US Treasury save Lehman Brothers? …the US tax payer has been put at risk of shouldering the burden of billions of dollars of losses, and it is becoming politically LESS ACCEPTABLE for the government to keep bailing out private companies.”
The same BBC article mentions that “analysts say the US Treasury has put a line under its willingness to use public money to rescue banks which have made wrong decisions.” In my opinion. the banks ( Glitnir, Landsbankinn) at the moment of their bankruptcy were owned by greedy investors who took wrong decisions and now my country is going to hell for that. I want to address to my leaders and the British leaders to be careful in their decision making. I hope they will find the way to work together to fix this mess. Me, as a regular citizen of Iceland, and i think i can speak for regular hard working British people, that is what we all want. Iceland has been getting a bad reputation in the news, and i think is undeserved. There are certain individuals that caused this financial plague, not regular Icelanders.
Warmly,
Thordur Runarsson
Not a banker or investor,
just a regular website owner from Iceland
http://www.herbalnourish.com
it is very painful for us, that UK government applied terorist law against Iceland. we hope it will be better upcoming weeks.
That the Icelandic compensation fund was not large has been known about for some weeks, that the Icelandic bank liabilities exceeded the countries GDP by a factor of 10 has been known about for months even years.
If these were problems, the Chancellor would have done something about it before this week ??
Iceland banks have a low exposure to sub-prime debt and the Icelandoc government was running its affairs like any other western government. It’s problem has been getting new loans to replace existing loans, something the UK and USA do on a monthly basis. Despite an excelent credit history the loans to the government and the banks dried up as they have for HBoS in the UK.
The Chancellor could have offered a loan of 5 Billion to Iceland on which the UK tax payer would have made a profit, now the British tax payer is spending 5 Billon to replace the Icesave and Local government deposits with no certainty that we will get the money back.
Meanwhile the UK private deposit holders will get their money back but many small investors in iceland will be wiped out and several thousand Icelanders in a population of 300,000 will loose their jobs.
The Chancellor appears to have done every thing to make the problems of Iceland as worst as possible. I wonder if the end game is to have the Navy and Royal Marines go up north to reposes Iceland.
This article did make me a little cross though because it in no way reflected the enormous difficulties and worry that the Icelandic banking collapse has caused people in other countries.
In the UK 100 local councils have lost millions and may now have to cut back on essential services causing much suffering, small businesses have been pushed near the edge and hundreds of thousands of ordinary people have had great anxiety and cannot access their savings.
The UK taxpayers will be picking up much of the bill now that the Icelandic PM has apparently told the UK PM that Iceland has no intention of honouring a guarentee that is a legal obligation. Many people around the world are asking what were the Icelandic regulatory authories up to? Clearly not doing their job.
Having said that I have much respect for the people of Iceland and your wonderful country, I’m sorry for the current difficulties – I’m sure you will endure and get over them with a bit of time.
I think your (Icelandic) PM is missing the point. The UK government only reacted following Iceland’s freezing of UK based ICESAVE accounts. There has been no communication from the Icelandic authorities as to what is happening, the steps that need to be undertaken and the likely timeline for this – all these items should now be reasonably clear.
The icelandic PM has continues to appear completely clueless as to what is going on and keeps changing his mind – in yesterday’s interview he was completely relaxed and the position taken by the UK government – and now (again) he changes his mind – does he and his advisers know what they are doing?
There are 3 simply questions he and his cronies need to answer for ICESAVE customer – is Landsbanki solvent or not (our accounts are frozen and yet domestically they cotinue to trade)? Secondly, when are we going to get some sort of clarity (it can’t be that difficult to work out whether they are a going concern or not)? and thirdly – what is the process for making a claim?
If he answered these questions rather than continuously changing his mind we could all leave him and the icelandic nation in peace.