The press conference held today at 2pm Icelandic time revealed details about the discussions between the Icelandic government and the IMF delegation.
The Icelandic Prime Minister, Geir H. Haarde, stressed that Iceland should not lose its courage and its people should support each other during these difficult times.
Haarde assured Icelanders that they are not the culprits that many nations have recently been making of them and furthermore that the immense body of work up till now had been aimed towards finding solutions, not identifying culprits.
Negotiations with IMF earlier today brought the first realistic numbers which should help towards securing large injections of foreign currency into Iceland. The talks have settled on Iceland entering into formal negotiations with the IMF regarding assistance in the form of as much as 2 billion USD to stabilise the Icelandic economy.
“We do not believe the IMF will put forward unacceptable conditions,” said Haarde at the press conference. “The IMF understands the situation Iceland has found itself in and has offered to help us to rebuild the Icelandic banking system.”
Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir, the Icelandic Minister of Foreign Affairs, described the situation of past weeks as “the earth moving a lot under our feet“.
„It is important to re-establish the strength of the Icelandic krona and to rebuild the trust that Iceland has lost,“ she continued. Gislasdottir then said that it is essential to accept the help of the IMF, as it is an organisation that will bring an unbiased view of the situation in Iceland which will help the country to be better understood overseas.
„It is difficult to talk about the current state of the application to IMF as it needs to go through a lot of legal procedures before its approval. The management of the IMF has two to three days to decide and then it will probably take ten more days to finalise the agreement,“ said Haarde.
we know our politicians are muppets, you are right
but your politicians are muppets aswell,
we will not steal anything, this just takes time to solve, there are always ways to get out of every mess we get into, we will solve this, possibly without the british government,
if our reputation is damaged beond repair we will just have to look to east europe
Anna and Axel, you and your countrymen are nothing more than a bunch of thieves, crooks and untrustworthy lowlife and deserve to be treated with absolute contempt you have shown to the foreign depositors.
What do you expect when you and your government steal money from the honest hard working people of Britain and Holland and then you fail to honour your legal obligations.
It was debt that created the problems in the first place and now you are being told that more debt (from IMF or Russia) is the answer to all your problems – NOT SO! It is just more of the same.
There are alternatives – take the hit, eat fish for a while, start a new currency (one of real value), and as the rest of the world falls into a global recession, you will come out of it in better shape in the end.
Umm, yes, the Icelandic banks are not repaying deposits that were made with them. Pretty close to the definition of stealing.
Haarde talking about rebuilding the banking system does make me laugh though. No one from abroad will bank with an Icelandic bank again – that particular house of cards has fallen and the government guarantees called into question (by the Icelanic PM, FM & the governor of the Central Bank, no less). And we’re not talking about people losing money because a bank went under here, we’re talking about the government refusing to state it will honour its guarantee for first ~20k euros of retail deposits.
Anyway, best wishes to the normal Icelander-on-the-street. Your politicians are muppets though (feel free to blame ours if it makes you feel better).
I would rather live in hell for the rest of my life than have the british walk all over me
as for you gray, suck it up, no one is stealing anything, if it comes to starvation please come to iceland, we will feed you some rotten shark
it tastes good but it smells like british politics
Looks like Shock Therapy is coming to Iceland. I hope the Icelandic people are ready for what’s coming: High unemployment, privatization of the country’s public sector and natural resources, decreasing middle class, etc. Just read Naomi Klien’s “The Shock Doctrine.” You’ll see what I mean.
Good luck to you folks.
“we have the right to safe our self first”
You have the right to steal the savings of other people? Maybe, if you’re starving. Are you?
Grate press confrance!stand up to those dam britts,the whole world is suffering not just the britts millone’s of folks have lost a lot of money’s all over the world and we have the right to safe our self first before we can save anyone else, that is the right thing to do,sorry but you have to safe your owne kids before you can safe anyone elses,these are very tougf times for us all….
“It is difficult to talk about the current state of the application to IMF…”
I don’t like the sound of that. It sounds like the details will not be made public until the agreement is signed and it is too late to do anything about it…