Nice country you have there...shame if anything were to happen to it...

[Elder Iptuous]

From what my wife was telling me about when she studied in the region, everyone calls them Burmese (and roll their eyes when they say it.  apparently they are the regions version of Kentucky or something)

Why is Spain and Greece not keen on getting them in?  is it because they are about to sovereign default and they don't want some other beggar crapping up the handout scene for them?

[Cain]

I'm not sure about Spain.  They just threw a ton of paperwork at them, for apparently no reason.  When that happens, my first suspicion is bureacratic sabotage.

Greece do seem to want them in.  They have a lot of influence over Malta, for some reason, despite the obvious UK and Italian connections.  Greece uses Malta and Cyprus as proxies, and Germany, the real power in the EU, uses Greece as a proxy quite often.  On the other hand, even the EU micro-states can sometimes act independently.

[BabylonHoruv]

True.  These guys are pretty special though.  I mean, one of them is promoting Steiner schools.  Yes, they really are that stupid.

[/quote]

What's wrong with Waldorf Schools?

[Requia ☣]

Didn't the UK also freeze numerous Icelandic assets using anti terrorism laws thus making a moderate disaster into a massive one because Iceland couldn't get at any foreign investments?

[Elder Iptuous]

anti terrorism laws?
what was the pretext?  or was it simply a blantant misuse of law? (which would shock me, i tell you!)

[Requia ☣]

The beauty of anti terrorism laws is that you don't actually need a pretext, they're set up to avoid all that unimportant judicial review crap.

[Kai]

The beauty of anti terrorism laws is that you don't actually need a pretext, they're set up to avoid all that unimportant judicial review crap.

It hurts so good.

[Cain]

The UK has a long and distinguished history of the misuse of anti-terrorism laws.  Under previous legislation, I seem to recall people got arrested for wearing t-shirts that insulted Glorious Leader Tony Blair, and eavesdropping laws used by councils to catch people cheating on...something or other to do with school catchment areas, I think.  Or rubbish, or something.

It also helps to know that the Special Branch (the counter-terrorism police force) are the most heavily politicized law enforcement agency in the country.  Its no coincidence that when police were sent into Parliament to search an opposition party MP's offices, Special Branch were the ones to do it.

[Triple Zero]

(Sorry, I'm a little pissed and I apologize if it sounds like its directed at you.  I just finished writing a post about a bunch of UK "leftists" and "liberals" who are cheerleading this on, either because they don't understand the economics, or just like our PM bullying other nations.  God damn I hate people sometimes)

Oh not at all, as I said, it was a good reason to stop being ill-informed about the matter.

And it doesn't surprise me in the least that my country is capable of doing awful things when it comes to banking ... I dunno if it's the former minister of finance that went working for the shady DSB bank or just simply the dark cold hard calculating look in Wouter Bos's eyes. For some reason, I believe Balkenende is just doing his moderate christian thing, not always things I agree with, but I don't really expect him to be plotting dark horrible stuff either.

But then again, apparently Balkenende doesn't take a stand against this extortion of Iceland either.

Most important thing is, what you said in the OP makes sense to me, and since I'm pretty sure some time soon some friend will bring up this subject, I'm gonna need to be able to argue that point. Because they insist that I cannot be well-informed since I do not watch TV, and refuse to pay attention to any kind of celebrity gossip poop or dumb TV shows. Though they more or less went a bit silent when I could explain them the basic causes of the mortgage crisis better than they could

Even though, in comparison to the average PD-er I do not consider myself well-informed at all, but yeah

[Cainad (dec.)]

Most important thing is, what you said in the OP makes sense to me, and since I'm pretty sure some time soon some friend will bring up this subject, I'm gonna need to be able to argue that point. Because they insist that I cannot be well-informed since I do not watch TV, and refuse to pay attention to any kind of celebrity gossip poop or dumb TV shows. Though they more or less went a bit silent when I could explain them the basic causes of the mortgage crisis better than they could

Even though, in comparison to the average PD-er I do not consider myself well-informed at all, but yeah

This is one of the reasons I like PD so much: I can siphon off of everyone's knowledge and make myself seem incredibly well-informed about everything.

[Freeky]

Most important thing is, what you said in the OP makes sense to me, and since I'm pretty sure some time soon some friend will bring up this subject, I'm gonna need to be able to argue that point. Because they insist that I cannot be well-informed since I do not watch TV, and refuse to pay attention to any kind of celebrity gossip poop or dumb TV shows. Though they more or less went a bit silent when I could explain them the basic causes of the mortgage crisis better than they could

Even though, in comparison to the average PD-er I do not consider myself well-informed at all, but yeah

This is one of the reasons I like PD so much: I can siphon off of everyone's knowledge and make myself seem incredibly well-informed about everything.

This!

[Cain]

True.  These guys are pretty special though.  I mean, one of them is promoting Steiner schools.  Yes, they really are that stupid.

What's wrong with Waldorf Schools?
[/quote]

Apart from the enormous amounts of pseudoscience and crap they teach, not much.  But if you insist on a fuller list

- they encourage bullying, as a form of "karmic payback"
- explicitly racist teachings
- Teaching "science" based on the four elements (ie; earth, water, air, fire)
- Almost complete omission of scientific theory from the cirriculum
- Geological stages such as Post-Atlantis and Mid-Lemuria are frequently used
- Teaching intelligent design (of the Steiner variation) instead of evolution
- The schools are generally used as a vehicle to peddle Anthroposophy

[Triple Zero]

Basically, under EU law, Iceland only has to pay back 20,000 Euros to each investor.  And this has passed the Parliament without a problem, despite the fact that these payments equal the entire yearly export earnings of Iceland (and the UK and Netherlands imposed a punitive 5.5% interest rate on top of those payments too).

But investors want the rest back as well, yes.

BTW, Dutch media is still reporting as if Iceland literally owes us 1.3 billion euros which they "won't give back to us"

And not a word about this EU law 20k per investor + 5.5% that they already agreed upon.

Basically they're portraying Iceland as a bunch of thiefs that won't give back what they "borrowed" from us and Wouter Bos is decried as a hero for holding this position.

[Aufenthatt]

To be honest, you all seem to be missing the real reason that the Uk (if not the Netherlands) is trying to twist their arm.

The government advisers that came from the city advised a lot of local councils and county councils to invest in other countries, for various reasons. The fact that the Co-op and the Post office run all their financial services through the Bank of Ireland is testament to this. They'd be more mellow if we'd just lost a lot of money from individuals, but what's happened is a significant amount of local spending money for the next five years went up in smoke.

Losing the money of any government is unlikely to make you popular, but losing money from a country which relies so heavily on government spending to run basic services is like enraging a pregnant, steroid enhanced baboon. Simply, if some money isn't found soon the public might find out that the government can't afford to maintain the infrastructure in the short term.
This is a no-no.

Each Icelander may have to pay a debt of $17,352, but each UK citizen has amassed $22,555 of debt through bailing out the Bank of Scotland, among other things, and simply, we can't get Nixon to pay it.

Actually what's happened is a return to the fine British tradition of plundering other nations, and I for one think its about damn time. In fact, I'm going to plan an invasion of the USA.

[Triple Zero]

ok so I've been talking this Iceland thing over with some friends, and they gave me a link, which seems a bit different from your story, it's Dutch so I will translate some parts:

http://www.bnr.nl/artikel/13941020/chronologie-debacle-rond-icesave

20 november 2008: IMF and some European countries lend to Iceland 6.5 bln euro on the condition that Iceland repays all its debts.

26 januari 2009: Premier Geir Haarde and his government step down. Icelanders protest for weeks about the way the government handled the crisis.

6 juni 2009: Netherlands and Iceland reach agreement on repayment of Icesave accounts. Iceland will get 15 years time to repay the entire amount of 1.3 bln euros to the Netherlands [I suppose this is the Dutch part of that 6.5 bln mentioned earlier?]

23 juli 2009: Iceland formally requests membership of the EU. The problems with NL and UK are an obstacle.

28 augustus 2009: Icelandian parliament agrees with repayment of 1.3 bln euros to NL. However, the conditions on this agreement remain unclear whether this money will be repaid within the agreed period [of 15 years].

19 oktober 2009: NL, UK and Iceland sign a new agreement about repaying the loans. Now NL and UK are guaranteed that the pre-financed repayments to Icesave investors will be paid back by Iceland. Iceland can even take longer than until 2024 to make these payments.

30 december 2009: Icelandian parliament agrees with the new law that makes the compensations to NL and UK possible.

31 december 2009: President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson does not yet want to sign the law. He says the program is still subject of debate and says he needs more time to reach a decision.

3 januari 2010: Nearly 25% of Icelandian population signs a petition against repayment. They are of the opinion that the Icelandian taxpayer should not take the hit for errors made by financial institutions that operate under official supervision.

5 januari 2010: The Icelandian president decides not to sign for the program. A veto by a president only happened once before in Icelandian history.




So all in all, there's no word about this 20k per debtor, nor about Iceland actually promising to even pay that part back.

And in all fairness, I can't really read this story in any other way than that Iceland did borrow money to pay its debt, did promise to pay it all back, and now is trying to backpedal out of that promise.

And sure enough, you can argue about whether it's a good idea of NL and UK to twist Iceland's economical arm behind it's back like that. But it's not like NL and UK aren't entitled to getting their money back and the investors are just whining about not getting everything back, but just a part. Cause it seems whatever it was they got back, was not paid by Iceland, will not be paid by Iceland, but will be paid by UK and NL.

Which is kind of different from the idea I got from your explanation on the previous page. So is that timeline story wrong? Is my interpretation of it wrong? Did I understand your explanation wrong?