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 Iceland on the brink of a meltdown. |  Having been on a business trip to Iceland this week, and seeing first hand the state of their economy, I am brought back to our own 6. October, in our case 1992 and not 2008.
Iceland was a surreal place, everything costs half. The ISK króna has lost over half it's value over the last year, and is currently slugging it out with Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan as the worst preforming currency of the past 12 months. Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan FFS! This is further compounded by the fact that many loans in Iceland were obtained in Yen, Euros and Dollars. Hence they have seen their loans basically double in size. The Guardian has a good article out today on this issue. It is well worth a read. For those looking to buy a cheap car it might not be a bad idea to look in Iceland. Plenty of luxury cars that they now cannot afford to have.
Finally the size of the Icelandic banks is a problem, the 3 biggest banks are between 5 and 15 times the size of the public budget (depending upon how it's calculated), which means that the Government cannot afford to bail them all out. I witnessed a bank-run on Landsbankin (which is privatized, go figure, luckily they made a new real Landsbanki)
On the up side I recommend everyone to go Christmas shopping in Reykjavik. Things are half-price, it's like Eastern Europe in the 90's. Even the Hilton Hotel was cheap...
...but tomorrow is the 6. of October...
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| Comments |
on October 06 2008 12:49:15
So yesterday the Icelandic PM said a bailout wasn't necessary and today the response is that the Icelandic banks have been pulled of the stock market, and everything is spiraling further down... |
on October 06 2008 13:45:48
And with the bad reputation that Iceland currently has in the economic world, it is going to be tough to recover from this mess that they are in currently. I just hope some of them are smart enough to get euro's or other currency to hang on to.
I would not recommend buying a car in Iceland and moving it to FO. It is still going to cost you a fortune when you get it here, but you might save a few bucks on the retail price. The only good and possibly cheap cars to buy in Iceland are the American ones. And those generally tend to suck. |
on October 06 2008 13:46:03
And with the bad reputation that Iceland currently has in the economic world, it is going to be tough to recover from this mess that they are in currently. I just hope some of them are smart enough to get euro's or other currency to hang on to.
I would not recommend buying a car in Iceland and moving it to FO. It is still going to cost you a fortune when you get it here, but you might save a few bucks on the retail price. The only good and possibly cheap cars to buy in Iceland are the American ones. And those generally tend to suck. |
on October 06 2008 15:15:46
Thing is that they're being sold in bankruptcy cases. People have their car loans in euro/yen and cannot afford the car (as the guardian article explains). |
on October 06 2008 18:08:01
And now the Icelandic PM Geir Haarde has said the government will take control of the banks...and Iceland has it's own replay of our 6. of October...on the same date... |
on October 06 2008 18:11:28
And the ISK krona took another 23% loss on fears that the whole nation is going bankrupt. |
on October 07 2008 07:09:24
So laser eye surgery has gone down to 8000,- dkr. or there about. |
on October 07 2008 10:55:00
Cool! Now is the time to get rid of the glasses, it seems.  |
on October 09 2008 15:27:06
Today Kaupthing went under, and it is therefore of interest to look at this story from the February 20.
In it Saxo bank predicts that Kaupthing will go under this year, partly because of the dreaded Credit Default Swaps, and is met with responses like this:
"Analytikeren må være dum eller helt uvidende om islandske banker. Man kan bare gå til vores hjemmeside, for at se, hvordan nøgletallene er for Kaupthing, " siger han til borsen.dk.
Turns out the analyst wasn't an idiot... |
on October 13 2008 00:05:02
I just love this kind of responses  'Now look who's stupid!' |
on October 13 2008 00:10:01
Well done digging such a good article up from the dead Spot on and the response is kicked in the teeth with a good dose of reality!
Now this doesn't mean, I don't feel sorry for the Icelandic people, I do  Sad a few people can walk away from this scandal with their pockets full of money and innocent people must pay for their specualtions and manipulations!  |
on October 13 2008 15:01:32
I'm still in shock that the Icelandic economy crashed because of their suspect investments. I did NOT see that coming.
/sarcasm |
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