3f: Iceland
Over the last 200 years, 83 countries have gone bankrupt. More recently in Europe, Cyprus, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece have all received massive bank bailouts making ‘austerity’ a household word in these countries. The exception though, is Iceland and for this very reason it is worth taking a closer look at how the crooked banks got their come-uppance. From the BBC; How did Iceland clean up its banks?
“The 2008 global financial crisis hit Iceland hard. The currency crashed, unemployment soared and the stock market was more or less wiped out.
But unlike other Western economies, the Icelandic government let its three major banks fail and went after reckless bankers. Many senior executives have been jailed and the country’s ex-prime minister Geir Haarde was also put on trial, becoming the first world leader to face criminal prosecution arising from the turmoil, although he was subsequently cleared of negligence. Experts talked to the BBC World Service Inquiry programme.
Gudrun Johnsen: The reckoning
Gudrun Johnsen was on the special commission set up to learn lessons from Iceland’s banking collapse.
“The banks were 10 times the GDP of Iceland; 20 times the state budget. They were too big to bail out…The stock market collapsed: 80% of the stock market was wiped out overnight. Shareholders were badly hurt. About every other business in Iceland became technically bankrupt…97% of the banking sector collapsed in a matter of three days, and I hope I will not witness this anywhere in the world again.
People felt very let down. They were very angry and took to the streets. Two or three per cent of the entire nation gathered in front of parliament demanding answers.
The government demanded that the banks decrease the debt of households [owing more than the value of their house], and that people would not be driven into bankruptcy…The government also set up a special agency where people in big financial trouble could apply for debt forgiveness.
Parliament had to respond to the outcry and set up a Special Investigation Commission, equipped with enormous data privileges so it could reveal the truth behind the collapse…It found the assets of the banks and the loans had been extended into a cobweb: firm A owns firm B, which owns firm C and, sometimes firm C owns firm A. There was virtually very little or no equity in those businesses. The operations are entirely dependent on credit from the banks.
What also came to light was that those who owned these pyramids of corporations were in the ownership of the largest shareholders of the banks themselves. That was very worrisome – we had a financial system that was really opaque. The bankers didn’t really know how much equity there was to be matched against the loans they were extending…If you don’t know exactly what happened, you don’t know what type of behaviour you need to correct, and cultural change is really difficult. There was a benefit in the entire system going down. We know what failed and as a consequence we were able to clean house pretty quickly.”
Olafur Hauksson
Olafur Hauksson was a special prosecutor working on the collapsed bank cases in Iceland. They have brought 28 cases, with more than 60 prosecutions.
“It’s been quite time-consuming: in one of the biggest cases we have 22,000 pages…After the three biggest banks failed, the Financial Supervisory Authority took them over and put in Resolution Committees. These were obligated to have auditors go through the books and return a report to the Supervisory Authority. They were obligated to give us information of anything suspicious.
In the beginning, we thought we may find something that was linked to the bank collapse itself; someone trying to take his chances because of the confusion of the crisis. But what came up was that many of the cases that we investigated stretched back several years…It was difficult to decide the difference between criminality and crazy banking, but we were more focused on how they gave their loans out; if they followed proper procedures. If they didn’t, that was an indication of some wrongdoing…We had an inside fraud case, and a manager in the Ministry of Finance received two years’ imprisonment. Then we had the Exeter Case. The CEO of that bank and the chairman got four and four and a half years’ imprisonment…We had an inside fraud case [which got] 12 months’ imprisonment; breaches on the Company Act [which got] six and eight months’ imprisonment and the lawyer was revoked…Then we had a market manipulation case and fraudulent loans case connecting to Landsbanki. They got three and a half years.
The CEO for all of the Banki (Icelandic banks) received 18 months, and one of the brokers received nine months. Then we have the BK case. Four were found guilty: two received four years, one received three and one received two.
There has been huge conflict in the courtrooms. It has been a big fight. They were testing on each and every inch of our cases…I do not think that we’d be able to establish faith in the system without this being dealt with. It is always about trust.”
Asgeir Jonsson
Asgeir Jonsson is the former chief economist at Kaupthing Bank.
“In European banking, there is an unwillingness to accept losses. If you look at how the central banks in the UK and the US and in Europe responded, they printed money…We could not print money, so we had to face the reality. No-one really knows how all the money printing that has been taking place in the major economies of the West will end.”
Dr Jay Cullen
Dr Jay Cullen is a lecturer in banking and finance law at the University of Sheffield.
“It’s difficult to draw parallels from the Icelandic experience…Iceland experienced a massive increase in the size of its banking system over a very short period of time from about 2000 onwards…I’m not sure that the Icelandic financial system was as important to the performance of the Icelandic economy as say, the City of London is to the UK. The UK economy is much more developed than Iceland’s. It’s much more reliant upon financial services as a whole.
The frauds involved were overt. There was substantial market manipulation going on, insider trading. These practices did occur in the UK and the US, but they weren’t systemic. There was fraud in the US mortgage market, but at fairly low levels. Perhaps the criminal law ought to have bitten, or been employed more vociferously.
The power of the banking lobby in the UK and the US is such that it’s politically very difficult to make an enemy of big business…There has to be a fundamental change in the structure of the banking system, and that requires huge political will and sacrifice, and it’s not evident to me that exists, because so little has changed since 2008…Now in the US, the banks are even larger than they were pre-2008. They are not only too big to fail, they are too big to manage and possibly too big to exist. The old phrase was, ‘Main Street will never again bail out Wall Street.’
That’s a noble claim, but the evidence suggests that in the UK and the US, and also in the eurozone, where several countries simply have broken banking systems, the taxpayers are still on the hook. Very little has been done, and the day of reckoning is potentially around the corner.”
An edited version from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35485876
Parliament Must Die contains quotes from: A. Greenburg, M.D._Abraham Maslow_Albert Einstein _Alnoor Ladha_Andrew Gwynne _Anneke Lucas_Arthur Koestler _Arundhati Roy_Asgeir Jonsson _Barbara Max Paul Hubbard_Bertrand Russell _Bill Mollison _Buckminster Fuller_Calcida Jethá _Caroline Lucas_Charles the Great_Chief Arvol Looking Horse _Christopher Ryan_Copernicus_Daniel Christian Wahl_Daniel Pinchbeck_Darwin_David Edwards_David Holmgren _David Icke_Dieter Duhm_Donald Worster_Donnachadh McCarthy_Doreen Massey_Doris Lessing_Dr A Bartlett Giamatti _Dr Claire Wordley_Dr Jay Cullen_Dr Kathy Sykes _Dresden James_E C Lindeman_Eckhart Tolle_Edgar Cayce _Edward Snowden _Ethan C Roland _Ewen MacAskill_Galileo_Galtang and Ruge _George Monbiot_Gerald Heard _God in Genesis_Greta Thunberg_Gudrun Johnsen _Guido Dalla Casa _Gustave Le Bon_Guy Fawkes _Henry Cloud _Henryk Skolomowski_Isaac Cordal _J Eliot_Jack D Forbes_Jack Forbes_James Gordon M.D._James Lovelock _Jeremy Lent_Jeremy Rifkin_John Cleese _John Hammell_John Hilary_John Trudell_Jon Stone_Jonathan Bartley_Julian Assange_Karl Marx _Karlos Kukuburra_Ken Ward _Lee Williams _Leonard Higgins_Lierre Keith _Lord Strasburger_M Knowles_Maddy Harland _Marianne Williamson_Mark Boyle_Martin Kirk_Martin Winiecki_Masanobu Fukuoka _Matthieu Ricard_Mogens Herman Hansen _Nafeez Ahmed _Nanice Ellis_Neil Dawe_Nikola Tesla_Noam Chomsky_Olafur Hauksson _Osho_Paul Hawken_Paul Levy_Peter Joseph_Peter Macfadyen_Pope Francis_President Franklin Roosevelt _Rabindranath Tagore _Rene Descartes _Russell Brand_Safa Motesharrei _Seyyed Hossein Nasr_Sigmund Fraud_Silas Titus _Simon Mitchell_Sir David Attenborough_Sir Isaac Newton_Sir Joshua Stamp_Skip Sanders _Steve Kent _Sting_Terrence Mckenna_The Dalai Lama _Thomas Berry_Tom McKay_Tyler Durden_Walter Bradford Cannon_Wendell Berry_William Derham_Yaneer Bar-Yam
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