Iceland: the New Lehman Brothers?

Lehman Brothers sounds like a cheap frozen food chain, while Iceland is a cheap frozen food chain, but the similarities don’t just end there.

Both have been horribly bullied. Lehman CEO Dick Fuld got served by Henry Waxman right in front of everyone, dumped by Bank of America only to see it go off with much prettier Merrill Lynch, and was apparently beaten up in the gym and in an online game. Jeez!

And Iceland were called bad names like “terrorist” in order to freeze their assets. “I woke up to find that counter terrorist laws were being used against us. This was very unpleasant, and I told the British chancellor that we are not pleased with this at all”, said PM Geir Haarde last week. Meanwhile a Landsbanki analyst said: “There’s an anti-Iceland thing going on. But why? Why are you behaving like this?” I think someone needs a hug!

Everyone loves a villain: the US had Lehman Bros, and now we’ve got Iceland (hooray!). By making Dick Fuld into a bogeyman the deregulation-loving US government has been able to shift blame to ‘greedy old Wall Street’. And in casting Iceland as a spineless baddie Brown has benefited by looking strong and decisive while Cameron is being cast as pathetic even by his own party. But then Iceland did go around cutting the cables on British fishermen’s nets in the Cod Wars, and before that, as Norsemen, carried out their fair share of raping and pillaging, so I suppose our sympathy is pretty limited…

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Hot Money | October 13, 2008 2:57AM |