Iceland Chaos Update

The FT’s man on the ground in Iceland Robert Jackson admitted in the paper’s weekend magazine he’s lost big in the meltdown. “Recent events… savaged my net worth by 60 per cent and pushed up my cost of living by 20 per cent. Iceland’s plight was mine, too.”

Ouch. And apparently that’s just the tip of the iceberg:

• Skype would not renew his credits because he had an Icelandic credit card.
• A homemade banner made from bedsheets was erected over the major motorway in Reykjavik reading “Let us stand together!”
• Local TV and radio stations have been demanding that the country’s six big venture capitalists go Buddhist, sell all their belongings, and give the proceeds back to the treasury.
• the credit crunch is now referred to locally as ‘kreppa’.
• Hallgrimur Helgason (director of 101 Reykjavik) admitted in on the country’s Sunday papers that he worshiped the bankers (pre-collapse) as if they were modern day vikings: “…we idiolised these titans, these money pop-stars… We never had clever business men, not for a thousand years, not to mention men who had won battles in other countries…” Bjork has also been weighing in.
• Comedians now refer to the country as ‘Icetanic’.

But it’s not like Robert Jackson didn’t have a chance to forsee all of this though, as he wrote in a now-quite-eerie travel piece in the Telegraph back in 2005: “Iceland has become a virtually cashless society, everything down to a stick of gum is bought on debit cards. So bring your plastic, but make sure you have a robust limit.” Indeed…

Posted by Becky North in Hot Money | November 17, 2008 3:02AM |