Poor guy.. your career is over, the voters are rioting.. oh and by the way, you have cancer.

Poor guy? Up until this financial meltdown, Iceland was something very close to paradise in terms of wealth distribution among its 0.3m inhabitants and overall well being of its citizens. This PM is a crook but lived a life of plenty most of the other inhabitants of this planet couldn't ever imagine..

You probably mean "wealth" as conjured up numbers by ATMs and computer terminals.

You know what I meant: full supermarkets, income, social services, job security, .. (doesn't matter it was based on silly foundations)

Well, currently impoverished Icelanders living in barely heated caravan can pass on future generation: "we had it all at one not so distant point in time and it was awsome!" As opposed to currently/always impoverished ~Central Africans, who can only "we never had anything (past 1-2k yrs)".. That's the point!

It would be nice if someone from Iceland would post on the situation. Still, I do not believe they will have to suffer badly heated houses - geothermal hot water and hydro electric power is not affected by the crisis. Imported food is another matter. Not being able to afford bread and butter is not nice either... Not being able to service car loans, taken in foreign banks after the Icelandic Krona lost 90 percent of its value, make some people really angry, but evokes less sympathy from my part.

nocar

Many Icelanders defaulted and were kicked out of their houses, you can't connect geothermal into your caravan! At least not overnight..

Hello Peakers!
I´ve been lurking for several years and just wanted to give my thoughts on what´s going on in my home country these months...

The situation here is strange.

The protests are something we´re only used to see in news from other countries. Last Saturday there were over 6000 ppl protesting in Reykjavik, which is something in a country with a population of only 300,000. That´s like 6 million ppl protesting in one place in USA.

The minister of commerce stepped down yesterday. Maybe just a ploy to look better for the coming elections... The two parties which hold majority in congress together seem to be giving up. The voters want more people to take responsibility and resign. Many people want radical changes; different elections, changes to the constitution etc.

The news from Iceland in other countries seems to me to be more dramatic than the reality. Yes, people are loosing their jobs, but I haven´t heard of anyone being thrown out of their house yet for not making the mortgage payment and living in a caravan...

The banks persuaded many to take a loan in foreign currency/currency basket the last two years. Many were unfortunately simple enough to take these kind of loans to buy a bigger house or another car.
These people are the ones that are having the biggest problems right now since the Krona has devalued greatly.

Personally I know less than 5 ppl who have lost their jobs yet. But I fear that 2009 will be a terrible year in Iceland.

My only hope is that people will realise how silly their way of life has been for too many years. We need to become much more self sufficient. With the geothermal heat we could grow a very big portion of our imported food right here.
We have the means to produce electricity for the car fleet, but must find other solutions for trucks and fishing fleet, maybe hydrogen, though not the perfect solution, could be used there.

Hopefully after being the first "western" nation to go under, we´ll rise strong after a few years. If we use our resources wisely, we will not be harmed as badly when the world recession is over (if ever), production increases again and the oil production can´t keep up...

Glad you came out of your Hobbit Hole Ice! I assure you, if you post up regularly your reports on what goes on in Iceland will be avidly read here.

How does it feel to be the Canary in the Coal Mine? I can only imagine its scary and exhilirating all at once.

Best of luck with the Geothermal power and getting your fishing fleet running for self-sustainability. Like the Bolivians, you walk off now on your own, sink or swim. Godspeed.

Reverse Engineer

I try to hide my schaden-freude so I won´t piss people off...

I´m just sad that my wife didn´t agree when I suggested selling our apartment at the top of the real estate bubble and moving to the country... That would have meant no or hardly any debt, access to the sea for fishing, plenty of space for rabbits/chickens and close relatives in the vicinity that are REAL farmers...

Now people are still protesting (12:15 P.M. in Iceland), the cabinet is meeting, reporters on overtime and something is probably going to happen today...

Holy crap. This is the first government to fall after PO and the resultant financial crisis, no?

Icelandic government falls amid financial crisis, protests

Jotapay PLEASE POST THIS SORT OF THING ON THE EXISTING TREADS ABOUT ICELAND. In this way the conversations that have started can be continued, rather than everyone shouting their own thing in a new thread, which makes it hard to navigate this site. Thanks

So bye bye Iceland goodbye, drove your economy to the ledgy and now you have died.

Yeah. Not just any cancer either. Esophageal cancer is an ugly one.

Maybe we should make a "recently collapsed governments" thread.

http://peakoil.com/post834499.html#834499

First to fall?


http://peakoil.com/post834499.html#834499