The unearthly landscape of Iceland

I found this video by Vadim Sherbakov on the Colossal web site, via kottke.org.

Weekend reading: Links & comments 10/23/2015

Iceland Just Jailed Dozens of Corrupt Bankers for 74 Years, the Opposite of What America Does by Jay Syrmopoulos of the Free Thought Project (via AlterNet)

Iceland sentences 26 bankers to a combined 74 years in prison by gjohnsit for Daily Kos (Hat tip to my expatriate friend Jack)

Icelandic courts have sentenced 26 bankers to prison terms for two to five years each—a total of 74 years—for financial fraud and manipulation leading up to the financial crash of 2008.

The important precedent here, and the great contrast with the United States, is that Iceland prosecuted individuals, not banks.  An organization structure cannot commit crimes, any more than a bank building can commit crimes.   It is the individuals within the structure who have criminal responsibility.

JADE: A Global Witness Investigation Into Myanmar’s Big “State Secret” (hat tip to Jack)

High-quality jade is the most valuable product of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.  But the government and people of the country get little benefit from it.  Instead the trade is controlled by military elites, corporate cronies and U.S.-sanctioned drug lords.

Nawal El Saadawi: ‘Do you feel you are liberated?  I feel I am not’ by Rachel Cooke for The Guardian (Hat tip to Jack)

An interview with the formidable 83-year-old Egyptian author, freethinker, feminist, medical doctor and campaigner against female genital mutilation.

The opposite of what America does

We Americans have a lot of things to be proud of, but we hurt ourselves when our national pride prevents us from learning from the best practices of other nations.

Hat tip to Hullabaloo.

Good advice from Iceland (with caveats)

I like and agree with this statement.

I like it even though Iceland’s politicians weren’t necessarily as brave and far-seeing as the statement implies.

Banks were allowed to go hog-wild in the United States and Europe in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, but Iceland’s banks were wild and crazy even by Wall Street and City of London standards.   They collected money from depositors all over the world, and lent out money at high interest rates without thinking about the high risk.   Investors in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and other countries bought into this risky behavior without considering that there would be a day of reckoning.

When the crash came, it wouldn’t have been possible for Iceland to bail out its banks even if it had wanted to do so.  The banks’ liabilities were equal to eight times Iceland’s GDP (its annual economic output).

Iceland did suffer severely from the recession, and it isn’t out of the woods yet.   Individual Icelanders are struggling economically, Iceland has a big trade deficit and the country is going to take another economic hit when the government lifts exchange rate controls on the Icelandic kroner.   In the last election, Icelanders voted in the political parties whose policies led to the financial crash, which is hard for me to understand.

Still Iceland’s recent history shows that it is possible to give relief to the honest citizen and prosecute the crooked financier, and still survive to tell the tale.