Ekki setja Ísland í skuldafangelsi

Leiðari stórblaðsins Financial Times í dag er merkilegur. Hann ber yfirskriftina Do not put Iceland into a debtors prison. Það þarf ekki að fjölyrða um hvílík áhrif þetta blað hefur.

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Do not put Iceland in a debtors prison

Published: January 6 2010 19:49 | Last updated: January 6 2010 19:49

Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, Icelands president, this week rejected

a law settling his countrys dispute with the UK and the Netherlands over

the sorry Icesave affair. In truth he had little choice: a quarter of this

fiercely independent electorate signed a petition against it, a show of

defiance no leader can ignore.

The law will now go to a referendum, likely to vote it down.

This may teach Dutch and British leaders the limits of what can be achieved

with duress, but too late to do anyone much good.

Landsbanki offered the Icesave accounts under European

“passporting” rules, which let banks open branches abroad if they satisfy

the home countrys regulators and take part in its deposit guarantee scheme.

But as its October 2008 collapse showed, Landsbanki was exposed far beyond

what Icelands deposit guarantee fund could pay.

In June, the UK and the Netherlands agreed a 15-year loan to the

guarantee fund to reimburse their Icesave depositors, but demanded an

Icelandic government guarantee for the loan, which would leave taxpayers on

the hook for more than one-third of Icelands yearly output. (The amount

actually paid would be less, depending on what can be recovered from

Landsbanki assets). Icelandic legislators passed it only after limiting the

guarantee to a share of economic growth over the life of the loan. When

British and Dutch authorities balked at the guarantee possibly expiring with

the debt still unpaid, changes were passed that were acceptable to the

creditors – but not to Mr Grimsson or to most Icelanders.

It is hard to fathom the need to make an example of Iceland. For

the creditors, the loans are trivial: they sum to €3.9bn, one-hundredth of

what the UK alone will borrow this year and next. Neighbourly generosity

would cost Amsterdam and London next to nothing.

They are also not innocent victims. British and Dutch banks

benefited greatly from the rules. Had they failed on the same scale, it is

delusional to think their governments would take on hundreds of billions in

debt to rescue foreign savers, and odious to force a weak neighbour to do

the equivalent.

From the start, Iceland has been under the gun. Loans from

Poland, Nordic neighbours and the IMF depend on successful IMF reviews that

in turn hinge on an Icesave solution. A lifeline-grasping application for EU

membership is hostage to British and Dutch goodwill.

Landsbanki showed that Europe must reform its rules to achieve

stronger common standards. This will not be done by putting Iceland in a

debtors prison.

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Hér er svo viðtal hins fræga sjónvarpsmanns Jeremys Paxman við Ólaf Ragnar Grímsson. Það má fagna því að loks sé einhver kominn í erlenda fjölmiðla til að skýra sjónarmið Íslendinga. Hefði kannski þurft að gera aðeins fyrr, en samt, maður spyr hvort við séum að upplifa viðhorfsbreytingu í þessu máli. Kannski aldrei of seint.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTP3DH5YQhc]