Economist Michael Hudson wrote an article on Friday about the Icelandic struggle against neoliberalism.
----"A landmark fight is occurring this Saturday, April 9. Icelanders will vote on whether to subject their economy to decades of poverty, bankruptcy and emigration of their work force. At least, that is the program supported by the existing Social Democratic-Green coalition government in urging a “Yes” vote on the Icesave bailout. Their financial surrender policy endorses the European Central Bank’s lobbying for the neoliberal deregulation that led to the real estate bubble and debt leveraging, as if it were a success story rather than the road to national debt peonage. "----
So what happened on Saturday? The Icelandic people voted and ..................rejected the neoliberals!
5 comments:
Tom,
Do you think the "Green" part of the neoliberal supporting coalition is the radical environmental "Green" party type of people up there in Iceland?
Not following Icelandic politics closely, Matt. Seems to me that the green kerfuffle is over whether green programs should be public or private. With the Social Democrats and Green-Left in power, that is decided for the present I would say, but I don't know where the public overall stand on this.
This question put to vote was over whether to stick to the banks or the people and the people said to stick it to the banks. Now, I understand the foreign banks are going to sue Iceland, so it is not over yet.
the greens want to pay back the debt that the icelanders were tricked into ?
opposite.
No, googleheim is right. The Greens, an originally environmental party as elsewhere, are part of the ruling coalition, that wants to sell the country into debt-peonage. Like the Australian Greens that Bill Mitchell complains about, they are economic illiterates. Iceland is lucky with a president that can and did veto twice the parliament's surrender, and a constitution that has therefore put it to the people twice. My bitter nature forecasts that life insurance on Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson might be a good investment, though.
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