Four Icelandic Bankers Arrested, Warrant Issued For Chairman; $2B Lawsuit Brought
Photographs of the former Icelandic bankers who left their country after the financial crash were stuck on the urinals. (AFP: Olivier Morin, file photo)
I have to say, I like that Icelandic style! But even more than putting our bankers on urinals, I'd be thrilled to see them in orange jumpsuits. How about you?
REYKJAVIK — More than a year and a half after Iceland's major banks failed, all but sinking the country's economy, police have begun rounding up a number of top bankers while other former executives and owners face a two-billion-dollar lawsuit.
Since Iceland's three largest banks -- Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir -- collapsed in late 2008, their former executives and owners have largely been living untroubled lives abroad.
But the publication last month of a parliamentary inquiry into the island nation's profound financial and economic crisis signaled a turning of the tide, laying much of the blame for the downfall on the former bank heads who had taken "inappropriate loans from the banks" they worked for.
On Wednesday, the administrators of Glitnir's liquidation announced they had filed a two-billion-dollar (1.6-billion-euro) lawsuit in a New York court against former large shareholders and executives for alleged fraud.
[...] In addition to its New York suit, Glitnir said it had "secured a freezing order from the High Court in London against Jon Asgeir Johannesson's worldwide assets, including two apartments in Manhattan's exclusive Gramercy Park neighbourhood for which he paid approximately 25 million dollars."
Gudbjartsdottir said Johannesson had just 48 hours to come up with a satisfactory list of his assets.
"If he does not give the right information he faces a jail sentence," she said.
Four former Kaupthing executives, who all live in Luxembourg, have meanwhile been arrested in Iceland in the past week and Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for that bank's ex-chairman, Sigurdur Einarsson./blockquote>
In Holland there were urinals with a single fly printed near the hole. It was supposed to give the men something to aim at and keep the area around the urinal cleaner.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?...
Could it be because Obama and his boys are owned by Wall Street?
At least put Bernanke's face down there.
or Paulson
Because Iceland is little. The US is huge and the Federal Government has very little, if any, accountability to the people.
to 27 million when their insurance company has already givn the $400 million for the spill...another outrage brought to you by the republican deals and deregulation...Just like the Fincnce dereg...
balls to ever demand accountability for economic looting.
They're mostly sedated in front of their teevee screens.
We live in an Idiocracy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_4jrMwvZ2A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1WojpmS5h8
Hopefully we can learn from Iceland on how to handle these problems more efficiently and effectively. Great Story. Thanks for the post!!
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Now THAT's what I call Trickle-Down Economics...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoP9AsrRF_Y
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
If only our sorry ass bought off government would start doing that here. WE might get some faith back in government. It does require getting rid of the most unsavory part of our government the GOP.
Way to go, Iceland!
Is good news .
every time you throw a little mud , you lose a little ground .
If they're smart, those guys will make bail and flee to Washington DC. Does anyone doubt they would be granted asylum?
and be forced to live on Wall street .
every time you throw a little mud , you lose a little ground .
they can probably get a place on C Street too...
and pulling down 7 figure bonuses.
MAN...this is frustrating
I keep dialing my phone only to not even get a ring
And my TV keeps switching stations...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
There's an app for that.
The precedent has been set. Now we need to rouse the politically active people of the world to follow suit.
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
touting Iceland as the cutting edge Conservative proof that their ideas were sound, and that "old Europe" would soon follow their example?
Yeah, you don't hear that much anymore.
And great photo Susie.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=r...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
the band played on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAl0FRjEzCA
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qRDg9WS7fk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHsx1cvACkY
All those in favor de-regulated banking should be paying attention to Iceland. In the 1980s and prior, their banks were very heavily regulated/nationalized even. Then the deregulation dreamers began to make headway in the 1990s. All the sudden, financial instruments were the majority of their economy...instead of actual harvested wealth like fish, coal, etc...
So with deregulated banks, interest rates went crazy. With high interest rates, people from all over the globe were investing there. But there was no actual product being generated to pay interest made from these high interest rates. Just more financial product... And today, their imaginary wealth is gone.
And yet thanks to Republicans who refuse to file criminal indictments against the Republican bankers here, our crooks get to walk free. Worse, the Bush regime *pays* these banker criminals even more of our money after fucking us up the ass dry repeatedly.
Iceland, home of the free.
America, home of the theofascist traitors.
Indict our bankers for what?
Our regulators made sure most everything the bankers at the highest levels did was legal. We may be able to prune off some low hanging fruit from fraud, but for the most part, these businessmen were operating within legal guidelines. They weren’t even bad businessmen, if being a “good” businessman is making money. That is, right up to the point they lost it all.
Unless the regulations, limitations, and legal guidelines change, nothing else will. They will continue to charge outrageous usury fees and interest, gamble with depositors’ money, make up investments and sell them to each other, and bring down entire economies with their hubris. And it will all be legal.
Like the stock market, banks and what used to be called Savings and Loans should provide valuable services to a robust economy. When they are allowed to supplant that economy they were supposed to serve, they are no longer valuable.
Must be, and that is all..."
~ http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/if-dogs-run-free
I would have put a link to the song, but youtube is completely destroyed...
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Sony Music Entertainment.
"And yet thanks to Republicans who refuse to file criminal indictments against the Republican bankers here, our crooks get to walk free".
I'm pretty sure the democratic party controls the Executive and Legislative branches of the U.S. government, DamOTclese.
Where's a good libertarian/teabagger cause when you need one?
First vote down efforts to stick the citizens with the tab for a bailout, then go after the banksters with civil and criminal penalties.
If Obama would have done that, no amount of Fox propaganda would dent his popularity or the Dems prospects in November. Good politics can be good policy.
for all the faces we could put on them. But, at least we know where to start.
http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Health/...
Be as you wish to seem
Now let's do that HERE.
NOBODY 2012
"Now let's do that HERE"
yup. Will it happen?
nope.
Have read some defending the poor Icelandic bankers , their government is just taking it out on them to take the heat off and pacify the people , cry me a river . If we locked up all the main culprits here we'd be minus a government and little of Wall Street would exist , a good idea but obviously will never happen .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
Yes - absolutely we need to do this here.
Okay guys - it's going to be up to you - the girls can't do this.
*
It will happen in the US as well.
And with the former bank chairman who is wanted now by Interpol... it is actually the Brits who now refuse to arrest him and extradite him to Iceland. The Brits who used their brand new terrorist laws to freeze all Icelandic assets in Britain following the banks downfall, putting Iceland on a list of terrorist organizations along with Al Quaida, the government of Sudan, etc. Go figure.
UPDATE: The U.K. authorities is refusing to extradite the Kaupthing Chairman, even though Iceland is a part of a European agreement to transfer criminals. The UK government should aid the people of Iceland to grab the people that have cause the UK public (as well as Icelanders) billions of dollars instead of harboring them.
The Chairman and other bankers that have been living in luxury abroad since the financial collapse have all opted to live in Britain actually. Could that have anything to do with them hiding their money in British-protected tax havens on Tortola and the British Virgin Islands?
Do the UK authorities want to a)keep these billionaires' cash in UK banks and b) charge the Icelandic nation for the damage they caused?
Could it be? Yes, absolutely!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0yQunhOaU0
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