United Liberty

Wow…who knew that Iceland was in such dire straits…it reminds me of the bank runs during the Great Depression in America. Scary times for all of us, as the world grows more interconnected.

I like the way you imply, but never state, that Icelands collapse is due to its “northern european welfare state”, when everyone with 2 brain cells to rub together knows it was a collosal failure of the FREE MARKET that caused Iceland’s problems. Keep up the good work of keeping your heads buried in the sand though.

Everyone knows that the sole problem IS the central banking system. That with its counterpart the WTO and IMF regulate the supposed “FREE MARKET”, which hasn’t been around for decades. For us American’s if you want to know what this country will be like in NO more than a year and a half look to Iceland. Remember, it took almost four years for the effects of the great depression to be felt hear. The stock market crashed in 1928 the depression i.e. bread-lines wasn’t until 1933. So get prepared cause there is no stopping it now.

Anyone with two-brain cells to rub together know that free-market participants do not wield coercive power and are subject to the forces of other market participants demanding and supplying products.

This is a failure to regulate government… not a failure to regulate The People.

The Idea that we have Free Markets…is similar to the Idea that…
We have a 2 party system…(Both of whom voted for the Bail Out)

Both are lies….

The truth is that these people were quite happy to take advantage of the system when it benefited them, but now want to blame everyone else when it collapsed.

Perhaps if instead of blithely accepting magical money they had expended a little effort in understanding where this new found wealth had come from and determining if it was sustainable, they wouldn’t be in this mess now.

Wow, pretty amazing. I guess no one is immune to the financial crunch!

the same thing is going to happen here in the U.S. The Unconstitutional and Illegal Federal Reserve is to blame. The Fed caused the first great depression and it is causing the second. It is a private cartel of international banks that have a monopoly on the monetary system of the country. It is more secretive than the CIA and it is accountable to no one.

End the Fed!!! Restore Sound & Constitutional Money to America!

Someone Submitted this article to Digg; Any votes would be appreciated:
http://digg.com/world_news/Icelanders_Storm_Central_Bank

I keep reading articles about people in Iceland being angry with the Central Bank, but no one is reporting exactly what their gripe is. Have the people in Iceland figured out how much fiat money sucks or do they want the Central Bank to print more fiat money?

Economic expansion comes from making more with less manpower, less material, less environmental inpact. Economic depression comes from making less, period.

Once you understand that you can understand that iceland is making a lot, lot, lot, lot less. Nobody in the world is giving them anything. So they are in economic depression.

The reason you have rights is because they are legislated in.

The reason you have worker rights is because they are legislated in.

The reason you lose employment is because you do not legislate in economic expansion and legislate the elimination of the outsourcing of work, and monetary control.

Corporations go were they have the best profit margin and the least legislature oversight.

Right now iceland does not have legislation in place to keep the corporations from shutting down there jobs and robbing them of there money.

America with legislation can fix the fact that we are closing down the most automated manufacturing plants in the world in America in favor of bailing out banks in Dubia with our tax money and financing the biggest manufacturing facitities in the world in places like china, india and korea so they can use child labor, slave labor, cheap labor and pollute the world with no oversight. Wake up and quit fighting dogmatic, religious and right vs left. They are all head fakes to the real fight that all corporations want us to forget about.

Continue the evolution of legislation of freedom, legislation of workers rights, legislation of environmental protection and legislation of economical expansion. OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!!!

If it was a failure of the free market, there would not have been a government in the first place. Since there is, calling it a failure of the free market and not the welfare system is idiotic.

i enjoy reading ignorant comments about how the free market must be the blame. the casual person has no idea what the free market means.

Mr Bernanke wrote the following in honor of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, who wrote “A Monetary History of the United States 1863-1960 ”

“ I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we (the Fed) did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again ”

Today is no different.

Ha..failure of the free market, that’s rich. Without getting into the details, let me just say this—you don’t have a free market WITH a central bank. In a free market, the market adjusts the interest rates based on natural supply-and-demand. Central banks are communistic, and they manipulate the interest rates and money supply. Blaming free markets when you have no idea what a free market truly is, is absolutely absurd.

Brilliant discussion on this thread. Thanks to all.

My thoughts, very very simplified:
1. The US government failed the people and sent us to slaughter the day they gave up our right to private property when they allowed the FED to create fiat paper and handed off management of American property to a bank. It’s done nothing but remove us from the gold backed currency and massive inflation and a world of debt and borrowing.
2. God tells us not to borrow, not to pay interest but to live within our means.
3. The stock markets / global economic markets were already setup for this disaster 10 years ago. The facts HAVE NOT CHANGED, only the “stories” fed to the people on the propaganda box television. Instead of “happy happy sunshine love” we now hear “disaster depression suicide terror.”
4. If Americans want what’s best for America we need to END THE FED and VOTE FOR PEOPLE WHO LOVE THE CONSTITUTION and GET ACTIVE and BE WILLING TO FIGHT for their liberty.
5. The stock markets are COMPLETELY CONTROLLED AND MANIPULATED by the Fed and the “plunge protection team.” I was a daytrader for 4 years and obsessed about the market news 18 hours a day and traded over a million dollars a year in transactions. I had the level 2 quotes and can cut through the crap. THE MARKET IS TOTALLY MANIPULATED and it is an INFLATION SINK to steal money from the people and give it to Wall Street banks to play with. If normal people actually kept control of their wealth instead of giving it to the Wall Street Criminals we would not be in this mess. Instead the TV idiot box tells everyone “you are an idiot, give your money to a professional.”

WAKE UP PEOPLE! Kudos to the person/people on this thread that know what time it is. That in itself has made my day. I am not alone!

PS
Your food and water is poisoned. Your vaccines are poison. The government DOES NOT LOVE YOU.

Dan is perfectly right!!!

You are not alone.

The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis

The news media are in the process of creating a great new historical myth. This is the myth that our present financial crisis is the result of economic freedom and laissez-faire capitalism.

The attempt to place the blame on laissez faire is readily confirmed by a Google search under the terms “crisis + laissez faire.”

[…]

The utter absurdity of statements claiming that the present political-economic environment of the United States in some sense represents laissez-faire capitalism becomes as glaringly obvious as anything can be when one keeps in mind the extremely limited role of government under laissez-faire and then considers the following facts about the present-day United States:

1. Government spending in the United States currently equals more than forty percent of national income, i.e., the sum of all wages and salaries and profits and interest earned in the country. This is without counting any of the massive off-budget spending such as that on account of the government enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Nor does it count any of the recent spending on assorted “bailouts.” What this means is that substantially more than forty dollars of every one hundred dollars of output are appropriated by the government against the will of the individual citizens who produce that output. […]

2. There are presently fifteen federal cabinet departments, nine of which exist for the very purpose of respectively interfering with housing, transportation, healthcare, education, energy, mining, agriculture, labor, and commerce, and virtually all of which nowadays routinely ride roughshod over one or more important aspects of the economic freedom of the individual. […]

3. The economic interference of today’s cabinet departments is reinforced and amplified by more than one hundred federal agencies and commissions, the most well known of which include, besides the IRS, the FRB and FDIC, the FBI and CIA, the EPA, FDA, SEC, CFTC, NLRB, FTC, FCC, FERC, FEMA, FAA, CAA, INS, OHSA, CPSC, NHTSA, EEOC, BATF, DEA, NIH, and NASA. […]

4. To complete this catalog of government interference and its trampling of any vestige of laissez faire, as of the end of 2007, the last full year for which data are available, the Federal Register contained fully seventy-three thousand pages of detailed government regulations. This is an increase of more than ten thousand pages since 1978, the very years during which our system, according to one of The New York Times articles quoted above, has been “tilted in favor of business deregulation and against new rules.” […]

Government Intervention Actually Responsible for the Crisis

Beyond all this is the further fact that the actual responsibility for our financial crisis lies precisely with massive government intervention, above all the intervention of the Federal Reserve System in attempting to create capital out of thin air, in the belief that the mere creation of money and its being made available in the loan market is a substitute for capital created by producing and saving.

[…]

http://mises.org/story/3165

Americans need to LEARN from the EXAMPLE of ICELANDERS. My concern is that when the grocery stores are empty in the U.S., Americans will take up arms against EACHOTHER. Hey, rather than robbing your neighbors, DIRECT YOUR EFFORTS AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT AND ITS POWER! We need to focus on ENDING THE POWER IN D.C.

My other concern is that Americans will actually support MORE POWER FOR D.C., as a way to “fix” the problems of its own making.

HOORAY FOR ICELANDERS!

I applaud the Icelanders for going after the manipulating central bankers who triggered this global crisis.

Also for those socialists on the page actually attacking the free market, the free market isn’t to blame here either. We haven’t had one since 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act. What is free about it when monetary manipulators had to much power and money to print? This global crisis is because EVERYONE with money was duped into the stupid fiat currency system.

The medium of money is not what matters. As long as people accept it as a medium of exchange then it does not matter how shiny it is.

The “free market” that people speak of constantly, is only to be found in a place called “fantasy land”. There are only two types of markets that ever truly exist:

1. Nationally-based Protected market economies (American System)

versus

2. Globally-based Unprotected market economies (Gloabalization/Empire)

The degree by which they seperate, is the degree by which people have control over those markets and thus the political element of their country as a percentage of wealth holding and creation. You could ask, “How is the wealth spread throughout a particular country?” It should be noted, that this consideration is NOT based on the amount of money in circulation.

When people speak against government monopolies, they are referring to the fact that they don’t like concentrations of wealth and power being continually held by a select few and supported by the state, which grants privileges to one group while over-regulating another. They would rather see diversity within the economy because they believe that that is the way a market works efficiently and benefits everybody in an ethical manner.

When people speak against Laissez Faire, they are referring to the fact that they don’t like concentrations of wealth and power being continually held by a select few; as an unchecked balance of power which those special entities gain from possessing a greater advantage within an unregulated economy. They would rather see diversity and better market access because they believe that that would make the market work more efficiently and benefit people in a more eithical manner.

The difference in the views, is that those who distrust the Laissez Faire model, don’t trust the market as much as they would legislated means to enforce a certain standard.
Those that distrust the Government in an honest fashion (less the state supported monopolies and market manipulators), are afraid that the government will overstep its boundaries and end up doing more harm than if they had done nothing at all. To this quandry the “free market” advocates suggest letting the market handle the problem because of some supposed rational market mechanism that will realize the same outcome as a legislated measure.

The question that we really need to ask is, “what behaviors are desirable and non-desirable in an economy?” Are usurious rates of interest helpful to an economy when directed at regular people, rather than detering wasteful speculation which only seeks to blow up the money supply and concentrate wealth? Should we bail out criminals? Should we not regulate unsound financial advice? Should we agree to an ideology that says making a profit no matter the method is ethical and just as valuable as a profit made on an ethical basis? Should we not regulate certain market conditions upon which the “anything goes” mentality is prevalant and consistent if it is detrimental to people or an entire nation for that matter?

Some market rationalists argue that it doesn’t matter if it is desirable/ethical/unsound/usurious etc. They state that no legislating should occur because the “free market” will supposedly correct that behavior if it is unworthy. Taking the opposite position, I would suggest that we first actually define a standard of economic value, rather than saying the free market will do it alone. People are markets because without people there are no markets. Rational behavior would be to define a standard of value and regulate otherwise. I argue that liberalism is a disease to humanity because it insists that people cannot know truth or derive an applicable standard for it. This they argue is especially true within economics and as such, the behavior of the market should just be left to it’s own invisible hand.

Take the difference between employing a Constitutional National Bank versus that of a Private Central Bank like the Federal Reserve System to illustrate the fallacy of economic liberalism, particularly the Anglo-Dutch Financier System of Debt-slavery and usury.

The question is, “who’s money and for what purpose?”

The difference is that a bank owned and controlled by private interests (invisible hand) without the Constitutional obligation to promote the general Welfare, has no business issuing the money of a sovereign republic because it is under no obligation to respect the wishes of the people by utilizing that issuance for productive purposes. Instead what it does, is issue that money at a discount rate to giant commercial banks for speculative financial operations which have nothing to do with actual productivity. It does nothing to increase valid Physical productivity nor does it build vital infrastructure necessary to facilitate a functioning economy.

In contrast, a national bank is a very useful tool to provide productive credit to build infrastructure and to DIRECT investment credit into necessary and proper types of large-scale projects that have huge spin-off capabilities for the wider economy. To this end, the control and obligation are under the authority of the congress and thus the people. It puts an end to the debt creation scheme and actually uses credit in a functional role that benefits the total society. In this capacity, money and investment credit will cease to be the master of humanity and actually be its most useful ally to help create an actually free market economy.

The question then becomes, Are you willing to fight for the means to that end or just bitch about it on the internet?

Noticed finally that an economy entered in a collapse. And yet from what it times Iceland was an example, always on the first positions Norway went with its highest standard of living.

The world is indeed experiencing global economic crisis. United States is greatly affected by this since recession has hit them on December of 2007. It already caused the rise of unemployment rate. That’s why almost all people in America are in need of financial assistance. Freddie Mac is back. Freddie Mac, the mortgage giant, is looking for more bailout cash to assist in their loan modification program, where troubled homeowners can restructure their mortgage so they don’t have to be foreclosed on. Both Freddie and Fannie Mae have both lost gargantuan amounts of money. Freddie is seeking an additional $30 billion plus, this coming off the heels of the taxpayers purchasing about 80% ownership in the company. In spite of this heavy investment, the company has still managed to lose about $20 billion in the last three months. So once again, the taxpayers may have to pick up the slack for Freddie Mac.

There is a little deception here, guys. As some of you know, I’m from Britain and we are right in the heart of the Icelandic situation. We have several British Councils that had millions of pounds in holdings within their banks.

Whilst on the surface, they looked a strong, stable nation, their wealth is based on the stability of the stock market and luxury fish products mainly.

They are massive on exporting fish products (that includes fishing equipment), which shoves them right in the middle of any stock market crisis. Their gross national profit on these goods are app. $1.3 billion, which is good for a country that number just under 300,000, but because many are luxury products, they are generally the first to go during a recession (their are obviously expenses involved in this).

Their manufacturing of products amount to a GNP of $237 million (considering components have to be paid for , that’s peanuts and hardly worth talking about).

Commerce and services accounts for $636 million GNP in exports, but has an additional advantage of lower expenses and where our biggest problem lies. They deal very much in commercial banking, and hold $1.4 billion of British council money to name a physical example (http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/09/iceland-britain-councils-markets-equity…).

When the stock market crashed, a small, but strong economy fell to dust, losing them more than they had, and Britain decided to do a China on Iceland, and threaten them with court action if they didn’t pay up. This proves that it doesn’t matter how big, small, strong or weak you are externally; the heart is always in the home and if you take that away, or didn’t have them there in the first place you are in trouble (you know those little s—t jobs that know one wants to do because they are so cheap; if they only lost ten percent of home grown industry that’s a massive amount when external forces attack your economy).

According to purchasing power parity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity), Iceland has a $38,400 estimate per capita, but it’s worth nothing now, unfortunately. We should all feel saddened by this because Iceland did not do that much wrong in terms of economy; they had to go the way they were forced to go and they did it well. The country went into meltdown when the government dissolved.

I’m concerned that Britain may end up a much bigger example of that as we have done much the same, but from a bigger viewpoint. We only did it to raise the minimum wage rate!

Anti-government protests have been growing larger and angrier since Iceland’s three main banks collapsed in October under the weight of huge debts amassed during years of rapid economic growth. Tiny Iceland has seen its banks and currency collapse in just a few weeks while prices and unemployment soar — leaving a country regarded as a model of Scandinavian prosperity in a state of shock. Unemployment is defined, as the numbers of people that are not working that are able and looking, divided by the total labor force. Unemployment is a scourge; the ranks of those afflicted with joblessness are growing, as well as those looking into mortgage loan modification. The national unemployment rate has increased dramatically. Several states have hit double-digit unemployment rates, and a few more are set to join the ranks? California, Michigan, Indiana, and Oregon, for instance, with Michigan and Ohio taking the top spots (dubious honors). Many people are hoping for an end sooner rather than later to unemployment and some debt relief.

Anti-government protests have been growing larger and angrier since Iceland’s three main banks collapsed in October under the weight of huge debts amassed during years of rapid economic growth. Tiny Iceland has seen its banks and currency collapse in just a few weeks while prices and unemployment soar — leaving a country regarded as a model of Scandinavian prosperity in a state of shock. Unemployment is defined, as the numbers of people that are not working that are able and looking, divided by the total labor force. Unemployment is a scourge; the ranks of those afflicted with joblessness are growing, as well as those looking into mortgage loan modification. The national unemployment rate has increased dramatically. Several states have hit double-digit unemployment rates, and a few more are set to join the ranks? California, Michigan, Indiana, and Oregon, for instance, with Michigan and Ohio taking the top spots (dubious honors). Many people are hoping for an end sooner rather than later to unemployment and some debt relief.

Now still the pork flu will cover and in general it will be absolutely “good”…

When a mortgaged tract of land is split up and sold, upon default, the mortgagee first forecloses on lands still owned by the mortgagor and proceeds against other owners in an ‘inverse order’ in which they were sold. the fact that requirements are getting more stringent on home loans is a good thing. The thing that led to the recession in the first place was a glut on credit, and a lot of it went in to lending mortgages. We seem to encourage acquiring debt, rather than thrift, savings, and resourcefulness. It used to be that things like payday loans, or credit cards, were a sign that you couldn’t pay for something out of pocket because you didn’t plan correctly. Perhaps tighter mortgage restrictions will do us all a little good.