Showing posts with label Iceland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iceland. Show all posts

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Switzerland Follows Iceland In Declaring War Against The Banksters

3763667122_ed5dafa4aa_bby Isaac Davis
If you want to continue to be slaves of the banks and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.”Josiah Stamp
Iceland has gained the admiration of populists in recent years by doing that which no other nation in the world seems to be willing or capable of doing: prosecuting criminal bankers for engineering financial collapse for profit.
Their effective revolt against the banking class, who drove the tiny nation into economic crisis in 2008, is the brightest example yet that the world does not have to be indebted in perpetuity to an austere and criminal wealthy elite. In 2015, 26 Icelandic bankers were sentenced to prison and the government ordered a bank sale to benefit the citizenry.
Inspired by Iceland’s progress, activists in Switzerland are now making an important stand againstthe banking cartels and have successfully petitioned to bring an initiative to public referendum that would attack the private banks where it matters most: their power to lend money they don’t actually have, and to create money out of thin air.
Switzerland will hold a referendum to decide whether to ban commercial banks from creating money.
The Swiss federal government confirmed on Thursday that it would hold a plebiscite, after more than 110,000 people signed a petition calling for the central bank to be given sole power to create money in the financial system.
The campaign – led by the Swiss Sovereign Money movement and known as the Vollgeld initiative – is designed to limit financial speculation by requiring private banks to hold 100pc reserves against their deposits.”  [The Telegraph]
Switzerland is in a key position to play a revolutionary role in changing how global banking functions. In addition to being the world’s safest harbor for storing wealth, it is also home to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS)a shadowy private company owned by many of the world’s central banks, and acting as a lender to the central banks. The BIS is the very heart of global reserve banking, the policy that enables banks to lend money that does not actually exist in their bank deposits, but is instead literally created electronically from nothing whenever a bank extends a line of credit.
Reserve banking is the policy that guarantees insurmountable debt as the outcome of all financial transactions.
The Sovereign Money initiative in Switzerland aims to curb financial speculation, which is the intended and inevitable result of reserve banking, the tool that makes financial adventurism possible by supplying the banks with endless quantities of fiat money.
Limiting a bank’s ability to produce money from nothing would be a direct blow to the roots of the banking cartel, and would cripple their ability to manipulate the world economy. Here’s how it works, in rather simplified terms:
“…if we had access to the same computer terminals the banks have, we could magic in or out of existence all the imaginary stuff we are trained to think of as important – money – in whatever quantities we liked.
This is how it works: when they print quite a lot of this stuff there is a boom. When they print too much of it, there is inflation (actually, the printing of money is inflation). When they stop printing it or simply hold on to it, there is a depression.” [Source]
In Switzerland, 90% of all money in circulation is electronic, and for this, The National Bank of Switzerland has become the direct target of the Sovereign Money Campaign. Swiss law has in the past required required banks to back all currency creation with collateral assets like physical silver or gold, however in recent decades the climate has changed, and, “due to the emergence of electronic payment transactions, banks have regained the opportunity to create their own money.”
The grass roots campaign said in a public statement regarding the intentions of the referendum, “banks won’t be able to create money for themselves any more, they’ll only be able to lend money that they have from savers or other banks.”
READ: Former Presidents Warn About the “Invisible Government” Running the United States
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This is an interesting twist in the human saga of man vs. banks, and while it remains to be seen if the referendum passes or not, it must be pointed out that it does have its own problems, articulated by Sam Gerrans:
“… it does say that the central bank should be given sole right to create money. This would essentially leave the creation of money in the same hands as those who control the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England rather than allow them to farm out the process. But at least it shows that people are beginning to wake up to where the true power lies.
In the unlikely event that this grass-roots movement in Switzerland should get its way and its proposed legislation be enacted, and then begin to morph into something which really does threaten the banking elite, we must not be surprised if Switzerland is shortly discovered to be harboring weapons of mass destruction, or to have masterminded 9/11, or to be financing Islamic State.”
Part of the cultural conditioning of our time is an ingrained, pre-assumed dependency on sacred cow institutions like banking. Just like it is impossible for most Americans to envision a world withoutDemocrats and Republicans, it is difficult for most people to imagine a world without predatory global banking.
Yet, there are a number of other possibilities for trading, storing wealth, and facilitating development in the world. This is not the only economic system we can imagine, and as Iceland has proven, people can regain control of their collective wealth, so perhaps this revolution will foment further in Switzerland, presenting a chance to at least bring greater awareness to the truth about central banking.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Iceland sentences 26 bankers to a combined 74 years in prison



Unlike the Obama administration, Iceland is focusing on prosecuting the CEOs rather than the low-level traders.


Iceland sentences 26 bankers to a combined 74 years in prison



Unlike the Obama administration, Iceland is focusing on prosecuting the CEOs rather than the low-level traders.


In a move that would make many capitalists’ head explode if it ever happened here, Iceland just sentenced their 26th banker to prison for their part in the 2008 financial collapse.
In two separate Icelandic Supreme Court and Reykjavik District Court rulings, five top bankers from Landsbankinn and Kaupping — the two largest banks in the country — were found guilty of market manipulation, embezzlement, and breach of fiduciary duties. Most of those convicted have been sentenced to prison for two to five years. The maximum penalty for financial crimes in Iceland is six years, although their Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments to consider expanding sentences beyond the six year maximum.
After the crash in 2008, while congress was giving American banks a $700 billion TARP bailout courtesy of taxpayers, Iceland decided to go in a different direction and enabled their government with financial supervisory authority to take control of the banks as the chaos resulting from the crash unraveled.
Back in 2001, Iceland deregulated their financial sector, following in the path of former President Bill Clinton. In less than a decade, Iceland was bogged down in so much foreign debt they couldn’t refinance it before the system crashed.
Almost eight years later, the government of Iceland is still prosecuting and jailing those responsible for the market manipulation that crippled their economy. Even now, Iceland is still paying back loans to the IMF and other countries which were needed just to keep the country operating.
When Iceland’s President, Olafur Ragnar Grimmson was asked how the country managed to recover from the global financial disaster, he famously replied,
“We were wise enough not to follow the traditional prevailing orthodoxies of the Western financial world in the last 30 years. We introduced currency controls, we let the banks fail, we provided support for the poor, and we didn’t introduce austerity measures like you’re seeing in Europe.”
Meanwhile, in America, not one single banking executive has been charged with a crime related to the 2008 crash and U.S. banks are raking in more than $160 billion in annual profits with little to no regulation in place to avoid another financial catastrophe.
James Woods ( AKA – JamesFromTheInternet) is an independent journalist based in New York City who can be reached on twitter @JamesFTInternet or via email: jamesftinternet@gmail.com


Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Time-bomb? Iceland volcanic eruption mystery – ground sinking below lava build-up by a foot a day

by The Extinction Protocol
January 2015 - SKAFTAFELL, Iceland -- Just north of here, on the far side of the impenetrable Vatnajokull ice sheet, lava is spewing from a crack in the earth on the flanks of Bardarbunga, one of Iceland's largest volcanoes. By volcanologists' standards, it is a peaceful eruption, the lava merely spreading across the landscape as gases bubble out of it. For now, those gases -- especially sulfur dioxide, which can cause respiratory and other problems -- are the main concern, prompting health advisories in the capital, Reykjavik, 150 miles to the west, and elsewhere around the country. But sometime soon, the top of Bardarbunga, which lies under as much as half a mile of ice, may erupt explosively. That could send plumes of gritty ash into the sky that could shut down air travel across Europe because of the damage the ash can do to jet engines. And it could unleash a torrent of glacial meltwater that could wipe out the only road connecting southern Iceland to the capital. All of that could happen. Then again, it may not.
Such are the mysteries of volcanoes that more than four months after Bardarbunga began erupting, scientists here are still debating what will happen next. The truth is, no one really knows. Volcanic eruptions are among the Earth’s most cataclysmic events, and understanding how and when they happen can be crucial to saving lives and reducing damage to infrastructure and other property. Scientists have several powerful tools to help, but in the end, they are often reduced to analyzing possibilities within possibilities, chains of potential events that could unfold in multiple ways. “Volcanoes are really difficult to predict because they are so nonlinear,” said Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland. “They can suddenly decide to do something very different.” For now, the eruption remains what volcanologists call an effusive one -- the lava, consisting primarily of molten basalt, is thin enough that the gases bubble out with little explosive force.
And the amounts of sulfur dioxide and other gases, while a concern locally, are nowhere near the amounts produced by an eruption at a fissure called Laki in the 1780s. In that event, the gases poisoned livestock across Iceland, leading to a famine that killed about a quarter of the country's population and had other effects in Europe and elsewhere. One possibility is that the current eruption will eventually peter out as the source of magma is depleted. “Maybe the most likely scenario is something similar to what we've been seeing,” Sigmundsson said. But that could take a while; although the volume of lava has declined, it has done so only very gradually, he said, suggesting the eruption could continue for many months. But there are many other possibilities. Bardarbunga sits at the heart of a complex system of volcanoes and “has a history of affecting its neighbors,” Einarsson said. Were the dike to continue moving to the northeast, he said, it could set off an eruption at the nearby Askja volcano, although that seems less likely.
Of greater concern is what is happening at Bardarbunga's caldera, the wide, deep valley at the top of the mountain that is filled with hardened magma from past eruptive activity. Earthquake data and GPS measurements show that this hardened magma, which acts like a plug, is sinking, probably as the hot magma below it escapes through the fissure to the north. The subsidence is astonishingly rapid, about a foot a day, and the question is how much more of this the plug can take before it breaks up. “As of now, the system seems to be relatively stable,” Einarsson said. “But it's almost certain that this can't last very long, and that's what people are worried about. Because this plug is bound to disintegrate as it moves so much.” If the plug cracks apart, the hot magma below would have a new, easier path to the surface -- straight up -- where it would combine with ice to cause a steam-magma explosion. Such an eruption could create a large plume of ash that could disrupt air travel, as the eruption at another Icelandic volcano did in 2010. Its effects on the surrounding region could be catastrophic as well, with glacial meltwater collecting in the caldera until it overflows, causing a vast flood.
That has happened countless times in Iceland's geological history, and it is what created the eerie skeidararsandur, the vast delta west of Skaftafell that resembles the surface of the moon, as floodwaters brought huge quantities of black volcanic sand down from the mountains. The skeidararsandur could take the brunt of a flood again, although it would depend on precisely where the eruption occurred. A short distance this way or that, and the floodwaters might flow to the north, or even to the west -- an especially troubling possibility given that several hydroelectric dams responsible for much of Iceland's electricity could be damaged or destroyed. “One can never be absolutely certain about predicting,” Einarsson said. “So we have to line up all the possible scenarios and stretch our imaginations to figure out what could possibly happen.” –Alaskan Dispatch