Lots of words (scary, I know) but a very interesting read for those of you keeping up with THE GREATEST DEPRESSION (and some of you who arent)...there are even elves.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland200904

4/13/2009 10:37:30 PM

so is bjork giving blow jobs on the street corner now?

[Edited on April 13, 2009 at 11:04 PM. Reason : she always seemed like the type. then she bites your dick off]

4/13/2009 10:38:28 PM

Well I wanted this posted in The Lounge for some normalcy (ie. less TSB crazies)

But I guess anything finance-related must be posted in TSB???

4/13/2009 10:43:28 PM

It's because everyone got foreign currency mortgages, but everyone earns unicorn money from their jobs. So, now that the unicorn money is worthless, there is no way for them to pay back these loans. What they need to do is start paying people in euros.

4/13/2009 11:16:45 PM

I hate to say it, because I too was initially taken in when it first came out a great while ago, but the vanityfair article in question has already been discredited. It is not even clear that the author went to Iceland before writing it, since many of the mistakes in the piece would be obvious to a visitor.

4/14/2009 12:34:48 AM

yet another victim of global warming

4/14/2009 2:25:22 AM

Since you mentioned you want crazies posting about this topic; The international bankers made Iceland crash as bad as it did on purpose to try to force them into joining the EU.

4/14/2009 2:59:06 AM

might be thinking of another country, but i heard one of the reasons iceland collapsed was that it had a really high debt to gdp ratio...like higher than the US will have even after the US has added all this spending

4/14/2009 4:48:27 AM

thank you for that valuable bit of insight, dnl...

4/14/2009 8:21:37 AM

hey, snark, where are you seeing that the article has been discredited? A cursory googling yields no such thing within the first few pages, and I don't even see a hint of that, beyond some bitching and moaning about just how inbred Iceland may or may not be.

4/14/2009 11:49:09 PM

Quote :

"I hate to say it, because I too was initially taken in when it first came out a great while ago, but the vanityfair article in question has already been discredited. It is not even clear that the author went to Iceland before writing it, since many of the mistakes in the piece would be obvious to a visitor."

I was wondering when it had been written. I looked for the date but didnt see it. I didnt know shit about Iceland so I read all 7 pages and it was pretty damn interesting. ^ I would also like to see were it's been discredited...I'm not sure why someone would fake an article such as this one.

4/15/2009 4:29:50 AM

Quote :

"I hate to say it, because I too was initially taken in when it first came out a great while ago, but the vanityfair article in question has already been discredited. It is not even clear that the author went to Iceland before writing it, since many of the mistakes in the piece would be obvious to a visitor."

you do realize you can't say things like that and not cite some source, right?

4/15/2009 8:12:57 PM

^ Well, see, it seems my memory may have dis-served me. I swear I read the rebuttal in my RSS feeds, but I searched and found no such thing. I suspect it was a link post with fish in the title instead of iceland, making finding it difficult. So, going to google I found the best I could, from nymag, which was no where near as vitriolic as I remember. Don't get me wrong, there are angry articles when you search "Iceland Vanity Fair", but many of those are from iceland and do not bother disputing the facts portrayed in the Vanity piece. So, sticking to U.S. media, here is what I got:
Vanity Fair’s Fishy Tales From Iceland
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/03/reality_check_vanity_fairs_fis.html

[Edited on April 15, 2009 at 9:40 PM. Reason : lnk]

4/15/2009 9:35:15 PM

Oh snap!

Quote :

"# Vanity Fair responds: You identify Mr. Moody simply as "an American who has lived on the island for the past seven years." A little elementary Googling turned up that he is in fact a journalist who recently lost his job and thus faces possible deportation from Iceland. Here are our responses to Moody’s criticisms: 1. Mr. Moody misses Lewis's point entirely here. Icelanders are not hoarding cash. According to a fired Icelandic banker (who spoke to Lewis and is quoted directly in the article), people, especially those who worked in finance, were hoarding foreign currency. As we were going to press, the source begged us not to use his real name or to run a picture we took of him with his foreign-currency hoard, and so we didn't. 2. The same source is quoted telling Lewis about people destroying their cars for the insurance. Mr. Moody is arguing with Icelandic sources here, not with Lewis. 3. Lewis’s anecdote implies that the water is not run directly from the volcanoes. As one of the comments below your article points out, 70 degrees C is 158 degrees F—hot enough for a nasty burn. "Getting boiled alive" is obviously humorous hyperbole—which Moody simply does not seem to understand. 4. This is the author's observation. Mr. Moody is free to disagree with it, but it has nothing to do with getting one’s facts right. (Continued in next post) Report By Vanity_Fair on 04/01/2009 at 12:42pm # 5. Scientific studies of Iceland’s gene pool have shown it to be one of the most homogenous in Europe, about as uniform as that of the Ashkenazi Jews, another close-knit genetic group. The fact that most Icelanders are descended from Nordic and British people does not conflict with this finding. Mr. Moody’s claim that the genetic-research company deCODE did not base its decision to study Iceland largely on the purity of country's gene pool is simply false. While one Icelandic scientist, Einar Arnason, made headlines for attempting to dispute the homogeneity of Iceland’s gene pool, his view was discredited by a 2003 review of the evidence made by researchers from deCODE and Oxford University. 6. This is obvious humorous hyperbole. Does any reader besides Mr. Moody think that Lewis meant there are actually only nine surnames in Iceland? Obviously he meant that it seemed to him a lot of people in Iceland have the same surnames. Lewis was careful to be explicit in the piece that his impressions were those of a visitor there for a short time. 7. Mr. Moody also takes umbrage at Lewis's statement that "if [Icelanders] fill out a form, they can start their own cult and receive a subsidy." This was confirmed with the Ministry of Justice and Ecclesiastic Affairs, a representative of which stated that in order to start a religion in Iceland, one need only send an application to his ministry. 8. A 2007 University of Iceland poll found that, while few people will go on the record to say they believe in elves, 54 percent of the Icelandic population will not deny that they exist. The information concerning Alcoa and elves was related to Lewis by an Alcoa executive. As he is quoted in the piece as saying, "We can't be in the position as a corporation..." is it any surprise that the Alcoa spokesperson Mr. Moody reached will not confirm the story? Report By Vanity_Fair on 04/01/2009 at 12:44pm "

4/15/2009 9:53:03 PM