Iceland: Media Turn a Blind Eye

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PUBLICATION DATE: 5-4-12
BY: HUBERT O'HEARN

As all good parapsychologists know, that which is unseen is often much more interesting than what is seen. The theory works for television columnists as well as ghost hunters. This is a story you haven't read or seen anywhere in North America's Big Media.

You're certainly aware of the mortgage debt crisis created by the monstrous Big Banks and lenders such as Citibank and the excrementally devious Goldman-Sachs. Homes were lost and abandoned, investments were reduced to nothing and entire nations such as Greece, Spain, Portugal and the Republic of Ireland are being forcibly nudged by the Eurozone to slash social spending including unemployment benefits and Old Age pensions.

Further, trillions of dollars were injected into the banks in the US through programs such as TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program) in the hopes of supplying cash for consumer lending. That hasn't worked out very well. Lest we forget, although Stephen Harper would like you to, our own Canadian chartered banks received between $10 - 15 billion dollars for much the same purpose.

So, to summarize - the federal governments of the nations named have transferred taxpayer money to financial corporate elites. What if there was another way?

There is. One of the first nations buried by the financial crisis was Iceland. You probably know two things about the rocky island in the North Atlantic: it has hot springs and Bjork puts out pretty good record albums. However, you should know a third thing: Iceland has put its finances back in order by putting consumers first.

Icelandic Currency - Their Money is Safer than Your Money

Here's what their government did. In an article written in the UK by The Telegraph's Economics Editor Philip Aldrick, he notes that Iceland forced the banks to reduce mortgage payments by up to 40% and furthermore had to write off the majority of consumer debt. There have also been court trials of the miscreants, including the former Prime Minister Geir Haarde for being a dunce and not properly protecting the people under his watch. The IMF, the International Monetary Fund, never noted as a hotbed of revolutionary socialism or home to anarchists, heartily approves. An IMF spokesman noted support “for government involvement to lower the cost of restructuring debt, facilitate the writing down of household debt, and help prevent foreclosures”.

Now why are you reading about all this in a television column? Because it hasn't been covered anywhere in North America. I repeat - anywhere. It was one of those little rabble-rousing stories that one gets on the Facebook newsfeed that peaked my curiousity. So I did as suggested and did a variety of Google searches on Iceland Mortgage Debt Relief and it was true. Decent coverage in the UK, very good coverage in Ireland, but North American broadcast and print? - silence.

Now why might that be? Surely it can't be that the media elites are so in bed with the financial elites that publishers and editors have crawled into bed with bad-smelling lovers? No, that would be conspiracy. And Ann Romney's $900 t-shirt is of course much more compelling to the public interest.

I'm glad you at least got to read the story here.

Be seeing you.