!['Businessman lighting cigar with $100 dollar bill' [Shutterstock]](http://www.rawstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Businessman-lighting-cigar-with-100-dollar-bill-Shutterstock-800x430.jpg)
Reykjavík, Iceland – In stark contrast to the record low number of prosecutions of CEO’s and high-level financial executives in the U.S., Iceland has just sentenced 26 bankers to a combined 74 years in prison.
The majority of those convicted have been sentenced to prison terms of two to five years. The maximum penalty in Iceland for financial crimes is six years, although hearings are currently underway to consider extending the maximum beyond six years.
The prosecutions are the result of Iceland’s banksters manipulating the Icelandic financial markets after Iceland deregulated their finance sector in 2001. Eventually, an accumulation of foreign debt resulted in a meltdown of the entire banking sector in 2008.
According to Iceland Magazine:
In two separate rulings last week, the Supreme Court of Iceland and the Reykjavík District Court sentenced three top managers of Landsbankinn and two top managers of Kaupþing, along with one prominent investor, to prison for crimes committed in the lead-up to the financial collapse of 2008. With these rulings the number of bankers and financiers who have been sentenced to prison for crimes relating to the financial collapse has reached 26, and a combined prison time of 74 years.
Massive debts were incurred in the name of the Icelandic public, to allow the country to continue to function, which are still being repaid to the IMF and other nations eight years later by the citizens of Iceland. In contrast to the U.S., Iceland has chosen to hold the criminals that manipulated their financial system accountable under the law.
In the U.S., not a single banking executive was charged with crimes related to the 2008 financial crisis, even though the U.S. itself precipitated the crisis. Icelandic President, Olafur Ragnar Grimmson summed it up best in his response when asked how his country recovered from the global financial crisis.
“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 people and didn’t introduce austerity measures like you’re seeing in Europe.”
While Iceland has prosecuted those that caused their financial crisis, America has done the opposite. In 2008, after Congress bailed out the failing American banks to the tune of $700 billion dollars, courtesy of the American taxpayer, many of the executives of institutions that received TARP bailout funds ended up getting large bonuses!
The prosecution of the Icelandic banksters represents an accountability that does not exist in the United States of America. It seems clear that the financial “Masters of the Universe” are the ones that truly control the political apparatus in the U.S., making it obvious there is no one who is going to hold them accountable for manipulating and crashing the financial markets.
This story was originally published at The Free Thought Project
Whatever the Iceland Banksters did, it was penny-ante compared to the scofflaw NYC Banksters stealing and controlling America while making themselves audaciously rich and powerful with printed dollars, robbing countries globally of billions, stealing their gold, making them buy dollars to buy oil, put sanctions on their allies, use their soldiers to fight our enemies etc.
I would call that a good start.
Feathers, tar and hemp should be included in their next step.
Never happen here as every single scumbag politician owes their shriveled soul to Wall Street. Except mebbe Bernie Sandars but he will be assassinated by the banksters if he gets anywhere near the nomination or the WH.
Iceland enjoys the worlds oldest surviving parliamentary governance.
It has proven the test of time and actions by the “masters of the universe” to pervert it.
Not so in the remainder of the western world and in particular in the US. The financial/politico cabal that is still in place in the US is the ultimate of height in perversion.
Governance and banking of the elites, by the elites, for the elites. And SCREW everyone else.
Ask yourself, if you were a bank governor in Iceland today, would you act honestly?
Your damned right you would, or your ass would end up in prison. The US system is f** cked.
In a related story, Iceland is due for a UN mandated influx of 500K refugees…..starting immediately.
“It’s only right that we share the burden” observed the Icelandic Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ms. Eyglo Haroardottir Goldstein-Rothschild.
Hope, you’re from texas. Read the fine print. Bernie Sanders has been a politician for his entire life.
highly unusual for the rule of law to apply to the elite. i bet the literacy rate in iceland is slightly above those over worked public servants in DOJ
But the in-justice department would tell you that’s “just not possible” here because, well you see, Iceland is but a small country and here in the big ass U.S. it might “damage the economy”.
Horseshit!
Hope: Screw the tar and feathers. Public execution. Hanging or guillotine.
When I was in college, I picked up a minor in PolySci, thinking that a journalist ought to know something about politics. Boy, was I WRONG.
Anyway, I took Politics of Western Europe and focused on the Nordic countries, especially Iceland for personal reasons. It may surprise you (or not) to know that Iceland claims to have instituted the first Democracy in the New World around 950 A.D. (I’d have to dig out my paper, which I still HAVE!!!) They sent out representatives to what is called Assembly Plains and the representative body is still, I believe, called the All Thing.
Nick and I think of Iceland as Paradise with its rough and beautiful terrain and stoic people who rarely smile, even if you purchase one of their incredibly finely woven sweaters at a fine price. One time, a female flight engineer and I rented a car from a Navy guy for $25 and drove around the Island Nation as far as we could. Amazing scenes of smoldering volcanoes, steaming springs, lava rock boulders and mountains that look like hills just a half mile away, but when you drive toward them, you discover the crisp, cleanness of the air is deceptive. The hill is perhaps 20 miles and is also perhaps 10,000 feet tall.
Anyway, when Iceland refused to bow to the demands of the EU, I silently cheered. If we could have moved there, I think we would have. But, you can’t just “go” to Iceland.
Wow, well I guess we don’t need to guess where the first nuke targets are going to be once the non-Israeli, non-House of Saud, Mideast is smouldering.
Screw prisons, and screw tar and feathering and screw hanging.
Make the dirty thieves WORK. Aren’t there orphanages, or seniors’ homes, that need bathrooms scrubbed? Potatoes and carrots to be peeled and chopped? Dishes to be washed, streets to be cleaned, snow to be shoveled?
Want to see crime rate PLUMMET? Make the (real) criminals do physical labor.
Our labor unions would never allow the competition, but I have faith in Iceland now!
Thanks for the info Maggie, this place truly is incredibly rich with so many real world experiences. And you my dear, are quite the Renaissance Woman after my own heart.
Thanks, TE… another interesting tidbit about Iceland? When the King of Norway decided to become Christian and sent a ship to Iceland demanding the country convert in order to continue trading with Norway, the AllThing met and voted on the issue. They voted in the affirmative, but ONLY if the required baptism could take place in the hot springs rather than the cold river. So, word went out to all the regions and the altars to the gods were changed into holy shrines to the One God and the entire population met en masse to be baptized at the hot springs near Keflavik. Haha… I found that to be a wonderful example of their stoic pragmatism.
[img
&sp=0747e0c864af2921c479c7d37375ab91[/img]
Sure, we’ll change our core beliefs for trade purposes, but we are NOT going to be dipped in ice cold water.”
I tried to find a nice photo of it in the “olden” days before it was turned into an actual tourist attraction once the Europeans started traveling there. When we used to go there to stand guard against the Soviets flying to Cuba and back (silly war games then too but at least there was a tangible enemy to point to), we could simply walk out to the springs and get in, if we wanted. Now, they are fenced and I guess you have to pay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Lagoon_%28geothermal_spa%29