'Nordic Tiger' Iceland Finds Itself in Meltdown

REYKJAVIK, Iceland, Oct. 9 -- The bad news just keeps coming for Icelanders, who in the last week have seen the international financial empire that they built on this remote North Atlantic island start to crumble, piece by piece. The Nordic Tiger is now singing me-ow. A special place to stash your cash has left investors holding an empty bag as English financiers angered when discovering their deposits are not insured in Iceland, invoked anti-terrorism laws to protect their stashed cash. The English government under the pressure of English financiers used an anti-terrorism guise to freeze everybody's assets in Iceland's largest bank to salvage their plundered wealth.A system put in place in the early 1990's when a wave of deregulation enabled the private sector to leave government regulators in the dust, often being paid to look the other way, I suppose,began enjoying high interest rates in Iceland's banks found nowhere else around the world. With the resulting interest return on billions of pounds invested in Iceland's banks, investors were able to hire entertainers,chauffeurs,waiters and waitresses locally paying minimum wage and therefore easily pressured to cater to every whim at their Galas. I wonder if the same people who provoked the government to use this esoteric guise, anti-terrorism, will use the same tool to prevent the super rich from cashing out their billions as they flee to set-up shop anew in countries which they've previously impoverished. One of the favorite tools used by government, contributing to hold back and impoverish local economies is the manipulation of supply and demand.Supply and demand long held as the most important determinant of pricing is manipulated with artificial price supports,often paying producers the difference between the losses they sustain from undercutting prices and the cost of producing the goods. Those government especially the United States where it's used on a huge scale and shamelessly against Latin American fruit and vegetable growers enables U.S. farm products produced thousands of miles away to sell below the fair market price.As a result of market manipulation the local economy is undercut causing wide-spread poverty.

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