Global Financial Crisis Fells Iceland Government
Andri Magnason is interviewed in this article in Washington Post from today. Strange mixup of Rome and the Titanic. Must have been an attempt to be poetic. Here is the article:
Global Financial Crisis Fells Iceland Government
Protests in Reykjavik, Other Capitals Grow as Savings and Jobs Vanish
- By Mary Jordan
- Washington Post Foreign Service
- Tuesday, January 27, 2009; Page A12
LONDON, Jan. 26 — Iceland’s coalition government collapsed Monday, the first government to fall as a direct result of the global economic turmoil.
Prime Minister Geir Haarde said he and his cabinet would resign immediately. As personal savings have been wiped out and joblessness has soared, Icelanders — once among the world’s wealthiest people — have taken to the streets in protest, banging pots and pans and throwing eggs and toilet paper at Haarde and other parliamentary leaders.
Protests have mounted throughout Europe, where the political backlash to the crisis is growing. In Ireland, Britain, Spain and other countries where bankruptcies and home foreclosures are rising, polls show that approval ratings of leaders are sinking. In Eastern Europe and Greece, where there is less of a government safety net, protesters have spilled onto the streets by the thousands. Last month’s collapse of the Belgian government, which had been wrestling with long-standing conflicts, was also hastened by the banking crisis, analysts said.
Perhaps nowhere has the economic crash been more spectacular than Iceland, an island with 300,000 residents on the edge of the Arctic Circle. Last fall, its largest banks went bust and the value of its currency plummeted. In recent days, protests intensified as no leader took responsibility for the crash, prompting police to use tear gas for the first time in half a century.
People felt that the government was “playing the violin while the Titanic was sinking,” best-selling Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason said in a telephone interview from Reykjavik, the capital. “Everybody who has a loan is paying 20 percent interest,” and even those who own modest homes find their salaries cannot cover what is owed, he said.
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The Story of the Blue Planet has been published in German. The book won the Icelandic literary award and has now been published in almost 20 countries.