As you may recall, over 18 months ago Iceland lead the world into a minor financial crisis, with the rest of y'all toddling along later.
Now Iceland takes the lead again, as a Special Prosecutor issues some indictments and the perps start walking...
In the autumn of 2008 all three Icelandic investment banks collapsed in quick succession, followed by the currency, financial system and the government.
Exciting times.
The root cause was that the banks had essentially looted the entire economy, while overleveraging their banks, fakes capital through circle-jerk loans, and given out bonuses and unsecured loans to themselves and their cronies.
A month ago, an independent parliamentary investigative committee issued what is known as the Black Report.
Surprisingly comprehensive, it dissected the transactions leading up to the collapse, including both bans actions and those of politicians. The purview of the committee was the regulatory and political side, it interviewed a number of players, and singled out half-dozen or so who were actively at fault, they also laid bare the corruption and stupidity on the bank and corporate side.
In parallel, a Special Investigator had been working on investigating the bank side, that office acted suddenly over the weekend - for now four of the senior management at Kaupþing have been arrested, and remanded without bail, and in turn had the supreme court affirm the no-bail decision - apparently they might be a flight risk.
A fifth manager, is wanted by Interpol - he is in London, or more likely Surrey, and will hopefully be extradited promptly (what with Gordon having already named his organization terrorists... hmm, wonder if he thought to buddy up with young Cameron).
He had refused to surrender to authorities until the Supreme Court had ruled on the validity of the remand orders.
I don't think anyone is holding their breath waiting for him to come home - maybe ashfall is preventing his private jet from making it way back, we can always send a boat, a long boat, to go fetch... oh, and I guess the police in Iceland watch "Law and Order", the prisoners have started talking, blaming the other guys of course.
20 more Kaupþing managers are to be interviewed by the office of the Special Prosecutor.
About fucking time.
I am looking forward to a similar round of perp walks from the Icesave crowd, they were dumber and apparently more corrupt.
Be interesting to see if Glitnir will also get rounded up, the receiver for that bank has issued subpoenas for 7 former executives to appear before a New York court, and have a court order to freeze assets worldwide, from a London court, on the lead Glitnir moron...
Their accounting firm, Price Waterhouse, is also named.
Charges are, approximately, fraudulent conveyance, accounting fraud and document forgery.
We'll see what happens, there may actually be hope for some justice, and maybe clawback of some of the assets.
Next, society needs to tackle the corporate side - the family businesses who got the loans, the fraudulent stock deals, and leveraged up to build their card houses and pay their bonuses.
Be interesting to see how that goes.
On a more cheerful note, along with the recession came a backlash against some of the other foreign concepts brought in over the last couple of decades - strip clubs were banned, they were introduced about 20 years ago, after a prominent "sex slave" case; the strip clubs had very rapidly developed ties to Eastern European organised crime, creating "no go" areas for the city police - that I presume is over and done with.
A number of individuals have also been charged with paying for sex as the pimping unravels.
In unrelated news, the eruption in Eyjafjallajökull shows no sign of slowing down, with strong ash emission and intermittent explosivity, there was also a worrying burst of small earthquakes, deep under the volcano - could be more magma, could be hints of a new vent opening.
There are also some stirring around a couple of other volcano areas.
Ash fall is nasty locally, and causing intermittent interruption to European airspace.
Expect more of that until the eruption ends. Hopefully it will taper off soonish.
Ash may also be interrupting spawning of cod, that would be bad.
Oh and unemployment in Iceland is up sharply... but the Office of the Special Prosecutor is hiring!
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Are there any ancient rituals to get the volcano which cannot be named to be quiet around the weekend of May 28? I have a workshop in Paris I'd really like to go to...
Here's hoping we get some US banker perp walks!
This has always been my favorite part of financial crises.
JohnD in Comment 1: "Here's hoping we get some US banker perp walks!" While I share your wish, there is unfortunately little to make anybody believe that a perp walk for U.S. bankers will occur in the U.S. Except for some small fish, such as Madoff or "Sir" Stanford, who had such obvious Ponzi schemes.
Everything else was perfectly legal, even if not different
(P. Krugman: "How different, really, is Mr. Madoffâs tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole?" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19krugman.html ).
And the government even bailed out, instead of nationalizing, the banks and investment houses, allowing huge bonuses to be paid ("What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses [in 2008]" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/business/29bonus.html ) There were just a few embarassing moments before some Congressional Committee for some CEOs, but well, after you get your bonus check, that's easily forgotten.
Efforts of clawback? Perhaps from defaulted home owners, to benefit the banks. Not from those who got us into the crisis.