Iceland president re-elected with 92 percent of vote

France24 –AFP,  28 June 2020

Iceland's President Gudni Johannesson has won a second four-year term Halldor
KOLBEINS AFP/File

Reykjavik (AFP) - Iceland's President Gudni Johannesson has been re-elected with a whopping 92 percent of the vote, according to final results released on Sunday.

The former history professor won his second four-year term in the largely symbolic position in Saturday's vote, the second election held by a European country after coronavirus lockdowns were lifted.

Since suffering spectacular bank failures in 2008, the volcanic North Atlantic island of 365,000 inhabitants has recovered some economic and political stability, which worked in the 52-year-old independent's favour.

The final results showed he took 92.2 percent of the 168,821 votes cast, crushing rightwing challenger Gudmundur Franklin Jonsson.

"I am honoured and proud," the president told AFP in Reykjavik on election night.

"This result of this election is, to me, proof of the fact that my fellow Icelanders... have approved of how I have approached this office."

The dominant win had been predicted by opinion polls, which had shown the president winning between 90 to 94 percent.

It is the second-highest margin of victory in the history of Iceland's presidential elections.

Vigdis Finnbogadottir, the first woman in the world to be democratically elected as head of state, holds the record, winning re-election in 1988 with 94.6 percent of the vote.

In this parliamentary republic, the president is largely symbolic, but he or she does have the power to veto legislation or submit it to a referendum.

There are no term limits -- Johannesson's predecessor Olafur Ragnar Grimsson served for five terms.

Turnout for Saturday's vote was 66.9 percent, dropping from 75.7 percent during Johannesson's first election victory in 2016, when he became the country's youngest president since independence in 1944.

Challenger Jonsson is a former Wall Street broker close to Icelandic nationalists and a vocal fan of US President Donald Trump.

He campaigned on wanting Iceland's president to play a more active role by exercising the right to veto legislation campaigns, but struggled to gain traction with voters.

"I send my congratulations to Gudni and his family," Jonsson told public broadcaster RUV.

The coronavirus pandemic had not been expected to affect voting, as the country has been only mildly infected. It has reported 10 deaths, and currently has around 11 active cases.

Iceland premier resigns in Panama Papers scandal

Yahoo – AFP, Hugues Honore with David Williams in Paris, April 5, 2016

Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson had been under pressure to
 resign since leaked financial documents showed he and his wife owned an offshore
company in the British Virgin Islands (AFP Photo/Jonathan Nackstrand)

Reykjavik (AFP) - Iceland's prime minister resigned Tuesday, becoming the first political victim of a mushrooming worldwide scandal over hidden offshore financial dealings exposed in the so-called Panama Papers.

Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson was the biggest casualty of a worldwide media probe into 11.5 million leaked documents that purportedly reveal the offshore financial activities of 140 political figures, including 12 current or former heads of state.

"The prime minister told (his party's) parliamentary group meeting that he would step down as prime minister and I will take over," the Progressive Party's deputy leader Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson told a live broadcast.

A series of other leaders and stars fingered in the leaked papers have hit back at the allegations, denying any wrongdoing despite the international furore.

Those named include Russian President Vladimir Putin's associates, Chinese President Xi Jinping's relatives, British Prime Minister David Cameron's later father and celebrities such as Argentine footballing great Lionel Messi.

Iceland's leader had been under immense pressure after the papers, leaked from a Panamanian law firm, appeared to show that he and his wife Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir owned an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands and placed millions of dollars there.

Though the prime minister denied ever hiding money abroad, pressure on his government had mounted, with egg-throwing protesters gathering in the streets Monday and fresh demonstrations planned Tuesday.

Graphic on the political fall-out of the Panama papers leak in Iceland where huge

 crowds poured into the streets of the capital Monday calling for the prime minister 

to resign (AFP Photo/John SAEKI, Adrian LEUNG)

'Groundless allegations'

The vast stash of records from Panamanian legal firm Mossack Fonseca was obtained from an anonymous source by German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with more than 100 media groups by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The network of journalists published their first findings Sunday after a year-long probe.

Offshore financial dealings are not illegal in themselves, though they may be used to hide assets from tax authorities, launder the proceeds of criminal activities or conceal misappropriated or politically inconvenient wealth.

In Beijing, there was no official reaction to ICIJ allegations that eight current or former members of the ruling party's most powerful body concealed their fortunes through offshore havens, as well as relatives of Xi Jinping, who has overseen a much-publicised anti-corruption drive.

Asked whether China would investigate those named in the reports, however, foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said: "For such groundless accusations, I have no comment."

The Kremlin suggested a US plot after the leaks put a close friend of Putin's at the top of an offshore empire worth more than $2 billion.

"Putin, Russia, our country, our stability and the upcoming elections are the main target, specifically to destabilise the situation," said a Kremlin spokesman, claiming many of the journalists were former officers from the US state department, the CIA and special services.

Rich must pay taxes too

Messi's family denied any wrongdoing after the footballer and his father were named as owners of a Panama company that had not previously been disclosed during a Spanish probe into their tax affairs.

"The Panama company to which they refer to is a totally inactive company that never had any funds or any open current accounts," the Messi family said in a statement Monday.

Australia, France and the Netherlands have announced investigations into revelations contained in the papers. A judicial source said Spain had opened a money-laundering probe into the law firm.

"We need to make sure that not just ordinary citizens pay their taxes but also people who have a lot of money, who earn a lot of money, pay their taxes where they make that money and don't hide the money," visiting European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans told reporters Tuesday in the Polish capital Warsaw.

Panama has pledged to identify whether any crimes had been committed and any financial damages should be awarded.

But France's Finance Minister Michel Sapin said his country would put Panama back on its list of countries that do not cooperate in efforts to track down tax dodgers following the revelations.

Latest allegations

Among the latest allegations of the Panama Papers investigations:

- A North Korean front company used to help fund the country's nuclear weapons programme, Pyongyang-based DCB Finance Ltd, was among Mossack Fonseca's clients, according to the BBC and The Guardian.

British Prime Minister David Cameron

 Cameron's Downing Street office insisted

 it was a "private matter" whether the family

 still had funds in offshore investments 

(AFP Photo/Alex Wong)

-- Prime Minister David Cameron's father ran an offshore fund that paid no tax in Britain for 30 years, according to the Panama Papers probe. Cameron's Downing Street office insisted it was a "private matter" although a government source later told AFP that the prime minister himself did not have any such funds.

-- Aides to French far-right leader Marine Le Pen put in place a "sophisticated offshore system" to hide money, according to Le Monde newspaper.

-- Syria used Mossack Fonseca to create shell companies to help it break international sanctions and fund its war effort, the French paper said.

The papers, from around 214,000 offshore entities covering almost 40 years, also name the president of Ukraine and the king of Saudi Arabia. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko denied any wrongdoing, but he may face an attempt to impeach him.

One of the Panama law firm's founders, Ramon Fonseca, told AFP the leaks themselves were "a crime, a felony" and "an attack on Panama".

Mossack Fonseca is subject to investigations in Germany and also in Brazil, where it is part of a huge money laundering probe that has threatened to topple the current government.

Related Articles:

President Obama Just Took a Major Step in Response to the Panama Papers - New
Switzerland,Singapo rejoin clampdown on bank secrecy (Update)

Iceland MPs vote to abolish blasphemy laws

Iceland's parliament has abolished its 75-year-old laws against blasphemy, approving a bill introduced by the country's minority Pirate Party. The group says it is a step forward for freedom of expression.

Deutsche Welle, 4 July 2015

 

A photo taken on 27 October 2013 shows an exterior view of the Icelandic
Parliament building in the country's capital Reykjavik.

Parliamentarians in the Nordic country overwhelmingly passed the bill on Thursday, with 43 yes votes to just one no. Speaking to DW, Helgi Hrafn, a member of the party which proposed the bill, said it was a law he had been wanting to put forward for a long time.

"The Pirate Party in Iceland wishes to defend and expand freedom of expression. This particular article is the most glaring fault in the general criminal code, which is why we proposed it," he said. Legal protections from hate speech and incitement remain in place.

On its website the Pirate Party states its core policies are the protection of civil rights, freedom of information, transparency and direct democracy. The group brought up the legislation in January of this year, shortly after the extremist attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Hrafn acknowledged that although there was "a connection with the timing" between the two, blasphemy being against the law is a "profoundly barbaric and backwards idea."

"We're not going to be scared of freedom of expression because somebody does something bad. We can't allow that," he told DW.

"Freedom of expression is not going to bow down to threats."

The group's ratings have surged since it won three parliamentary seats in 2013, with one recent opinion poll making the Pirates Iceland's most popular party.

OSCE media freedom representative (.@OSCE_RFoM) welcomes decriminalization of blasphemy in Iceland http://t.co/Vl2t0JKwAT

— OSCE (@OSCE) July 3, 2015

A dangerous precedent

Under the previous code, accused blasphemers could face prison time if found guilty. Hrafn argued the criticism that the law was rarely or never applied was untrue, and cited a 1997 case against an Icelandic comedy group as an example of it being used to silence people. "Because of pressure from the clergy the police questioned them, and for a few months they had to wonder if they would be prosecuted," he said.

Several countries have become notorious for their hardline stance on crimes such as blasphemy. In Pakistan on Friday, a Muslim cleric was arrested for supposedly leading a mob against a Christian couple accused of desecrating the Koran. It followed death sentences for a man with a history of mental illness and a Christian woman last year. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, France has cracked down on anyone it sees as supporting terrorism, leading to comedian Dieudonne being convicted for Facebook comments he posted in the days after the attack.

Germany too has seen calls for its blasphemy laws to be scrapped, with a member of the country's Protestant church ealier this year saying that while it may be distasteful, legally it was "an exercise of fundamental rights." Those who break the country's 144-year-old law could be handed prison terms of up to three years, at least in theory. Yet Germany has been a vocal opponent of Saudi Arabia's jailing and flogging of blogger Raif Badawi for "insulting Islam."

Freedom of speech again became a 

hotly-debated topic following the Charlie

Hebdo attack

'Practice what we preach'

Hrafn says it was "obnoxious" laws like these that undermine complaints over other nations' curbs on free speech. "If we are to honor freedom of expression it's not enough for us to point at somebody else and brag about how Western culture is supposedly much better at freedom of speech, we have to practice what we preach," he told DW. "We have to allow speech that goes no further than to offend the occasional person.

"People do not have a right to never be offended."

The Icelandic Ethical Humanist Association described Thursday's decision as sending "a vital message to the rest of the world."

"Nations which maintain blasphemy laws with serious consequences should not be able to point to Iceland and say that it has the same kind of law," a statement read.

Despite the law's abolishment, Hrafn insists that Iceland is far from perfect. "Iceland is by no means any sort of a role model when it comes to freedom of expression - not on the legal books," he said. "There are many problems here, and this is the most silly one, but there are more to be fixed."

Switzerland comes out on top in World Happiness Report

Switzerland has knocked Denmark off its perch as the happiest country in the world. That's according to the 2015 World Happiness Report, which seeks to quantify happiness as a means of influencing governmental policy.

Deutsche Welle, 24 April 2015

The third annual World Happiness Report put Switzerland at the top of the list, followed closely by Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada. Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia rounded out the top 10 for 2015.

Germany was placed 26th of the 160 countries studied, not far behind Britain, which placed 21st, and the United States, which did a little better at 15th.

Among the lowest on the list were war-torn Syria and Afghanistan, which were among the bottom 10, along with eight sub-Saharan African countries.

The rankings were based on a number of factors, including real gross domestic product per capita, healthy life expectancy, social support systems and the perceived degree of corruption or lack thereof in government.

Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University in the United States, which led the study on behalf of the United Nations, told a press conference in New York on Thursday that the top 13 countries were the same as in last year's report, although their order had shifted.

Sachs, who was one of the authors of the report, said the winning formula for all 13 was relative affluence combined with strong social support networks and relatively accountable systems of government.

"Countries below that top group fall short, either in income or in social support or in both," he said.

Sachs said the report would be widely distributed at the United Nations and that he expected that it would be carefully read by governments all over the world.

"We want this to have an impact, to put it straightforwardly, on the deliberations on sustainable development because we think this really matters," he said.

'Networks that connect people'

Another co-author of the report, John Helliwell of the University of British Columbia, told the CBC, Canada's public broadcaster, that although affluence played a major role in happiness, "the importance of social factors and the norms and networks that connect people" was a theme that cut through all levels of income.

This, he said, included "everything from the degree of trust and collaboration in the workplace to time spent with family and friends, for example."

The other co-author, Richard Layard from the London School of Economics, stressed the importance of an individual's childhood to how happy they could be expected to be in their adult lives.

"We must invest early on in the lives of our children so that they grow to become independent, productive and happy adults, contributing both socially and economically," he said.

pfd/bk (AFP, dpa)

Related Article:

The Netherlands falls three places in happiest countries report

Iceland says dropping bid for EU membership

Yahoo – AFP, Haukur Holm

Iceland announced it was dropping its bid to join the European Union in line

 with pledges made two years ago by its then new eurosceptic government 

(AFP Photo/Georges Gobet)

Reykjavik (AFP) - Iceland on Thursday announced it was dropping its bid to join the European Union in line with pledges made two years ago by its then new eurosceptic government.

Iceland first applied for EU membership in 2009 but Foreign Minister Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson said in a statement that the centre-right government had informed current EU president Latvia and the European Commission of its decision to annul the application.

"Iceland's interests are better served outside the European Union," the minister wrote on his website.

Iceland first applied for EU membership under a leftist government in 2009, when the country was badly shaken by an economic crisis that saw the Icelandic krona lose almost half its value, making eurozone membership an attractive prospect.

But the thorny issue of fishing quotas was seen as a key obstacle to joining the bloc, although it was never brought up in the accession talks.

Fishing represents an important part of the Icelandic economy, and it was never made clear how differences between Brussels and Reykjavik could be patched over on the subject.

Thousands of protesters had thronged the streets of Reykjavik last year to demand a referendum after the government said it was dropping its EU membership bid without a popular vote.

But opinion polls more recently began to show growing resistance among Icelanders to EU membership.

The head of the Social Democratic opposition, Arni Pall Arnasson, however lamented that the government had taken the decision without approval from a majority in parliament.

Clawing back

When the centrist Progress Party and the right-wing Independence Party came to power in 2013 they suspended the talks with Brussels.

Iceland has said it wants to maintain "close ties and cooperation" with the EU, and indeed already benefits from such links.

The North Atlantic island is a member of Europe's visa-free Schengen area and the European Economic Area.

That allows it to export seafood to the mainland tariff-free and helps boost tourism, which is crucial to the country's foreign exchange earnings.

Iceland has clawed its way back from the demise of its bloated financial sector in 2008, with official figures showing this week that GDP reached record levels last year.

At constant prices, Iceland's GDP grew by 1.9 percent in 2014 to beat a GDP record dating back to pre-crisis levels, according to Statistics Iceland.

However, "GDP per capita remains lower than in 2008, and while there is no shortage of jobs, we lack jobs that pay well, especially for young graduates," University of Iceland economics professor Asgeir Jonsson told AFP.

For many Icelanders, joining the EU has not been a major priority, with concern instead over how to pay back loans taken on when the economy seemed to be booming before the crash.

The small Nordic country was hit hard as the crash of US investment bank Lehman Brothers caused the collapse of its three largest banks.

Without effective oversight, Iceland's banks had taken out massive cheap loans abroad, scooping up assets worth several times the island's annual output.

Iceland then became the first Western European nation in 25 years to appeal to the International Monetary Fund to save its battered economy.

Icelandic bank ex-head sentenced over market manipulation

The former boss of Icelandic bank Landsbanki has been sentenced to 12-month imprisonment by a court in Reykjavik for manipulating the market.

Deutsche Welle, 19 Nov 2014

Sigurjon Arnason, 48, was convicted of manipulating the bank's share price and deceiving investors, creditors and the authorities in the dying days of the bank between Sept. 29 and Oct. 3, 2008.

Two other former executives of the bank were sentenced to nine months with three months served over the same allegations. All pleaded innocent to the charges.

"This sentence is a big surprise to me as I did not nothing wrong," Sigurjon Arnason told news agency Reuters after the sentencing. He and his attorney had not yet decided whether to appeal the verdict in the Supreme Court, Arnason added.

Iceland's banks had gone on an international buying spree in the early 2000s fuelled by cheap foreign loans.

But the global financial crisis in 2008 froze credit markets and Iceland's banks quickly foundered. Landsbanki was one of three banks that racked up $75 billion (59.8 billion euros) in debt before collapsing and crashing the country's economy in 2008.

The fallout from the 2008 crisis continues to this day. Earlier this week, Landsbanki and its successor Landsbankinn agreed to extend a deadline to restructure bonds to the end of the year. If a deal is struck, it will help the government lift capital controls which were imposed due to the crisis.

sri/cjc (AFP, Reuters)

Norway named best place to grow old

Yahoo – AFP, 1 Oct 2014

An elderly woman makes her way through the snow in Norway which tops the
Global AgeWatch index ahead of Sweden (AFP)

Norway is the best place to grow old, according to the latest Global AgeWatch index of 96 countries published on Wednesday, while Afghanistan is the worst.

All but one of the top 10 countries are in Western Europe, North America and Australasia, with Japan the exception at ninth place, according to the ranking which comprises 91 percent of the global population over the age of 60.

Norway tops the index, pushing last year's number one Sweden into second place in the second year the index has been released.

An elderly Afghan man carries firewood over 

his shoulders in Afghanistan -- bottom on the

list of places to live in old age

Unsurprisingly, African countries make up half of the lowest quarter of the index, although Venezuela, Turkey and Serbia are ranked 76th, 77th and 74th respectively.

HelpAge International, the charity which compiled the list, said economic growth in itself was not enough to improve the lives of older people.

"Specific policies need to be put in place to address the implications of ageing," said the report, published on the United Nations International Day of Older Persons.

"Policies on income security in Mexico (30) have lifted it 26 places in the overall rankings since last year despite being less wealthy than Turkey (77)."

The index is based on 13 indicators grouped into four areas: income security; health status; capability, which includes employment and educational status; and the enabling environment, including issues such as physical safety.

Some countries fare better than others in different areas. Japan tops the rankings when it comes to health, while Switzerland has the best environment for older people.

'Explosion' of pensions

This year's report focuses particularly on income security, namely pensions, which older people consistently identify as their top priority to fend off the risk of poverty.

With rising numbers of old people -- two billion over the age of 60 by 2050, a similar number as children under 15 -- HelpAge International chief Toby Porter said pensions were vital for all governments.

"Incomes are often too low to save for old age, which is why there's such a need for a basic social pension now," he said.

African countries make up half of the

lowest quarter of the index

In low and middle-income countries, only one in four people over 65 receive a pension while worldwide, half of the global population do not have a pension, the report said.

But it applauds an "explosion" of new tax-financed, non-contributory pensions over the past two decades, which provide regular income for the very poorest.

Across Latin America, countries have "dramatically extended coverage" of social pensions, helping push them up the global rankings.

This reflects a global trend that saw China introduce a rural social pension in 2009, reaching 133 million more people, and Nepal and Thailand follow a similar route.

"In most European Union countries, pensions systems as a whole do more to reduce inequality than all other parts of the tax or benefit system combined," said Porter.

The top 10 in the index are: Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Iceland, United States, Japan and New Zealand.

The bottom 10 are: Iraq, Zambia, Uganda, Jordan, Pakistan, Tanzania, Malawi, West Bank and Gaza, Mozambique and Afghanistan.

Hope for enhanced trade as China and Iceland sign FTA

Want China Times, Xinhua 2014-07-03

China's minister of commerce Gao Hucheng, right, and Iceland's minister
 for foreign affairs Ossur Skarphedinsson shake hands at the signing ceremony
of the free trade agreement, April 15. (Photo/CNS)

As the free trade agreement between China and Iceland came into force Tuesday, Icelandic companies believe the FTA will lower consumer prices in Iceland and boost the trade between the countries.

According to the FTA, China will implement zero tariffs on goods under 7,380 tariff numbers imported from Iceland, which accounted for 81.6% of China's total imports from Iceland, including its aquatic products after the agreement comes into effect.

Iceland will implement zero tariffs on all industrial products and fishery products imported from China which accounts for 99.8% of China's total exports to Iceland.

After the final establishment of the FTA between China and Iceland, zero tariffs shall apply to 96% of goods in terms of tariff numbers, or 100% in terms of trade volume.

Adolf Gudmundsson, chairperson at the Federation of Icelandic fishing vessel owners, believed the free trade agreement would be of great importance for fishing companies in Iceland.

"China, the biggest market in the world, is opening up for Icelandic seafood products," Gudmundsson said.

"The Chinese market will offer enormous opportunities for the Icelandic companies," he said. He added that it will of course be important that Iceland is able to offer competitive prices.

"I believe the free trade agreement will bring good fortune to both Iceland and China and strengthen the Icelandic fishing industry," Gudmundsson said.

With Iceland becoming the first European country to sign a FTA with China, Orn Erlendsson, chairperson at the seafood exporter Triton, believes the deal will give a headstart to Icelandic companies in competition with other seafood exporting countries like Norway, Russia and Canada.

Triton has been selling lumpfish to restaurants in China where its thick skin is regarded as a delicacy. Erlendsson said the FTA made it possible for Icelandic companies to offer very competitive prices.

Icelandic companies import clothing and shoes from China, often through a third country. Products imported straight from China will no longer have a 15% tariff.

Many Icelanders expect lower consumer prices as a result of the FTA, especially on products imported directly from China.

Shoes manufactured in China will see a 13% price reduction, according to TV channel Stod 2 in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik.

Margret Sanders, chairperson at the Federation of Trade and Services, welcomed the FTA, stating that such agreements are important for small countries like Iceland.

She believes Icelandic companies will be interested in exploring the possibility of increasing direct imports from China.

Rumfatalagerinn is one of the biggest department stores in Iceland. Rumfatalagerinn sells furniture and textiles manufactured in China and imported to Iceland through a third country.

Its CEO Magnus Sigurdsson said the agreement offers great opportunities to import products directly from China. The company is now trying to find out how best to utilize the agreement to benefit Icelandic consumers.

Johannes Gunnarsson, chairperson at the consumer federation in Iceland, sincerely hopes consumers will feel the effect of the lower prices as a result of the FTA.

"The Icelandic domestic market is very small. I'm told that the companies have to make big orders from China so it's hard to see the FTA having a lowering effect on prices in Iceland," he says.

The FTA has also boosted other parts of the Icelandic economy. US company Silicor Materials, a leading manufacturer of high-quality solar silicon, has decided to build a new silicon plant in Iceland because of the agreement.

The company's CEO Terry Jester said that the company made the decision to build the plant in Iceland because of cheap energy and the aluminium industry and plans to build more silicon plants in Iceland.

Talking about the FTA to local media, Jester said Silicor Materials' biggest customers reside in China.

Iceland Postpones Plans to Drop EU Bid

Naharnet - AFP, 12 May 2014

Iceland has postponed plans to withdraw its application for European Union membership, the government said Monday.

The island nation's euroskeptic center-right government announced on February 21 a draft bill to retract Iceland's 2010 EU membership application without holding a referendum.

But pro-EU members of parliament have sought to block a motion giving the government the right to withdraw the application.

Foreign Affairs Minister Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson told newspaper Morgunbladid that the parliament would return to the issue after the summer recess.

“I did, in fact, expect the government parties to get the motion through. But there were bigger and more important matters we had to finish," he said towards to close of the parliamentary session.

"The government is not in any negotiations with the EU and does not intend to (be), so I only consider it a formality.”

Opinion polls suggest that a majority of Icelanders want a referendum to be held on EU membership, as initially promised by the governing Progressive Party and Independence Party.

US hits Iceland on whaling, looks at sanctions

Google – AFP, 6 February 2014

The tails of two 35-tonne Fin whales are bound to a Hvalur boat on June 19, 2009

 after being caught off the coast of Hvalfjsrour, north of Reykjavik, on the western coast

of Iceland (AFP/File, Halldor Kolbeins)

Washington — The United States said Thursday that Iceland was violating an international agreement through its whaling, opening the possibility of economic sanctions over the controversial hunt.

The Department of the Interior, in a decision it is required to take under US law, found that the Nordic country's actions violated the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

The certification was sent to President Barack Obama, who has 60 days to determine whether to impose economic sanctions on the NATO ally. After a similar decision in 2011, Obama declined to do so but ordered diplomatic measures to raise concern.

Iceland and Norway are the only nations that openly defy a 1986 global moratorium on commercial whaling. Japan kills hundreds of whales a year but says it abides by the moratorium by using a loophole that allows "lethal research" on the ocean giants.

Iceland consumes little whale meat but supplies the Japanese market. It increased its 2014 quotas to 383 whales, despite not making the hunt level the previous year.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, in a statement on the decision, credited the 1986 moratorium with helping whale stocks recover after commercial whaling "had nearly driven whales to extinction."

Conservation and animal rights groups hailed the move and called for Obama to take action to stop Iceland's hunt.

"Killing endangered fin whales is not only brutal, it's short-sighted," said Taryn Kiekow Heimer of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"Iceland should not be allowed to ignore the fact that, regardless of some temporary financial reward, this practice is simply unsustainable and cruel," she said.

Related Article:

Sea Shepherd accuses Japanese whalers of 'aggressive', 'ruthless' confrontation

IMF paper warns of 'savings tax' and mass write-offs as West's debt hits 200-year high

Debt burdens in developed nations have become extreme by any historical measure and will require a wave of haircuts, warns IMF paper

The Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 02 Jan 2014

The paper said policy elites in the West are still clinging to the illusion that rich
 countries can chip away at their debts with a blend of austerity cuts and growth
Photo: PA

Much of the Western world will require defaults, a savings tax and higher inflation to clear the way for recovery as debt levels reach a 200-year high, according to a new report by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF working paper said debt burdens in developed nations have become extreme by any historical measure and will require a wave of haircuts, either negotiated 1930s-style write-offs or the standard mix of measures used by the IMF in its “toolkit” for emerging market blow-ups.

“The size of the problem suggests that restructurings will be needed, for example, in the periphery of Europe, far beyond anything discussed in public to this point,” said the paper, by Harvard professors Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.

The paper said policy elites in the West are still clinging to the illusion that rich countries are different from poorer regions and can therefore chip away at their debts with a blend of austerity cuts, growth, and tinkering (“forbearance”).

The presumption is that advanced economies “do not resort to such gimmicks” such as debt restructuring and repression, which would “give up hard-earned credibility” and throw the economy into a “vicious circle”.

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But the paper says this mantra borders on “collective amnesia” of European and US history, and is built on “overly optimistic” assumptions that risk doing far more damage to credibility in the end. It is causing the crisis to drag on, blocking a lasting solution. “This denial has led to policies that in some cases risk exacerbating the final costs,” it said.

While use of debt pooling in the eurozone can reduce the need for restructuring or defaults, it comes at the cost of higher burdens for northern taxpayers. This could drag the EMU core states into a recession and aggravate their own debt and ageing crises. The clear implication of the IMF paper is that Germany and the creditor core would do better to bite the bullet on big write-offs immediately rather than buying time with creeping debt mutualisation.

The paper says the Western debt burden is now so big that rich states will need same tonic of debt haircuts, higher inflation and financial repression - defined as an “opaque tax on savers” - as used in countless IMF rescues for emerging markets.

“The magnitude of the overall debt problem facing advanced economies today is difficult to overstate. The current central government debt in advanced economies is approaching a two-century high-water mark,” they said.

Most advanced states wrote off debt in the 1930s, though in different ways. First World War loans from the US were forgiven when the Hoover Moratorium expired in 1934, giving debt relief worth 24pc of GDP to France, 22pc to Britain and 19pc to Italy.

This occurred as part of a bigger shake-up following the collapse of the war reparations regime on Germany under the Versailles Treaty. The US itself imposed haircuts on its own creditors worth 16pc of GDP in April 1933 when it abandoned the Gold Standard.

Financial repression can take many forms, including capital controls, interest rate caps or the force-feeding of government debt to captive pension funds and insurance companies. Some of these methods are already in use but not yet on the scale seen in the late 1940s and early 1950s as countries resorted to every trick to tackle their war debts.

The policy is essentially a confiscation of savings, partly achieved by pushing up inflation while rigging the system to stop markets taking evasive action. The UK and the US ran negative real interest rates of -2pc to -4pc for several years after the Second World War. Real rates in Italy and Australia were -5pc.

Both authors of the paper have worked for the IMF, Prof Rogoff as chief economist. They became famous for their best-selling work on sovereign debt crises over the ages, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.

They were later embroiled in controversy over a paper suggesting that growth slows sharply once public debt exceeds 90pc of GDP. Critics say it is unclear whether the higher debt is the problem or whether the causality is the other way around, with slow growth causing the debt ratio to rise to faster.

The issue became highly politicised when German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble and EU economics commissioner Olli Rehn began citing the paper to justify eurozone austerity policies, over-stepping its more careful claims.

Critics says extreme austerity without offsetting monetary stimulus is the chief reason why debts have been spiralling upwards even faster in parts of Southern Europe.

The weaker eurozone states are particularly vulnerable to default because they no longer have their own sovereign currencies, putting them in the same position as emerging countries that borrowed in dollars in the 1980s and 1990s. Even so, nations have defaulted through history even when they do borrow in their own currency.

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What We Can Learn From Iceland

Channel:  Wanderer of the Skies - April 14, 2012

“… Your nation of Iceland is being used as a testing ground for the rolling out of financial strategies for the betterment of your planet. It would be wise to follow their progress in this respect, as it will be the fate of all nations in a very brief period of time. We have always advised you that such an action would never come from the larger powers and nations of the world, but they will follow in lockstep once the actions begin their domino effect…..”