Iceland: Loan from Russia could mean use of air force base

darkcrow

I can't find an online source but I was watching the news *BBC* this morning and they reported that the Icelandic government has asked Russia for a huge loan and one of the conditions would be that Russia could use their air fields for military purposes.

spiral out

Don't know about the airfields bit, but i get the feeling Russia don't have the cash to loan to Iceland anyway.

There are a lot of irate savers over here right now. I wonder if they get there money back or how long it will take.

BrotherLoveBone

They really have created a mess in Iceland. Apparently the loan from Russia isn't official yet, but they are about to negotiate a $5.4 billion loan together. The country is almost bankrupt. They've secured domestic bank savings, but the savings of 300 000 British account holders are at risk of disappearing. U.K. is threatening to sue Iceland over this and has promised to secure the British savings.

Russia would certainly use the loan to get more influence in the NATO country.

I remember seeing a documentary 2 years back about the big investments that the financial sector of Iceland was doing all over Europe. They interviewed many bank managers, investors and other experts asking how they think they can keep this up and none of them were worried. For a while it was strange that investors from a country with population of 320 000 were buying companies all over the place, even over here for example the Finnish airline Finnair and many banks and insurance companies.

We had a similar crisis after the crazy 80's and it feels odd that the business world never seems to learn anything. When things are good nobody is willing to show concern about possible downfalls, it's always building growth on growth forever. If someone says something negative during the good times the majority of experts usually question their motives to cause confusion in the market when everything is obviously fine. During growth money is given for free, since everyone want's a piece of the wealth and "be a player" on the financial stage and when this freedom to spend backfires the same people are begging the government to step in and take over companies and secure investments. Communist measures after capitalist craziness.

Some links to the official news about the subject
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1848073,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-topics

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081007/eu_iceland_banks.html?.v=3

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27083106/

Eisi

Well, never has this been mentioned in the Icelandic press. I think that we would never let the Russians set up an Air Base here as there was considerable protest against the US when they were here. But given we are really desperate for money, you never know.

Gordon Brown singlehandedly put the biggest company in Iceland´s history, Kaupthing Banki, out of business my freezing their assets and imposing some kind of a terrorist law against Landsbanki, witch was another icelandic bank and as a result they were put on the list of terrorists in England.

Imagine, Iceland, population 300.000 approx, never ever had army of it's own, never fought in a war, occupying a list of terrorists???

Stupid, plain stupid.

Don't get me wrong, i fully accept that the situation we are in is our fault bet Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling didn't do alot to help, that's for sure.