I think there has been a decent amount of reporting in the Netherlands and the UK. Mostly because all of this is about their money.
Let's not pretend this "revolution" is about anything other than the Icelandic people not willing to pay for the failures of the government they elected.
Let's not pretend this "revolution" is about anything other than the Icelandic people not willing to pay for the failures of the government they elected.
From my understanding, this is not quite true. Icelandic banks defaulted on debts towards foreigners, the Icelandic government was being pressured into taking over those debts - even though there was no legal obligation to do so - and the Icelandic people revolted against this.
So: Private entities screwed up - both the banks and non-Icelandic bank customers who misplaced their trust in those banks - and so private entities were morally responsible for taking the losses. The Icelandic people simply did their part to ensure that capitalism works properly, even though it required going against their government.
> the Icelandic people not willing to pay for the failures of the government they elected.
Why should they be? It's supposedly common knowledge that no democratic government has the power to bind the hands of a future government.
It is important to the financial stability of the world that the financial industry understand the world as it is, and not how they would like it to be. Hopefully the Iceland incident has been an a sufficiently good example that the bad lessons the US is teaching will be ignored.
Do note that many of our compatriots put more money into IceSave than was covered by the bank guarantee system. Hence, they did not deserve to be made "whole" (they took a risk, willingly, for a higher return).
Also note that The Netherlands single-handedly increased the max. amount to 100k euros, then demanded that the Icelandic people repay them, which isn't really right either. Sure, there were major issues in terms of lack of oversight and irresponsible investments resulting in risk of insolvency in case of a "bank run", but the "greed" of the UK and NL consumers dropping their life savings for one extra percentage point should not have been rewarded.
Lastly, I seem to recall that Iceland has agreed to repay most of it in the long run (though I may be mistaken, that proposal has been voted out and reinstated several times, and I'm too lazy to find out the latest status)
Let's not pretend this "revolution" is about anything other than the Icelandic people not willing to pay for the failures of the government they elected.