We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Reflections on the Iceland credit crunch disaster “In retrospect, there are some obvious questions an Icelander living through the past five years might have asked himself. For example: Why should Iceland suddenly be so seemingly essential to global finance? Or: Why do giant countries that invented modern banking suddenly need Icelandic banks to stand between their depositors and their borrowers – to decide who gets capital and who does not? And if Icelanders have this incredible natural gift for finance, how did they keep it so well hidden for 1,100 years?”
Michael Lewis, Boomerang, page 36.
And I liked this line (page 37): “Leverage buys you a glimpse of a prosperity you haven’t really earned.”
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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“Iceland credit crunch disaster”
Good for Iceland that their credit crunch is behind them, they can get around to rebuilding a ‘sustainable’ [dread word] economy.
Our credit crunch should have taken place by now, but for the incestuous relationship between the banks and the state, the politicians and the bankers.
For a glimpse of what to expect, look at Greece.
I’m a fan of Michael Lewis. Looks like another book to add to my reading list.
I was given a copy of Boomerang by one of my client contacts as a
ChristmasHoliday gift, and it’s currently doing the rounds of the office.It’s a good book, well written, and entertaining. As a firm full of ‘hedgies’, we already know a lot of this stuff, but Lewis manages to keep the material fresh and readable, and so yeah, it’s well worth a read.
Remember that the government of Iceland (like all elected governments it appears) desperatly WANTED to betray the country.
Turn the population into European Union debt slaves (paying money they DID NOT OWE) to the British and Dutch governments for the next century?
“Wonderful – where do we sign?” was the attitude of the elected government.
Only TWO referendums stopped this.
However, the new Icelandic Constitution appears to be a mess.
Full of collectivist nonsense.