THE U.S. DOES —
By Jay Syrmopolous
Reprinted with Permission
In 2015, Iceland sentenced dozens of bankers to
a combined 74 years in prison for crimes relating
to market manipulation. The majority of those
convicted were sentenced to prison terms of two
to five years. The maximum penalty in Iceland for
financial crimes is six years.
The prosecution of Icelandic banksters stems
from the manipulation of the Iceland’s financial
markets after the deregulation of the finance sector
in 2001. Eventually, an accumulation of foreign
debt resulted in a meltdown of the entire banking
sector in 2008.
Massive debts were incurred in the name of the
Icelandic public, to allow the country to continue
to function, which are still being repaid to the IMF
and other nations eight years later by the citizens of
Iceland. In contrast to the U.S., Iceland has chosen
to hold some of the criminals that manipulated
their financial system accountable under the law.
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland
gained a global reputation for corporate accountability, in stark contrast to the to the United States,
which saw a record low number of prosecutions of
CEO’s and high-level financial executives. In the
U.S., not a single banking executive was charged
with crimes related to the 2008 financial crisis, even
though the U.S. itself precipitated the global crisis.
Icelandic President, Olafur Ragnar Grimmson
summed it up best in his response when asked how
his country recovered from the global financial
crisis.
“We were wise enough not to follow the
traditional prevailing orthodoxies of the
Western financial world in the last 30 years.
We introduced currency controls, we let the
banks fail, we provided support for the people
and didn’t introduce austerity measures like
you’re seeing in Europe.”
TheSovereignVoice.Org