1. "Iceland teeters on brink of bankruptcy". (Forbes.com)
LONDON - Iceland is getting closer to becoming the first nation to go bankrupt as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis and resulting squeeze on lending. Late Wednesday afternoon in Europe, Fitch Ratings said it had cut Iceland's long-term sovereign currency issuer default ratings to "BBB-," from "A," putting them firmly in "junk" territory. Moody's also cut Iceland's sovereign rating to "A1," from "Aa1," and said its ratings were on review, according to TradeTheNews.com.
2. "Iceland sinks further into crisis". (ABC7 Chicago)
Today, the government said it was abandoning a plan to nationalize the country's third-largest bank (Glitnir) and is instead putting it into receivership.
Further details at Marketwatch.
3. The Icelandic meltdown jeopardises British citizens who have cash in a British subsidiary of Landesbanki.
More than 300,000 British customers had around £4 billion deposited in Icesave accounts, which until yesterday offered higher rates of interest than British banks.
The UK government last week issued a general guarantee that British account holders will be able to reclaim their money if their financial institution goes bankrupt - but only up to a maximum of £50,000 each.
4. The Icelandic bank collapse will affect the fishery in Atlantic Canada.
"The big impact that people probably are not aware of is that these Icelandic banks, Glitnir and Landesbanki, both those banks (finance) a lot of Atlantic Canadian seafood companies," said the chief executive officer of Black's Harbour-based Cooke Aquaculture Inc. on Tuesday.
"Glitnir has a very small piece of Cooke," he said. "These Icelandic banks they're banking a lot of firms - Clearwater Fine Foods, they're part of the syndication in Connors Brothers, they back the Barrett Group [sic. Perhaps he meant the Barry Group] out of Newfoundland."
So much for the claims Newfoundland and Labrador is protected by a magic bubble.
5. CBC Radio Noon (St. John's, ram audio). Rob Greenwood of the Harris Centre at Memorial University discusses the Icelandic crisis in the context of local proponents of the Iceland model for Newfoundland and Labrador.
Rob gives it a nice try but it must be getting really hard to push the Icelandic model and fanciful notion of "subsidiarity" with any degree of seriousness.
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