Coppola Comment

Guest post by Sigrún Davídsdóttir The word “trust” has been mentioned time and again in reports on the tortuous negotiations on Greece. One reason is the persistent deceit in reporting on debt and deficit statistics, including lying about an off market swap with Goldman Sachs: not a one-off deceit but a political interference through concerted action among several public institutions for more then ten years. As late as in the July 12 Euro Summit statement "safeguarding of the full legal independence of ELSTAT” was stated as a required measure. Worryingly, Andreas Georgiou president of ELSTAT from 2010, the man who set the statistics straight, and some of his staff, have been hounded by political forces, including Syriza. Further, a Greek parliamentary investigation aims to show that foreigners are to blame for the "odious" debt. But there is no effort to clarify a decade of falsifying statistics.  In Iceland there were also voices blaming its collapse on foreigners

Guest post by Sigrún Davídsdóttir Now that Greece has controls on outtake from banks, capital controls, many commentators are comparing Greece to Iceland . There is little to compare regarding the nature of capital controls in these two countries. The controls are different in every respect except in the name. Iceland had, what I would call, real capital controls – Greece has control on outtake from banks. With the names changed, the difference is clear. Iceland – capital controls The controls in Iceland stem from the fact that with its own currency and a huge inflow of foreign funds seeking the high interest rates in Iceland in the years up to the collapse in October 2008, Iceland enjoyed – and then suffered – the consequences, as had emerging markets in Asia in the 1980s and 1990s. Enjoyed, because these inflows kept the value of the króna, ISK, very high and the whole of the 300.000 inhabitants lived for a few years with a very high-valued króna, creating the illusio