Of Banks and Broken Hearts

The economic collapse that brought Iceland to its knees last October is a catastrophe on multiple levels. The financial crisis is only one aspect of the disaster whose tentacles have stretched into all aspects of the nation's life, its heart and soul.

I was shocked, when meeting with family and friends in Iceland a couple of weeks ago, to hear how many people I know - friends, old school buddies, family members - are getting a divorce (or trying to; a friend who's been having marital problems pointed out that divorcing in Iceland these days is almost a logistical impossibility, because there are no buyers for properties).

Financial difficulties are usually near the top of any marriage counselor's problem list, and many families are suffering because of the economic strain the kreppa (the Icelandic word for economic recession or depression) has put on people in the form of unemployment, skyrocketing debts, and cost of living. However, in addition to the garden variety couple strained by financial woes, there apparently is a new phenomenon on the marital problem scene: the "bank marriage." A "bank marriage," an Icelandic psychologist recently explained to me, is a marriage in crisis created not directly by the kreppa, but by a spouse's work situation in one of the banks.

The typical bank marriage that this therapist (who chose to remain anonymous "to protect" his clients) says he sees - seven or eight couples at the moment - in his practice, located in a bright, spacious office near downtown Reykjavik, is that of the husband working in some high level bank position and the wife taking care of the home and kids.

"The situations in all these marriages are almost exactly the same, with minor variations," he said. "These are couples in their 30s, 40s, with 2 ½ kids, dog and three cars, educated, with money, and a bank job that had completely taken over the husband's, and by extension, the family's life. And, yes, usually there is or has been an affair on the side, the husband's side."

Some of the husbands no longer have their jobs with the banks, he added, but the crisis generated by their positions remains unresolved. The wives were fed up with their spouses having to be on call 24/7, constantly on the phone, work trips abroad, long workdays into the evenings, and staff-only parties, dinners, and travel. The husbands had grown distant; their lives revolved around work and the bank, which came first, second, and third. "There definitely was an element of brainwashing going on," he said. "You (the bank employee) either did things their (the bank bosses') way, or you were out (and out of all the money you otherwise could have.) It was their way or the highway."

I knew exactly what he was talking about. Since I "lost" one of my oldest and best friends to the "brainwashing" of the Icelandic fraud factories (aka banks), I have observed the heartbreaking collapse of a family in an almost sinister parallel with the bank crash. I never could have believed that any one person could change so much; it was a metamorphosis of Kafkaesque proportions. Perhaps though, after almost thirty years, I never really knew my friend: "One of the dangers of wealth... is that it may make more conspicuous defects and faults that otherwise would have remained latent. Money reveals character far more often than it creates it," wrote a 19th century American clergyman,Theodore Thornton Munger.

"Broken." Photo: Íris Erlingsdóttir

It took less than two years working in the Icelandic con shops for my friend to transmute from a true mensch, a wonderful, trustworthy, generous human being into an insensitive, egotistic, two-faced narcissist who thought nothing of breaking up a large family with young children and walking out on a spouse and partner of 25 years to follow an apparently new and improved road to happiness, located on life's map via an an adulterous liaison in the bank's marketing department (cooking up crooked investment deals and family disasters!). "This," my friend told the spouse before leaving the family residence, referring to all the apparently boring stuff that was their home and all they had worked for, is not enough for me; I need more out of life."

I guess, after hobnobbing with the Icelandic private-jetset that eats breakfast in Rome and dines in New York on the Icelandic hoi polloi's account, that the thought of coming home to Reykjavik to dinner with your humdrum spouse, who, because you've been gone for a long "work weekend" in Paris or New York, is tired of having had to deal alone with everything from kids, homework and temper tantrums to dirty laundry and your daughter's ear infection, was just too uninspiring.

After all, how could these monetary masterminds be expected to live life on the same terms as the unwashed masses back home? Obviously, you had to find someone of your own superior kind, even if that meant dumping the life partner who allowed you to realize your career dreams while changing dirty diapers and making sure all your needs were met, from your socks to sex to supper to soul support in hard times and good.

Like I said, perhaps I never really knew this person. The quotes about money and character are copious: "If you want to test a man's character, give him power (money)," said Abraham Lincoln. But I do think though, that I did know my friend, who used to be an honorable, kind, decent person. I think my friend simply, like so many others, succumbed to the pervasive greed, conceit, and corruption that permeated the Icelandic banks like an evil fog, resulting in an ethical breakdown that gradually, in a sort of mass-conditioning, became the norm, the M.O. at all levels, professional and personal, of the organization.

This state of anomie eventually contaminated every aspect of Icelandic society. It has ruined lives, homes, businesses, trust, and decency. It has also devastated my friend's family.

The recovery ahead will be long and difficult for everyone. However, businesses can be rebuilt, homes replaced, plans rewritten, but some things can never be repaired. Contrary to common wisdom, time doesn't always heal broken hearts. Sometimes, as the song goes, it just makes them old.

Follow Iris Erlingsdottir on Twitter: www.twitter.com/elluskott

Comments

[darrensays]

You are one amazing writer Ms. Erlingsdottir. Thank you.

[research]

Sad, and enlightening. Banks have a culture of greed induced corruption. Fraud is inevitable. Only regulation can save us.

[Freedom2]

And the thieves are still loose and waiting to unleash the final insult by buying businesses and properties at fire sale prices as soon a the smoke clears! These carpetbaggers can call themselves anything but patriots because their soul interest is in making the deal to enrich themselves at the expense of others! This is one moment in time where you wish an actual hell existed....