Two famous cinematic scenes came to mind when I heard that the people of Iceland had overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to bailout the bankers that sunk their country under mounds of debt: The most memorable is that of gladiators standing up individually to say "I am Spartacus", as the victorious Romans try to identify the leader of the gladiator revolt. The other is that scene in the movie Norma Rae as she stands on a table holding a sign emblazoned with the word "union", and her fellow workers shut down their machines, one by one, but in beautifully choreographed unity to protest injustice.
Here's how the New York Times framed it:
The vote shows the depth of Icelanders' rage. They are angry at the British and Dutch, who they say are mistreating them; angry at the regulators and government officials who failed to properly oversee the Icelandic financial system; and angry at the bankers whose recklessness helped the economy grow at a headspinning rate and then caused it to self-destruct in days.
Instead of going after the banks, ordinary people were asked to pay for the excesses of high flying investment and commercial bankers. Specifically, the Icelandic people were being asked to divvy up $5.3 billion to reimburse British and Dutch customers of the poorly regulated Icelandic bank. Ninety-three percent of voters said no to the banks, European governments and bank executives.
It's already understood that this is not the last of this episode. Unemployment will climb and the money to the British and Dutch governments will still have to be repaid, somehow. But at a time when ordinary people, everywhere, seem so helpless in the shadow of international bankers and their protectors in government, this was an important example of "people power."
Though the referendum may ultimately be remembered as only a symbolic gesture, it was far more powerful than any message that is being sent to reckless bankers and investors here in the USA. In 2009, according to the New York Times, "Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley--together set aside about $90 billion for compensation". While bankers and Wall Street investors reap record bonuses from the TARP bailout--without any apparent sense of shame or irony--Icelandic bankers are in the bullseye of a unified, unambiguous reaction to such callousness and greed.
Some on the American right will inevitably compare what the people of Iceland did to their own brand of populism. But that comparison is more than off-base. It is absolutely inaccurate. How Icelandic rage differs from the "populism" of the Glenn Beck led right-wing in the U.S, is that while standing up to the banks Icelanders also stand up for each other. For example, while Icelanders clearly reject the too big to fail philosophy of banks and their government boosters, they also reject the "the every man and woman for themselves" approach to health care that is so popular among the American right. Iceland has universal health care.
And unlike right wing populists who decry big bankers while simultaneously demanding little or no regulation of the banking industry, Icelanders want more regulation of banks, corporate traders and raiders. Right wing populists in the U.S rail against government fees on banks to help tax payers recover TARP money. Icelanders are demanding that bankers pay back what they gained but neither earned nor merited.
When Icelanders, "turn off the machine" in unity and say in essence, I, too, am Spartacus, theirs is the cry of the common man and woman on the street and the closest a nation comes to a national consensus and populist democratic revolt. They don't mean, as do many here in the US: "I am Spartacus" with conditions: "As long as he is a follower of Glenn Beck; as long as he rejects a president--whom I suspect was not born in this country--who has his grubby socialist hands all over my government sponsored Medicare; and as long as he believes that I should be able to carry a gun to Starbucks, political rallies and taverns, than I'm with him" That's a whole different kind of populist uprising.
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the mouse roars...
I'm in Newfoundland at this writing, right smack in between the US and Iceland
life here is often a sad mix of both of those worlds - it feels like we're alive, but we're suckers to the corporate govt.