http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7738874.stm okay, with recent record high energy prices, doesn't it strike anyone else as odd that Iceland, a nation with, incredible geothermal wealth, and quite a bit of the infrastructure to take advantage of it, had a banking collapse? I know we all already know about entirely too much manipulation of the markets, and yes, stating the obvious that markets are not behaving in a natural way, but shouldn't more questions be getting asked about this? Also, iceland has a really good quality of life, granted, VERY small population, but it's amazing that 2.1 billion dollars can rescue their economy, when 700 billion isn't even doing it for america's, that just SCREAMS to the disparity of scale, and the disparity of placement of funds in the u.s. this should raise a good many more questions, and establish a good deal more perspective than it probably will.
Why are you referring to markets as not "behaving" in "natural" ways? A market isn't alive, it does not grow, think, or behave. It merely reflects the capitalist structure.
water behaves in a certain way, a certain natural way, despite being incredibly inorganic. the market is behaving in a way that demonstrates manipulation, just as a river that is being splashed by a pair of playful children may be.
Iceland's geothermal richness does really nothing in a financial economic crisis. Iceland's banking system collapsed like no other countries so far and it further went around the globe, i.e. local British councils had around $1 billion I believe invested in banks there.
it does nothing now, but, I am saying, why were they leveraged in such a precarious position? why did their banks have so much bad debt? so little investment in local energy? and why were they not making money off said energy? there are some great ways to convert electrical energy to chemical energy that iceland could have capitalized on, and, I just don't see why that capital wasn't flowing.
You do realize that Iceland is an island far from anyplace else don't you? Any electricity they generate must be used at home as it is not yet practical to export electricity wirelessly. The fact of using geothermal means that they have that resource on hand, but it is again something that is not exportable. The tech behind using it could be but not many places have the geothermal energy on hand to use it. As for converting it to hygrogen and then exporting it also has problems such as low demand for the finished product. The problem was the fact that the banks held 50 billion euros of foreign debt (US$62.5 billion) while the entire country has a GDP of 8.5 billion euros (US$ 10.6 billion). Compare this to the US foreign debt of $10.7 trillion and $13.3 trillion GDP. This leaves Iceland with a 5.9:1 ratio of foreign dept to GDP compared to the US ratio of 0.8:1. Iceland's banks simply bit off more than their government could cover. This was due to Iceland's deregulated banking and the fact the government interest rate was paying 15.5% interest on deposits compared to a few % the US was paying. This causes many foreigners investing there and overvaluating the currency. When the US banking system collapsed and rippled throughout the world, Iceland couldn't get more interbank loans to pay up. Simply put greed on a larger scale of GDP than the US.
you don't transport electricity, it is tenable to convert electricity into chemical energy by a number of means. you can even heat and convert certain sorts of biomass electrically and convert them into oil. greed is exactly what I am looking for as the answer to my question though.
