Icelnad has gotten a deal for a $2 billion loan from the IMF. That’s about $6250.00 for every man, woman, and child on the island. They could not cut a deal with the Russians who, my wild-assed guess here, wanted some naval basing consideratins.
There are conditions, such as, “Iceland said it would use the funds to reintroduce a flexible interest rate regime and revise its financial regulation, particularly insolvency laws.”
What does that mean, for a start it means that Iceland’s central bank just raised rates to 18%.
As to the insolvency laws, my guess is that they were told to change the laws so that foreign investors are at the front of the line, and that those debts could not be discharged at all.
Iceland has just become 320,000 people working for foreign masters.
Ukraine is well along the way to the same fate, with the IMF demanding budget cuts in the middle of an economic downturn.
This is the sort of policies that created the Great Depression following the stock market crash.
There has also been a deal cut between the IMF and Hungary, but I don’t have details.
As I’ve said before, let’s see how free market fundamentalist the IMF goes on white people. I think that it will be far more gentle than it would be if the people were black, brown, or yellow.