Icelandic Court Rules: Wikileaks Will Get Contributed Credit Card Money

New submitter mordur writes "An Icelandic District Court has ordered the payment processing company Valitor to immediately reopen the merchant account (Icelandic original) of DataCell and start processing credit card payments for the Wikileaks organization. Noncompliance on behalf of Valitor will result in daily fines of ISK 800.000 (approx. USD 60.000). Under pressure from the USA based international credit card companies, Valitor stopped all service to DataCell, and thus to Wikileaks, just hours after having started processing payment in July 2011. The court found that Valitor had failed to prove that the processing of payments for Wikileaks was contrary to the business policies of the international credit card companies, nor had the company proved that DataCell was in breach of the service agreement between the companies by serving Wikileaks."

Comments

Good decision by Icelandic court

[ACTA sucks]

European countries always seem to have the most common sense in their rulings. USA is out of reality and Asia keeps to their own stuff. EU shines.

I think we should let the US companies and government to know that they can't do shit like this to us Europeans by banning Visa, Mastercard and Google from operating in Europe. Remember, we do have our own credit card processing networks too - lets use them instead. That way your privacy is better too, as your data isn't handed to US companies and therefore US government has no access to them.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Maquis196]

Well it's not all milk and honey over here. Our airlines ARE supposed to give data to the US government if the airline has anything to do with America. I'm in the UK and were bow down to most US requests for people or information.

Iceland isn't EU (although they are attempting to join afaik), they just happen to be an awesome country that seems to care about such things. They must have been doing a good job, my goverment called them terrorists once for letting their banks fail (oh no, not the banks!).

This might have been feeding a troll but wanted to set a small record straight :)

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[dkleinsc]

Iceland isn't exactly European. I mean, it was settled by Vikings back in the day, and Norway has occasionally over the course of history tried to take charge of it, but generally speaking the Icelanders have done their own thing. They aren't part of the EU or the Euro, for instance.

But yeah, 3 cheers for the world's oldest democracy!

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet operates world-wide, as do banks and credit card companies - we consumers have choices. Companies which comply with the freedom killing orders of fascist governments should be boycotted. As the recent Barclay's bank disclosures prove, all of the major banks are run by crooks, who operate in collusion with each other. Perhaps Iceland is the only country who's government refuses to allow it's banks to collude with the rest of the world's banks. When will the countries in Europe demonstrate they are democracies, and stop the democracy killing abuse by their own banks?

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[CanHasDIY]

Forcing a company to do business with someone they don't want to. Yeah, wonderfully enlightened position EU

from the summary you clicked to get to this page:

Under pressure from the USA based international credit card companies, Valitor stopped all service to DataCell and, thus to Wikileaks, just hours after having started processing payment in July 2011.

In other words, Valitor did indeed want to do business with them, but were strongarmed by US credit card companies into violating their contract with DataCell.

Must be troll...

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[ACTA sucks]

There are other countries in the Europe who also aren't part of the EU or have Euro as their currency. Iceland has language close to other European languages and is geographically in Europe, so yeah, they should (and are) considered to be Europeans.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[ACTA sucks]

Europe != EU

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah the bank thing was hilarious.

"We demand the government reimburse us for the money held in failed Icelandic banks!"

"Why? the debt was not backed by the full faith and credence of the government; that's why the interest rates were so high"

"HERP DERP I DON'T CARE GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY!"

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[jythie]

Eh, there is a certain amount of information bais going on. Stories of EU courts sticking it to the US and being moderate fit an existing narrative well, but the reality is they are just as dysfunctional and have more then their fair share of crazy rulings. There are some thing EU courts (which is a VERY broad concept right there since each country has its own laws in a way that US states do not) are good for, and some things US courts tend to be saner on.

Heh, though as others have pointed out, Iceland isn't EU... but they do rock. Walking on lava and everything ^_^

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Iceland actually totally fucked up at banking not so long ago. However, that may have actually had a salubrious effect. In the US and EU, the fuckuppery of the banking sector has been massive; but small enough that shovelling bushels of money at the people responsible can be advanced as a 'reasonable' proposal. In the case of Iceland, the scale of the meltdown of the imaginary money economy was so enormous that even the most overtly delusional had difficulty advocating the 'just bail out the Experienced Experts who got us here' theory of repair...

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[SteveFoerster]

Don't get me wrong, I love Iceland, but I believe that the world's oldest democracy is San Marino, which has been a republic since its founding in A.D. 301.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[dkleinsc]

Thank you for the correction, sir. You are a gentleman and a scholar. Or at least a scholar.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[CrimsonAvenger]

Don't get me wrong, I love Iceland, but I believe that the world's oldest democracy is San Marino [wikipedia.org], which has been a republic since its founding in A.D. 301.

Not that I doubt you, but San Marino was ruled by its bishop as recently as the 9th century, with the democratic part of the government coming in the 10th century.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[ceoyoyo]

A bunch of banks that happened to be in Iceland, but not backed by the government, made some promises they couldn't keep. A lot of people, mostly in the UK, fell for those promises, and when everything went belly up they demanded that the Icelanders make good on them, which would have essentially bankrupted the country. The Icelanders felt that wasn't fair, and had the wherewithal to tell the banks, the investors, and the countries that were backing them, to go to hell.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Charliemopps]

"European countries always seem to have the most common sense in their rulings."

Always? Like in the 1900 to 1940s?

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it sucks when those damned socialist courts force you to honor your contracts, eh?

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Anonymous Coward]

Scandinavian peninsula is in Europe, it consists of Sweden, most of Norway and some parts of Finland. Iceland is an island in the middle of Atlantic ocean which is halfway split between European and American plates.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[CowTipperGore]

This might have been feeding a troll...

Let's see. Brand new account, other posts are pro-Microsoft, and he worked a slam on Google into a post about Iceland and Wikileaks. We have a winner!

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Indeed. My point was just that(in terms of bank bad debts vs. GDP) Iceland experienced the largest bubble of financial chicanery of any economic region(and, to the best of my knowledge, any point in human history) which helped remove the "zOMG, we have to bail out the banks or Worse Things Will Happen!!!!" faction from serious consideration.

In the US, for instance, the government was only strictly on the hook for the (relatively small, and largely not advantageous to the bankers) FDIC-insured accounts. Minor matters like, oh, All of AIG were 'voluntary' decisions. By virtue of being totally and absolutely fucked, per capita, Iceland managed to make these sorts of 'responsible' responses look entirely insane, while the US, EU, and similar made the same basic mistakes(and, let's not forget, embraced moral hazard like it was going out of style); but managed to carry them through because their costs were simply excessive, rather than overtly ruinous, per capita.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[ceoyoyo]

So rather than "Iceland actually totally fucked up at banking" what you meant to say was "some Icelandic banks totally fucked up and Icleand, unlike the rest of the world in a similar situation, DIDN'T fuck up."

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[shentino]

There's nothing wrong with backing banks as long as all we do is keep them from taking their depositors down with them.

The problem with the US system is that we prop up zombies that don't deserve to stay in business.

But protecting innocent depositors is a good thing.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Catbeller]

And so far, Iceland is doing just fine, while Ireland, for instance, did what it was told.

Ireland balanced its budget, and then had to bail out the banks and is now in a cost-cutting death spiral, while being told all that nasty social spending caused it all and has to stop. Milton Friedman for the win there. Thieves take all.

Iceland for the win. Doing what you are told is not, despite what vast numbers of human instinctively believe, the right thing to do.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Anonymous Coward]

well if we're only looking at economy Germany certainly seems do do well for it self, and it all goes back to those decisions made in "1900 to 1940" :P

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[gmuslera]

Ask yourself why the US people isnt rioting or strinking (ok, both share the unemployed part). Maybe being out of reality isnt exclusive of the government.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Yvanhoe]

Note that Iceland is not part of the EU. This is a very small island with an incredible amount of common sense : They have sane privacy laws, they refuse to bail banks out and they understand that wikileaks is regular journalism. All the geeks of the world should migrate to this 300 000 persons island...

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[gl4ss]

it's ridiculous the sarcastic parent isn't modded up but the "informative" response to it is.
because.. vikings come from scandinavia and scandinavia is in europe, furthermore iceland is fully _european_ as far as customs and traditions go as result. iceland has been an independent country for less than a century and for large parts they've been occupied by foreign forces.

not specifically middle european sure, but there's more to european than french frogs and german lederhosens.

if it's technically fully in europe is just a technicality.

that iceland gets to do it's own thing is that nobody wants it on their social expenses bill and generally doing their own thing has been generally doing fuck all nothing - and the reason their banks were trusted was exactly because they're european - though anyone with a brain should have known that they had nothing to back them up with.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

Lol, yeah. I like to simply view the British "losses" in the Icesave situation as a late payment for all the cod the British stole from Icelandic waters.

"Losses" is in quote because the banks actually are, in fact, paying off their minimum insured obligations, and are on track to finish paying them off within the next year or so (they're already half done). The Icelandic government took on huge amounts of debt, in no small part to help prop up the banks and get them back on their feet so they'd be worth enough to sell off enough asset value to do this. And the British and Dutch are still suing us in the EFTA. Gee, thanks. We appreciate the whole mackerel thing, too. How dare Iceland and the Faroes fish a non-negligable portion of a fish that does most of its growing in Icelandic and Faroese waters? Such insolence, I know. Best to pressure the EC to slap sanctions on us for "overfishing" (aka, taking a non-negligible portion of the catch) when you refuse to negotiate.

Remember all that electricity you're wanting to buy?...

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Anonymous Coward]

DEPOSITED FUNDS != INVESTMENT IN BANK

Deposits are one thing, but investing in a bank that pays high returns on risky investments does not equal government backing, hence the risky and high returns.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[KhabaLox]

The hillarious part is if you put all your money in a bank (and not just the couple hundred you got from working at mcdonalds but actual sizeable amounts of money) youd want your money back as well.

Well, sure. But the point is (based on my reading of his post - I'm not sure if it's 100% correct as far as the terms/agreements Icelandic banks had with their depositors) that the Icelandic banks were not insured by the Icelandic government, and therefore offered an above-market rate of interest. Depositors (I'm guessing other banks from the EU and US) put there money in to gain that high return, then when the bank failed looked to the Icelandic government to bail them out.

Bottom line, if you invest your money (and depositing money in a bank is an investment that nets you a certain, stated, return at a certain level of risk) you bear a certain risk of losing it.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

Like the people who had their money in Lehman Brothers? Sorry, but there's a difference between a regular bank account and an investment account. Icesave was a program predominantly for retirement funds and municipal investment funds. It wasn't a checking account program.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080225152959/http://icesave.co.uk/legal.html: "Deposits made with Icesave are protected under the Icelandic Deposit Guarantees and Investor-Compensation Scheme (details of this scheme may be obtained from www.landsbanki.com/legislation). Payments under this scheme are limited to the first €20,887 (or the sterling equivalent) of your total deposits held with us. You have further protection from the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme (www.fscs.org.uk). Payments under this scheme are limited to 100% of the first £35,000 of all your deposits with us, less any payments made under the Icelandic scheme. This means that the maximum claim amount as at October 2007 is £35,000. The total financial protection given to you under both schemes is no less than you would receive if your deposit was only protected by the UK scheme. Further details about both schemes can be obtained from our web site or by post, on request."

Following the Icelandic side's link for the fund that backed the deposits: Hmm, nowhere in here do I see anything about government backing. Do you?

The fund went bankrupt. The British tried to force the government to pick up the bill. Which is frankly BS. The accounts were never guaranteed by the government, you can't make the government suddenly start guaranteeing them *after* a crash.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[nedlohs]

You assume that, without any evidence of course. It might well be true, I'd want my money and I'd whine about it and hope the government would give me free money too. I'd also expect everyone else to laugh at me, mock me, and tell me to get stuffed.

That isn't hilarious or judgemental. It's just being selfish - which is perfectly normal for humans and apparently a requirement for banks. Wanting something that makes you better off and everyone else worse off isn't exactly a new thing. The very same people not wanting the things that make somebody else better off and everyone else worse off is also not unexpected.

You assume the original poster is in the selfish camp. However, even if they are it doesn't invalidate anything they said anyway or make them an ass or make the comments snarky. It just puts them in with most people.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

Not to mention that the Fascists ruled it from the 1920s to the 1940s and banned all other political parties from participating. Of course Iceland is problematic in and of itself in that Denmark banned the Al(th)ing from 1800 to 1845.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

Correct. Iceland is Nordic, not Scandinavian.

People here need to read more Scandinavia and the World (a webcomic that's both funny *and* educational!)

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[CanHasDIY]

That's not what Valitor says.

You must be a native Icelandic speaker; I tried sticking the page into Google Translate and it's damn near un-readable:

Representative Olafur Sigurdsson, owner of Data Cell, argues, however, that links the payment gateway has been submitted with the application so it could open it. Otherwise would not be possible to open it. Valitor would in turn mean that the company had simply hidden their partnership, but a little before closing the Danish credit card company Teller on all trade with Data Cell for their cooperation with Wikileaks. The reason they said at the time a fear of damaging their business with business cards.

Translate - Fail.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

Indeed. It's hard for people to picture how big the scale of the Icelandic banking crisis was. The banks weren't just big by Icelandic standards, they were big by global standards, in a country of only 320,000 people. Remember how big of a deal Lehman Brothers was? Picture 300 Lehman Brothers failing at once. That's the Icelandic per-capita equivalent when the three major banks went down. Here's what happened to the Icelandic stock market.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[nedlohs]

Scaninavia is irrelevant if you are going by pure geography. Since Iceland isn't in Scandinavia.

If you are using pure geography half of Iceland is in Europe and half is in North America, since it sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where those plates meet.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

Iceland is not doing "just fine", and Iceland largely did what it was told by the international community (including becoming the IMF's new poster child) - just not what the British and Dutch demanded it do. There's a lot of myths about Iceland going around (which Krugman gives a wink and a nudge to by posting grossly misleading stats). Trust me on this one, I live in Iceland. The country got slammed, and is far from a "happily ever after" story. The only reason we're growing faster than most of Europe is that we went a lot further down than most of Europe, earlier. It'd be practically impossible not to.

And I say this as someone who supports the Samfylkingin / Vinstri Grænn coalition. Which is probably going to get pummeled by Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn (the conservatives, who caused this mess) in the next election. :P

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

Indeed. Here's the last thing that the Icelandic supreme court made the news for. :P

What makes it so ridiculous is that it's Goldfinger and Strawberries who are the ones who should have been slapped down by the court, not journalists reporting on them. They're so blatantly circumventing the law. Basically, strip clubs were made illegal in Iceland (to try to prevent trafficking and exploitation, not for moral reasons), so they reclassified themselves as bars and simply had the girls come in and work on their own without any legal connection between the two. So they're still strip clubs, just not legally.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

But is in the EFTA.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[gislifb]

I wish I had mod-points right now! Although the Occupy Wall Street protests took place in the U.S. the U.S. people don't seem to have the courage to give the government and big firms the finger and if I was a U.S. citizen that would scare me alot!

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Carewolf]

The Scandinavian peninsula is named after Scandinavia, not the other way around. Scandinavia doesn't cover all of the peninsula, and the peninsula does not cover all of Scandinavia.

Depending on the definition Iceland is included because it was part of Denmark when Scandinavia was defined in the 1800s as Denmark, Norway as Sweden, on top of that they have Scandinavian culture and language.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

That is simply not correct. There's a record of the region being called terms similar to Scandinavia all the way back to Pliny the Elder. And the penninsula does cover all of Scandinavia, because that's what it is. If you want to include Finland, it's "Fenno-Scandinavia". If you want to include Iceland and Finland, it's "Nordic". Although I personally object to Finland being called Nordic, as they speak a language unrelated to Old Norse, and if you're going to include Finland, you really need to include Estonia too... but I digress.

Now, of course, Icelanders will often talk about how "Scandinavian" the culture is and things of that nature. But it's distinctly not a Scandinavian country. It's a Nordic country.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[joe545]

The key part you neglect to mention is that the Icelanders signed up to a statutory guarantee to guarantee up to a certain level of depositors funds. When Landsbanki collapsed taking IceSave with it, Iceland turned around and said that this guarantee only applied to Icelanders and not to other countries. Only then did the UK and the Netherlands start taking Landsbanki's assets.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[rahvin112]

You do not understand what happened with AIG and the banks.

But let me leave this little nugget for you, had the government not bailed out AIG almost every single bank in the US and probably world would have went under. We are talking a total collapse of the banking system and a run on the banks. The economic catastrophe that would have resulted would have made the bailout look like pennies.

There might have been a couple banks here and there that weren't exposed to the real estate losses and wouldn't have needed the AIG guarantees but the vast majority of banks would have went under and the FDIC insurance alone would have been more than the bailout of AIG.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Aryden]

I do speak Icelandic and all you need to take away from the entire article is the statement by Thorkelsson that they have no opinion "special view" one way or another about wikileaks. "en við höfum enga sérstaka skoðun á Wikileaks,"

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

Please point to where the Icelandic government guaranteed the solvency of the Icelandic Deposit Guarantees and Investor-Compensation Scheme.

They never did. The decision to compensate Icelanders for their losses was purely a choice. Iceland could decide to give everyone Icelander who had an Icesave account a pony. Would that mean that they also owe every British person a pony?

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Wikipedia article you linked:
"In 1972, Iceland unilaterally declared an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extending beyond its territorial waters, before announcing plans to reduce overfishing."

From http://www.britains-smallwars.com/RRGP/CodWar.htm:
"The 200-mile economic exclusion zone was supported by various coastal states, including Great Britain, at UN conferences on the Law of the Sea, although it was not law yet."

So Iceland decides to declare that all that territory belongs to them, and somehow it is the British in the wrong? EEZ was not part of law yet so you had no right to do so, end of. You would have had had a right to do so after the EEZ law was passed, but you didn't wait. British ships were within their rights to fish there at the time, and you were the aggressor attempting to stop them. It's hardly surprising and completely understandable that we used our military to protect against your aggression.

Furthermore, even if we were somehow responsible for the Cod Wars, do you really think the cost would add up to the $5 billion you owe to Britain and the Netherlands? The Cod Wars were a minor spat, concerning a single industry that really isn't that important. I personally doubt the cost added up to $100 million, let alone $5 billion.

Past problems aside, if someone lends you money you owe it to them to pay it back. Especially if the countries lending it are currently hard up themselves. No amount of rationalizations will make not paying the money back the right thing to do.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

I was actually referring to the part just before that also: "Forstjóri Valitors á Íslandi, Viðar (TH)orkelsson, segir að (th)að hafi verið uppi vísbendingar um að starfsemi Wikileaks samræmdust ekki reglum sem al(th)jóðlegu kortasamtökin setja" - The president of Valitor in Iceland, Viðar (TH)orkelsson, says that there is evidence that the activities of Wikileaks are not in accordance with the laws/regulations which the international card agency set.".

Aka, they don't care about Wikileaks itself, but thinks that they were breaking the law/regulations concerning credit card payments.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

It's hot dogs and baseball for our judicially sensible friends in Iceland.

Nah, pylsur and handball ;)

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

First off, there were *three* cod wars, in case you forgot. After overfishing your waters (and the waters of several other countries - I've found the Irish people I've met have a lot to complain about on this front, too), you sent trawlers to overfish other people's waters. Iceland's among them, but hardly alone. You started doing that not long after you *invaded* and occupied Iceland, a neutral country, with one of the most bungling invasions ever, in order to prevent a nonexistent Nazi plan which existed only in your leaders' minds. But I digress. You started fishing as little as *4 kilometers* from Iceland's shore, meaning that Icelanders could sit there and easily watch your trawlers overfishing Iceland's waters. The first Cod War pushed you back to 12, which is still easily in sight of the shore, overfishing Iceland's waters with even more ships involved. The second Cod War pushed you back to what was then the international limit of 50km. However, by the 1970s, many nations had already began asserting 200km exclusive economic zones - in fact, the first ones were claimed in the 1940s. By the 1970s, they had become standard. Heck, the groundwork for the concept of the EEZ began from work from UK in *1939* with the Panama declaration, and then in 1942 concerning the Gulf of Paria. The UK claimed exclusive economic access to a wide range of area outside their territorial waters in 1964. And even if all this wasn't the case, it's ridiculous that Britain felt that it had the god-given right to trawl up the lion's share of the fish in waters right next to Iceland - let alone ignoring how much you were overexploiting the stocks (something Iceland immediately reversed). Iceland's actions were upheld by the International Court of Justice in 1974 (United Kingdom vs. Iceland, 1974 ICJ Rep 3, 75).

You were saying?

do you really think the cost would add up to the $5 billion you owe to Britain and the Netherlands?

Well, let's see... Iceland's fisheries are worth about $1.5 billion a year, and you were exploiting them from the 1940s to the 1970s... so no, you still owe us a damn lot more. Perhaps *you* should vote on a repayment plan.

concerning a single industry that really isn't that important.

Once again, the world revolves around you. Yeah, not that important for you. It's only 40% of our entire economy. Which was the crux of the whole problem.

Past problems aside, if someone lends you money you owe it to them to pay it back.

Companies go bankrupt. Deal with it. Just ignoring that there was clearly no government guarantee, who in their right mind expects a government backing on a 6% interest rate? What's next, do you want us to ensure that anyone who buys junk bonds to get their money back if they loses value? Full reward, no risk, is that the plan?

Especially if the countries lending it are currently hard up themselves

Oh yeah, really hard up compared to Iceland, which had just had the per-capita equivalent of 300 Lehman Brothers fail at once.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Carewolf]

There is ancient talk of an area called Scania, the same area is still called Scania. But the scandinavian peninsula is a modern name, and Scandinavia itself is defined as a political term for Denmark, Norway and Sweden, with Denmark not being on the peninsula.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

6% on an account with no limitations on where you can take money out? Wow, where do I sign up?

(Actually, I can't, as there are currency trading restrictions here, but...)

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

Pliny actually calls it "Scatinavia". I have no idea whether that was A) based in reality, or B) had any influence on the modern naming. But it is it.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[cheesybagel]

Well the alternative is to sit on large stacks of cash and risk being robbed. It is probably safer to have it in the bank.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[abhisri]

Does this means you will be returning the billions of dollars worth of wealth(after including interest) that you Brits stole from India? You can start with sending back the crown jewels for starters, which were also stolen from India by you guys. I believe *that* is the right thing to do.(Especially with all the lip-service you are giving to "doing the right thing").

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

And I wasn't meaning to disparage yours either - you're quite lucky that you can get that kind of interest rate. That's truly remarkable!

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

I think it's hard to find a country that *wasn't* economically pillaged in some way or another by the British at some point in the past couple centuries. And much of it isn't ancient history, either.

Re:Good decision by Icelandic court

[Rei]

The debt was backed by the Icelandic government,

That is a lie. Point to me where in the fund's charter it says that it's government-backed.

That was entirely made up; what happened was that money that remained in the UK was seized under a piece of legislation that had originally been intended to seize, among other things, terrorists funds.

What you should be asking yourself is, "What do you think it means when you have anti-terrorism legislation invoked against you?" If that's hard for you, just picture it applied to other situations. "Hey everyone, we're pressing charges against James here with the Anti-Rape And Pedophilia Act of 2004. Oh, no, he's not a rapist or pedophile, we just chose that law..." Think James would be mad?

but the thing that really pissed off UK depositors was how our banks shut their doors so depositors couldn't get their money back, meanwhile branches in Iceland and cash machines were still spewing out money to any Icelander that wanted some, leaving less to pay off the banks creditors outside of the country

Because our goverment passed a new emergency law *after* the crash providing guarantees for Icelanders with Icesave accounts, at government expense, which is why they stayed open. Your government was more than free to do the same for you. It had absolutely no bearing on whether the Icesave were insured by the government before that (which, as you can plainly tell by reading the charter, linked above, they were not); the law didn't even exist when Brits were putting their money in. In short, our government could give everyone who had an Icesave account in Iceland a free pony if they wanted; it wouldn't mean you were owed one. "News Flash, Governments Spend Tax Money On Their Own Citizens".

Re:Sixty Bucks a Day?

[gstrickler]

Try 60,000/day. Many european countries use the "." as a thousands separator rather than a ",".

Re:Sixty Bucks a Day?

[Talderas]

You forgot a zero, but it's a pretty light punishment. I mean... all they need to do is spend about $30 and get two PLEXes and sell those for about 800,000,000 ISK. That'll keep the fines going for 1,000 days so it works out to about $0.03 USD per day.

Re:Sixty Bucks a Day?

[raydobbs]

It's supposed to be 60,000... some places and people have something against using commas to represent thousand separators.

ISK?

[NettiWelho]

Why does the court want the fines in Interstellar Kredits?

Re:ISK?

[gmuslera]

Tought that the biggest exports of Iceland were this ones. But it depends a lot of the month of the year.

ISK

[dontbemad]

The first thing I thought when I saw the amount they would be fined was "600 thousand ISK is chump change. I could make 50 million in an hour, no problem."

Re:ISK

[dontbemad]

And by 600, I mean 800. Whoops.

Iceland, for the win

[circletimessquare]

The 2008 crisis hacked them worse than the USA and Europe. Now, 4 years later, they are riding high, and Europe and the USA are still muddling through. How? Why?

For a country that four years ago plunged into a financial abyss so deep it all but shut down overnight, Iceland seems to be doing surprisingly well.

It has repaid, early, many of the international loans that kept it afloat. Unemployment is hovering around 6 percent, and falling. And while much of Europe is struggling to pull itself out of the recessionary swamp, Iceland’s economy is expected to grow by 2.8 percent this year. ...

But during the crisis, the country did many things different from its European counterparts. It let its three largest banks fail, instead of bailing them out. It ensured that domestic depositors got their money back and gave debt relief to struggling homeowners and to businesses facing bankruptcy.

“Taking down a company with positive cash flow but negative equity would in the given circumstances have a domino effect, causing otherwise sound companies to collapse,” said Thorolfur Matthiasson, an economics professor at the University of Iceland. “Forgiving debt under those circumstances can be profitable for the financial institutions and help the economy and reduce unemployment as well.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/world/europe/icelands-economy-is-mending-amid-europes-malaise.html?pagewanted=all

We, in Europe, and the USA, have much to learn from Iceland about how to survive a crippling financial crisis.

Re:Iceland, for the win

[BlueStrat]

We, in Europe, and the USA, have much to learn from Iceland about how to survive a crippling financial crisis.

Yeah, like NOT putting the very people responsible for the bank's failures in powerful government positions.

Obama Administration: Deputy Director, National Economic Council
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Financial Analyst

Obama Administration: Chairman, Presidentâ(TM)s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Board Member (Chairman, 1990-94; Director, 2005-)

Obama Administration: Commissioner, Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Partner and Co-head of Finance

Obama Administration: Undersecretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs, State Department
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Vice Chairman, Goldman Sachs Group

Obama Administration: Ambassador to Germany
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Head of Goldman Sachs, Frankfurt

Obama Administration: Chief of Staff to Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geitner
Former Goldman Sachs Title: Lobbyist 2005-2008; Vice President for Government Relations

Obama Administration: Advisor to Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geitner
Former Goldman Sachs Title: President and Chief Operating Officer (1999-2003)

They should just change the name from the "White House" to "Goldman Sachs House". Yeah, I'm sure they'll do the right thing to protect regular US taxpayers.

Strat

Re:Iceland, for the win

[wierd_w]

As much as it sounds like a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, the actions of BoA, Chase, and pals actively forclosing on people IN GOOD STANDING, and in some cases, WHO DIDN'T HAVE LOANS to begin with, are quite suspicious.

I understand that one shouldn't attribute to malic what can be explained by incompetence, but the "incompetence" defense doesn't mesh with the "leading experts" line of thought behind the bailouts.

What the banking industry and the US govt. Plan to gain by taking the foundation out from under the house of cards like that, I have no clue.

I suppose it is entirely possible that both the banking industry AND the US govt. Are completely incompetent in these matters, and this is the result of a trainwreck double-fail, but that seems highly unlikely when you examine how the bank and loan industry has managed to nearly dominte the world economy, and the US Govt does all manner of complex legal and economic wrangling.

So far though, it seems as if the banks and the world govts have been operating on this plan:

1) treat low quality debt like an asset.
2) sell debts as if they were assets, and amass too much debt.
3) cause a financial crisis.
4) get lots of interest free taxpayer money.
5) forclose on everyone, including people without debts
6) ???????
7) Profit!

From the bank and loan side, the one-time injecton of huge amounts of capitol allows them to make a boom-growth of high interest investments, at leas it does here in the US. (A bank can inflate its hard currency store 900% in loans and investments per the fractional reserve rules.) The banks can quickly return the hard injected cash, because they can treat their interest payments as the new hard currency reserve, and keep their inflation. For the banks, this is clearly candy on a plate, and returning the injected money is easy.

[Analogy: the fed gives the bank a 100$ bill. They pop it in the copier and make 9 copies of that note, which they then loan out to people. People make payments with real notes on the debts, and the bank uses those payments to replace the injected bill. It then returns the injected bill, and keeps the loan income.]

As such, arguments that the banks "paid the money back" are a red herring. The exact same outcome would have happened in terms of banking power increase and currency inflation if the fed had just printed trucks of money and dropped it into the economy. The value of the "loaned" money was inflated 900% before being returned, with the banks keeping the inflated portion.

This is one of the (many!) Reasons that the dollar tanked obscenely in the world currency market.

The banks are then left with inflated notes, and new debts that should be better quality ones to improve their revinue stream, but they need to consolodate assets, so they start forclosures. They need hard assets quickly, because the cash injection was just a temporary high in the face of the real problem, which was outstanding and un-collectable debts. The banks conveniently sell a lot of this bogus debt to the government, but also embark on a radical spree of foreclosure frenzy. I would hazard that this was not accidental, and that they looked for every opportunity to acquire hard assets, including cooking payment histories to make otherwise profitable debtors default on their properties. With the huge size of the cash injection propping them up, they can afford to deflate their holdings by doing so. By selling the forclosed properties, they can rapidly regrow their loan industries, bigger and stronger than before.

The problem is the collateral damage.

People are now disrupted from equitable banking relationships, now have bogus credit ratings, have outstanding bills to pay because of new bankruptcy laws, and are still getting a payrate proportioned for the old level of currency inflation. Essentially, the US govt (and any govts that followed our example

Re:Iceland, for the win

[Catbeller]

People in Iceland, like the USA, were in danger of losing their homes due to circumstances beyond their control.

The US yakked about "moral hazard" and let the banks take everyone's homes.

Iceland spent a tiny bit and let people keep their homes.

Now the US has millions of disillusioned, unhomed people whose collective demand has pumped rental costs to unaffordable heights, so they are screwed both ways.

In Iceland, people remained in their homes, found new jobs, and everyone is happy except the Friedmanites and Randites. The moral hazard was understood differently. In Iceland, you say, they believed the real moral hazard was the societal breakdown caused by people ruined through no fault of their own, but by the actions of foreign bankers - so they made sure it didn't happen.

In the USA, it is our firm economic religion that people's failures are their own, and them's the breaks. Except rich bankers of course, who made out fine, own everyone's abandoned homes, and are about to make an even bigger killing when the value goes up and they can unload. The moral hazard is never the rich man's, always the schmuck's. 19th century plantation capitalism; freedom is for the owners, not the serfs. You wanna be free, get rich, lazy parasites...

Re:Iceland, for the win

[Svartalf]

More like an Oligarchy...

Re:Iceland, for the win

[gmuslera]

I would bet for idiocracy, but as there are surely lawyers involved, reverse Hanlon's razor should apply

Re:Iceland, for the win

[Svartalf]

As much as it sounds like a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, the actions of BoA, Chase, and pals actively forclosing on people IN GOOD STANDING [southcoast...torney.com], and in some cases, WHO DIDN'T HAVE LOANS to begin with, are quite suspicious.

I understand that one shouldn't attribute to malic what can be explained by incompetence, but the "incompetence" defense doesn't mesh with the "leading experts" line of thought behind the bailouts.

Having had a bit of "fun" with one of their "pals" until recently you should attribute malice to this situation. Seriously.

Re:Iceland, for the win

[BlueStrat]

that's disgusting

so much for meritocracy. more like plutocracy

Then why is it that I get modded down for suggesting that OWS should be protesting in Washington D.C. instead of Wall St. NYC? If OWS wanted the Wall St. fat-cats to see their protest, they need to be where they're at. The WH.

And, why are you promoting an anti-TEA Party movie, when they've been pretty much the only ones in the US pointing stuff like this out and trying to hold them to account?

Puzzled it makes me, yes.

Strat

Re:Iceland, for the win

[dyingtolive]

+1 Depressing.

Re:Iceland, for the win

[Carewolf]

True, except the part about foreign bankers. It was Icelandic banks and bankers that screwed up and the Icelandic government that looked the other way while they did it.

Re:Iceland, for the win

[Rei]

Figured this sort of tripe would run rampant in this article. Let's go down the list.

1) Surprisingly well? So that's what you call a housing bubble, money going half as far (in a country that imports most goods it consumes), 30% across-the-board austerity cuts, and currency restrictions which prevent you from buying foreign currencies in any sort of quantity so that you can't escape inflation.

2) "many of the international loans" - no, just the first set of payments. Most of the debt is still quite outstanding.

3) Unemployment rate: First, a quick introduction to Icelandic unemployment figures. This is a brief graph, but what you can see on it and what I'll describe extends before and after it: A) note that unemployment *always* drops in the summer. Farm work strongly peaks in summer here. Summer is the tourist season (tourism being one of the country's biggest industries. Summer is the travel season (all the biggest festivals are in the summer). Etc. So it's rather a "duh" thing that unemployment is dropping in the summer. B) Iceland has long had (much longer than in the graph) an *abnormally low* unemployment rate, typically between 1 and 3 percent, but sometimes even lower than 1%. So the current figures are *way* over what is normal here.

4) Iceland fell way further and earlier than most of Europe. It'd be practically a miracle to *not* grow faster.

5) Iceland didn't officially bail out the banks, but it did so indirectly, via using a lot of the money from the aforementioned loans to shore up the cost of restructuring the banks.

6) Paying off Icelandic depositors may lose us the EFTA Icesave case. :P Not saying it was a bad choice, but it could have serious negative consequences.

7) The "debt relief to struggling homeowners" (wow, can you make that sound any more like a poltical talking point?) was due to one of the screwed up things about the Icelandic banking system that almost no other developed country on Earth has: foreign-currency-indexed loans. Which means that when the króna fell to half its value, principals owed *doubled*. These types of loans were illegal to grant in the first place, and eventually a court ruled as such. The government responded by meeting the ruling wit the most pro-bank option possible, converting some of the loans to standard loans at higher rates, within limits.

BTW, homeowners with non-indexed loans here not only pay high rates, but also have to pay a (not cheap) insurance on their loan against currency spikes. FYI to all of you people out there who don't live here who keep talking about how Iceland needs to stay on the króna, it rather sucks having a weak currency.

I can go into the rest of the article, but I figured I'd just do the part you quoted.

And this isn't to say that I disagree with all the steps Iceland's taken. Actually, I agree with most of them. But it's not the rosy picture that the foreign press wants to paint, looking for some happy-populist-utopia to lead the way out of the crisis. Hell, Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn, the conservatives, the ones who caused this mess, are leading in the polls right now, having more support than *both* of the parties in the current coalition combined.

Re:Iceland, for the win

[Rei]

In Iceland, people remained in their homes, found new jobs, and everyone is happy except the Friedmanites and Randites.

Keep dreaming.

(I live in Iceland).

Re:Iceland, for the win

[Rei]

-1, Not At All Related To The Truth

People like that need to stop reading leftist blogs (full disclosure: I waver between calling myself "liberal" and "socialist") and even foreign reporting (which is sometimes almost as bad) and read the Icelandic press directly. Don't worry, there's English language sources.

Re:Iceland, for the win

[BlueStrat]

Why address the puppet rather than the puppeteer?

Although the relationship has gotten quite symbiotic and incestuous at this point between private-sector financial powers and the government, never doubt one thing when it comes down to brass tacks:

The guys that make the laws and have the guns and bombs and soldiers have the last word, because they can just arrest, prosecute, and imprison/execute the other guys and seize what they want just as they can to regular citizens if they chose to.

Government has the monopoly on force. That's where corruption starts. It's also the first place to start to clean up corruption and cronyism.

How can you use the system of a corrupt government to prosecute those they are co-defendants with? You get what we've seen repeated ad nauseum over the last number of decades; "The "Justice" Show" where show trials are held, TV pundits bloviate, stern-sounding soundbites played, a few scapegoats are sacrificed, and afterwards everybody goes back to pretty much the way it's been without much really changing.

I think it's way past time we had a "change in programming", don't you?

Strat

Re:Iceland, for the win

[Catbeller]

You're right. And Paul Krugman's definition is quoted in the Wikipedia article, and the man who is right *every* time gets to tell me what moral hazard is, any day.

Re:Iceland, for the win

[rahvin112]

No fault of their own? Maybe that's true in Iceland (I don't know), but that is NOT true in the US. All those foreclosures are the direct result of people borrowing more money than they can afford, all because the stupid banks were willing to loan them the money. But you know what the best part is? Idiots like you that claim the bank misled them and it was the banks fault they borrowed all that money and spent it on vacations and SUV's.

Giving all those people who borrowed more money than they could afford a pass and reducing their mortgages is a direct slap in the face to everyone else who was responsible. It rewards bad behavior and you're a damn fool for even suggesting it. The biggest mistake in this whole thing as delaying the foreclosures because all it did was extend the pain.

Re:Iceland, for the win

[nitehawk214]

and everyone is happy except the Friedmanites and Randites

Let me get this straight. The people who are opposed to bailing out the banks are upset with Iceland because they didn't bail out the banks?

Well, the real issue is that they are more interested in their philosophy being "right", than actually helping society out. If the entire world goes to shit following their philosophy you would hear them trumpeting about how "right" they are.

Re:Iceland, for the win

[BlueStrat]

And, why are you promoting an anti-TEA Party movie, when they've been pretty much the only ones in the US pointing stuff like this out and trying to hold them to account?

You actually think tea party is "pretty much the only ones in the US" against the collusion of WS and WH. Do you think when OWS complains about the proverbial "1%", they're somehow saying they support this collusion?

I'm not quite sure *WHAT* OWS's platform and agenda is. I hear and see them protesting for a lot of different things, everything from "kill the rich" to advocating socialist/communist/anarchist revolution or eliminating money, anti-Jew hate, and even Nazi-types screaming. I'm sure that somewhere in there amongst all that, there *are* those you speak of who firstly know of the facts I listed, and second, are actually angry at it instead of ignoring it for partisan political reasons. They're pretty much being drowned out by the extremists and crazies.

The TEA Party, on the other tentacle, has actually coherently and cohesively voiced their anger at just these sort of shenanigans and actually gotten allegedly like-minded political candidates elected to actually move forward in solving problems.

Strat

Re:Iceland, for the win

[BlueStrat]

Do you think when OWS complains about the proverbial "1%", they're somehow saying they support this collusion?

The people in the WH *ARE* the "1%"!! There's no "collusion" here, because they're the _same people_, in many cases, the *exact same people* that created the mess! They just changed office location and job title.

It doesn't matter whether you believe it's the "evil corporations/1%" or "evil big government" that's the problem, the solution to either/both starts with reining in government power.

If you believe it's the "evil corporations/1%", well, how do you think they make us comply? The corporations and ultra-rich use the power of corrupt, over-reaching, intrusive, and abusive government to exercise their power. If you believe it's "evil big-government", then of course government power is their tool.

Can't we at least agree that handing the government more power is a bad idea? Because no matter which side you're on, that just gives more power to your (our) enemies.

You'll never succeed trying to fix things from the "1%/corporations" side using government to prosecute them. How can you use the system of a corrupt government to prosecute those they are co-defendants with? You get what we've seen repeated ad nauseum over the last number of decades; "The "Justice" Show" where show trials are held, TV pundits bloviate, stern-sounding soundbites played, a few scapegoats are sacrificed, and afterwards everybody goes back to pretty much the way it's been without much really changing.

Strat

Re:Iceland, for the win

[L4t3r4lu5]

Someone earlier posted that unemployment was down to 6% and still falling. Are you seeing something different?

Re:Iceland, for the win

[Rei]

Thought I responded to this already, but the response isn't here :( I'll just sum up very quickly: Already wrote about this elsewhere in this page, highly misleading, unemployment always lower in summer (seasonal jobs), Icelandic unemployment rate for the past several decades normally ranges 1-3%, sometimes below 1% (different countries have different "normal" unemployment rates, Iceland's is very low, so this is abnormally high). And people conveniently ignore all the facts that really suck about the current status in Iceland, like that in a country where most goods are imported, the currency is worth half of what it was before, and is staying the same or getting worse.

no court order originally?

[gl4ss]

no court order originally?

I wasn't paying attention when they got banned, but was under the impression that there was at least one court somewhere that had banned them from receiving the money, because otherwise visa/amex/etc are targets to be sued ? sure, they're private organizations.. but they're let to move money only because governments let them and usually that includes that they don't discriminate randomly - which is why these participant organizations are under stress to be fined if they don't comply.

I guess that shows to Valitor & other regional processors that they'd better ask for the fucking permits and court orders first, like nz cops.

Re:Sixty Bucks a Day?

[mrbester]

More like $6000 unfortunately:

http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert/?Amount=800000&From=ISK&To=USD

ISK is about 200 to the pound...

Re:Choices

[Jeremy Erwin]

Let's find out, shall we?

Fuck yeah

[GameboyRMH]

Eat that, fascism!

So they will just be cut off.

[captaindomon]

This will just mean they will be cut off from the world financial processing system. If they start accepting these payments, the VISA network, for example, will just drop them as a provider. The other networks will as well, and you can count the truly international ones on one hand. As someone said above, it's financial suicide for Valitor.

Re:Icelandic courts rule?

[RavenousRhesus]

O'doyle rules

So. How to contribute and not suffer retribution?

[Catbeller]

It's a fact that the US has targeted anyone who contributes to Assange, Manning or Wikileaks. They mess with you at the borders, taking your stuff away and questioning you, making it damned clear that you are their bitch for the rest of your life.

So how do we help Assange, Wikileaks and Manning without effectively losing citizenship? I am not overstating this. They will fuck with you for the rest of your life, in countless ways, untraceable to them. And no court will stop them, given that they don't give a fuck what the courts think. Secret police don't have rules.

Canadian Currency Maybe? Maybe Later

[theshowmecanuck]

Iceland did, very recently discuss switching their currency to the Canadian dollar.

FInally my two donations

[future assassin]

will start making an impact.

You'd be surprised about European processing

[daemonenwind]

A large part of the European processing network is run by a subsidary of US Bank.

Guess where they're from.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elavon

Re:Choices

[onyxruby]

Responding to AC, but I'm on lunch break and have a moment to swat a bug. My post isn't misleading at all, it's rather direct, the fact that you disagree with it doesn't make it misleading, it just means you have an different opinion. It's the Internet, it's okay to have different opinions. Heck, being the Internet you'll even find posts of mine that are negative of banks.

I am certainly no friend of wikileaks, your right about that. I have spent a fair part of my career doing things like safegaurding private data like medical records, financial data, private student data and all kinds of other data that you don't want leaked. Funny that, someone who has a career in keeping private things private doesn't support leaking private things into the public. But hey, who am I to say whether or not your /private/ data gets to be leaked onto the Internet for everyone to look at.

Re:Sixty Bucks a Day?

[compro01]

Closer to $6,000 actually. Iceland follows the "Screw decimals. Let's just use whole numbers" philosophy of currency and 1 ISK is about 0.78 cents USD.

Re:Choices

[gl4ss]

Well the next step on the line would be for the USA based credit card companies(amex, visa, dc..) to stop doing business in Iceland if they refuse to let Valitor to continue business while complying.

Thing is, those companies apparently have no court ordered obligations to not serve Wikileaks since they got nothing on Wikileaks except that USA government nudging that it's bad karma to serve them.

Re:So. How to contribute and not suffer retributio

[Anonymous Coward]

I sent Bitcoins. You can request anonymously a one-time address to sent to. Fuck the card companies, PayPal and the rest.

Re:fuckin love iceland

[Rei]

You realize that that is a total myth, don't you? Starting with the words "bankers shakedown"; what you're referring to was never a conflict between banks or bankers, but between the government of Iceland and the governments of the UK and Netherlands.

The whole world must bow down in fear & awe..

[Paracelcus]

The whole world must bow down in fear & awe of the brutal, violent, omnipresent, colonial power that the USA has become!
The UK has caved, Sweden has caved, only one tiny South American country hasn't!

Re:fuckin love iceland

[Rei]

Not true, fair troll, not true! "The banks" were not involved in the decision making process. The British and Dutch governments bailed out their citizens, and then demanded Iceland compensate them. The three primary players involved have been Iceland, the UK, and the Netherlands. The next biggest players have been the EU (in particular, the EFTA court system, but the EU has filed an amicus curae-type filing) and the IMF.

FYI, I live in Iceland.

Re:Sixty Bucks a Day?

[2.7182]

Wow that's sounds complex. So some countries in Europe would write that as 60","000 ? A lot of extra bits, but I can see it has a sort of graphical appeal.

Companies can do what they want

[neonv]

Let companies serve who they want to serve. Those who cater to everyone will probably do better. It's the basis of freedom and market competition.

There are endless numbers of companies who can process credit cards, and many of them will pay Wikileaks. Use the companies you like and don't use the companies you don't like. It's much more effective then taking them to court to force them to take your money.

Tynwald: world’s oldest parliament, 1000+ ye

[Nivag064]

http://www.iomguide.com/tynwaldhill.php
[...]
In 1979, Tynwald celebrated its Millennium under the watchful eye of Her Majesty the Queen, Lord of Man. The Queen returned to preside over the ceremony in 2003, a year after her Golden Jubilee. The Isle of Man is not part of UK, but remains a Crown Dependency.
[...]


http://www.gov.im/mnh/heritage/story/tynwald.xml
[...]
The World’s Oldest Continuous Parliament.

The most enduring relic of Scandinavian culture in the Isle of Man is the Island’s parliament, Tynwald. After 1,000 years the world’s oldest continuous parliament normally sits in Douglas, but still meets once a year at midsummer on the Tynwald Hill at St. Johns. This was not the only meeting place for Tynwald, and like others it was given legitimacy by its closeness to a burial ground - in this case one of the oldest and most extensive on the Island - and allowed the living to be associated with land owned or administered by their forbears.

But Tynwald is more relevant to the living than the dead. It is a vital social institution, and, after all the past conquests and re-conquests, today it is consolidating the independence of the Isle of Man.
[...]

Re:Sixty Bucks a Day?

[gstrickler]

It does make it difficult to miss the point. ;)

Came here for the EVE Online references..

[Jumpin' Jon]

..leaving happy!

Re:Sixty Bucks a Day?

[Rei]

It's because the comma is the decimal separator.

Which makes more sense. Ask yourself this: what's the more important thing for your eye to catch, where thousands/millions/billions breaks, or where the decimal is? (I think almost anyone would respond "where the decimal is"). Now ask yourself, "which is a larger and more visible character, "," or "."?