Asshole Capitalist

I just finished reading the article by Michael Lewis called "Wall Street on the Tundra".  This may be one of the more interesting articles on the Icelandic economic crisis.  It does not so much explain what happened in Iceland in the boring technical, economic terms as it does explain what happened in more entertaining and revealing cultural terms.  The article shows a side to Icelandic culture only a foreigner can take note of. Lewis describes Iceland as male dominated and basically says it was the men who ruined the country. Here are some lines from the article-

The best way to see any city is to walk it, but everywhere I walk Icelandic men plow into me without so much as a by-your-leave. Just for fun I march up and down the main shopping drag, playing chicken, to see if any Icelandic male would rather divert his stride than bang shoulders. Nope.

I will soon learn that Icelandic males, like moose, rams, and other horned mammals, see these collisions as necessary in their struggle for survival.

The other, more serious problem was the Icelandic male: he took more safety risks than aluminum workers in other nations did. “In manufacturing,” says the spokesman, “you want people who follow the rules and fall in line. You don’t want them to be heroes. You don’t want them to try to fix something it’s not their job to fix, because they might blow up the place.” The Icelandic male had a propensity to try to fix something it wasn’t his job to fix.

Icelanders—or at any rate Icelandic men—had their own explanations for why, when they leapt into global finance, they broke world records: the natural superiority of Icelanders. Because they were small and isolated it had taken 1,100 years for them—and the world—to understand and exploit their natural gifts, but now that the world was flat and money flowed freely, unfair disadvantages had vanished

Watching Icelandic men and women together is like watching toddlers. They don’t play together but in parallel; they overlap even less organically than men and women in other developed countries, which is really saying something.

One of the distinctive traits about Iceland’s disaster, and Wall Street’s, is how little women had to do with it. Women worked in the banks, but not in the risktaking jobs. As far as I can tell, during Iceland’s boom, there was just one woman in a senior position inside an Icelandic bank.

The best part of the article is the last paragraph which so plainly states what Iceland, and every other nation, is doing when they borrow heavily- they are trying to bring the future into the present.

 When you borrow a lot of money to create a false prosperity, you import the future into the present. It isn’t the actual future so much as some grotesque silicon version of it. Leverage buys you a glimpse of a prosperity you haven’t really earned. The striking thing about the future the Icelandic male briefly imported was how much it resembled the past that he celebrates. I’m betting now they’ve seen their false future the Icelandic female will have a great deal more to say about the actual one.

Overall this is a great article for anyone who wants a glimpse of the cultural as well as the technical side to Iceland's crisis.

On the net:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland200904?currentPage=1

 

 GTB

Wall Street á túndrunni

Athugasemdir

[Brynjar (IP-tala skráð) 3.3.2009 kl. 12:18]

I guess the only problem with the article is his assumption that this is an Icelandic crisis and not a world crisis that hit Iceland first.

[Gregg Thomas Batson, 3.3.2009 kl. 12:52]

Brynyar, It is a world crisis, that much is true. But you have to ask yourself why did the crisis hit Iceland so quickly and so hard? As Lewis writes-

The problem with this story is that it fails to explain why the tsunami struck Iceland, as opposed to, say, Tonga.

 This is what Lewis (and most economists) are trying to tell Iceland today- World crisis or no world crisis the system in Iceland was going to collapse. Lewis writes Bob Aliber had recognized the signs of this "Pefect Bubble" and-

For him the actual crash was a mere formality.

GTB

[Páll Thayer, 3.3.2009 kl. 13:01]

Interesting that you should state that "they are trying to bring the future into the present." I'm assuming that this is also what Michael Lewis is attempting seeing as the article is written in April 2009.

[bjarni (IP-tala skráð) 3.3.2009 kl. 23:53]

Hjákátlegt þegar slúðurdálkahöfundur fer í sparifötinn og fer að skrifa um hluti sem hann hefur ekki vit á eða ræður við.  Þett er dæmigerð tröllasaga fyrir trúgjarna og illa upplýsta lesendur þar sem meira er gert með groddalegar rangtúlkanir og afbakanir í trausti þess að lesandinn hafi jafnvel minni þekkingu á málefninu en sjálfur höfundurinn, sem hefur augljóslega hitt í mark hjá Gregg.

Greinin er öll gegnsýrð af þeim hroka og dónaskap sem einkennir alla framkomu engilsaxa þegar þeir heimsækja þjóð sem þeir telja vera fyrir neðan sína eigin í goggunarröðinni, eitthvað sem Gregg augljóslega þjáist af.

Annars hafa íslendingar almennt það orð á sér að vera viðfeldnir og kurteisir, jafnt heima hjá sér og annars staðar, eitthvað sem ekki er hægt að segja um þjóðir eins og bandaríkjamenn og breta sem umturnast í hrokafulla dóna þegar þeir bregða sér útfyrir eigin landamæri.  Ég meina, við hvernig viðmóti býst mannfílan þegar hann gerir sér það að leik að ganga á fólk úti á götu?  Heimboð í kaffi og kleinur?

Annars er þetta karlahaturskjaftæði með eindæmum og ótrúlegt flæðið af greinum sem eru gegnsýrðar af þessu óhefta karlhatri sem  og hvert helvítis fíflið á fætur öðru er að dásama út í gegn.  Þessiúrhrök yrðu æf ef svona væri skrifað um gyðinga, konur, svertingja eða aðra hópa, en ef það er um hvíta karla vætir það brækurnar af hrifningu og hrýn afkátínu.

[Gregg Thomas Batson (IP-tala skráð) 4.3.2009 kl. 01:31]

Bjarni,

Yes! Finally! Someone has the balls to write something with some meat to it.  I though this blog was going to stay up the whole day without anybody objecting to it.  And you did it in Icelandic too. I almost can't stop smiling. Why doesn't everybody write in Icelandic? I don't do it because I would never want to cause Icelanders that much pain.  I mean they can see I'm reading the news in Icelandic so I must be able to comprehend something. Although to be honest I struggled through what you wrote, what with words like  "karlahaturskjaftæði " (man hating bullshit?). That one is definately not in the dictionary. 

To be honest I found Lewis's article more entertaining than informative.  And of course he is making some broad generalizations about Icelanders in general and Icelandic men in specific. But all generalizations are built on some small grain of truth and I really can relate to the "bumping into" thing.  Not so much on the street but definately in a bar.  Every foreigner I know who has lived here for some time will tell the same story.  I have relayed this to my Icelandic friends and they have no idea what I'm talking about.  I could take you to a packed bar in the US or The UK and walk from one end to the other and you would never touch a soul.  And if you did you would most certainly apologize for it. 

Sure British and Americans, especially Americans can be the worst tourists, the ugly tourists.  What I can say here is Icelanders have no problem dishing out the criticism (sometimes quite enjoyably) but are not really good at taking it.  Lewis has a point in saying that the Icelanders ignored criticism of their banks partly because of their cultural superiority complex.  Icelanders will tell you they have the best of everything.  Some of it is true.  The best water, cleanest air, pehaps the most beautiful women, but hey, I lived in California and if I hear one more Icelander tell me that they have the best pot in the world I think I will puke.

And what about this man hating bullshit. Lewis was a bit overboard in this theme , especially "the Icelandic male had a propensity to try to fix something it wasn’t his job to fix." paragraph. I work with Icelanders every day and the reason they try and fix everything is because they usually can. But when it came to the financial crisis even Icelanders themselves were convinced the men were the problem. They immediately put women over two of the three banks, and both Sjálfstæðis and Samfylking competed to put the first woman prime minister in power to clean up the mess. So again there is a grain of truth in the story.

I do agree that if Lewis had wrote about jews, women, blacks or some other minority in this way it would have created a firestorm.   That is just one of the disadvantages of being a white male. And as disadvantages go that ain't much.

GTB

[bjarni (IP-tala skráð) 5.3.2009 kl. 00:42]

Hér má svara nokkrum hlutum, fyrir það fyrsta þá er þetta "bumping into" eitthvað sem ég hef ekki orðið neitt sérstaklega var við, og man það svosem ekkert hvort það þekkist ekki annars staðar, læt það liggja milli hluta.  Ef þetta er tilfellið þá það, getur varla verið meira pirrandi en "hello how are you?" yfirborðskurteisin sem mætir manni hvar sem er í BNA.

Þetta með að konur hafi verið látnar hreinsa upp eftir karla er alls ekki samkvæmt raunveruleikanum.  Krafan var að henda spilltu kerfi og taka upp ný vinnubrögð.  Í hugum íslendinga hafði það ekkert með kynferði að gera, heldur hugmyndafræði.  Þess vegna var eini bankastjórinn sem ekki mætti andstöðu þjóðarinnar, karlinn sem tók við KB, konunum sem tóku við hinum bönkunum var hafnað af þjóðinni vegna þess að þær komu úr spillingarkerfinu.  Þær eru nú á leiðinni út.  Slúðurdálkahöfundi sem leitar að athygli yfirsést svona atriði, sér bara yfirborðið og dregur kolrangar ályktanir.  Fréttamaður, sem hefði það að markmiði að upplýsa frekar en að afbaka, hefði þurft að hafa afar lítið fyrir því að komast að þessari staðreynd þar sem þetta er á vitorði allra íslendinga.  En sjálfsagt hefur ML bara ekki heft áhuga á staðreyndum, frekar verið að leita eftir því að búa til skrípamynd af lítilli þjóð sem fæstir lesendur hans hafa nokkra þekkingu á.

Hitt atriðið sem þú mistúlkar er að íslendingar þoli ekki neikvæða gagnrýni.  Það er af og frá, íslenska þjóðarsálin tekur hóli með hógværð en veltir sér uppúr neikvæðri umfjöllun frá útlöndum.  Þú getur blaða í gegnum svörin sem koma við bloggi Egils Helgasonar á Eyjan.is vegna þessarar greinar.  Viðbrögðin er í rauninni aumkunarverð, svona hálfgert "þetta er alveg hárrét, við erum algjörir vitleysingar, enginn treystir okkur og allir hata okkur", grátbroslegt ef þetta væri ekki svona aumkunarvert.