Why burn a bank's flag?
Because the government has agreed to pay back a significant portion of private bank balances parked in Icelandic banks by Dutch and UK private banks.
Another "who could'a know'd?" except anyone paying attention. Wealth does not materialize in the absence of significant changes in resource availability. These changes may be attributable to discovery or acquisition of new resource stores or technology developments which avail us of greater efficiencies for exploitation of existing resource stores. The diversion of investments into Icesave and US/UK CDO's simply infused the risk pool with poisonous unsecured debt.
Distilling that risk out of the system is impossible, the only ways to neutralize the unsecured debt are to
1). Dilute it, by exercising currency inflation
2). Offset it by selling assets. Iceland has huge, as yet, untapped reserves of geothermal energy. Alcoa was able to buy up rights to exploit these energy resources at fire sale prices in late 2008/early 2009. A seemingly short-term loss because of plummeting Aluminum prices, the long-term value of the investments are already paying off handsomely for the multinational behemoth.
3). Offset it by acquiring new exploitable resource stores, by obtaining first rights to rare-earths and other finite resources.
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Learn more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsbankinn