Ísland gjaldþrota? - Svo segja sérfræðingar sem New Yorke Times ræddi við

Eftirfarandi er af New Yorke Times. Takið sérstaklega eftir kaflanum um krónuna. Og svo þá er eini möguleiki okkar að kalla til Alþjóðagjaldeyrissjóðin og með því verðum við ekki lengur fjárráða á meðan verið er að endurskipuleggja efnahagsumhverfið. Þetta hefur verið gert í Mexico, Fillipseyjum og fleiri löndum með góðum árangri.

“Iceland is bankrupt,” said Arsaell Valfells, a professor at the University of Iceland. “The Icelandic krona is history.The I.M.F. has to come and rescue us.”

Prime Minister Geir Haarde, who had warned this week of the threat of “national bankruptcy,” said Thursday that Iceland’s finance minister, Arni Mathiesen, would be in Washington this weekend for the autumn International Monetary Fund/World Bank meetings.He declined to say whether Iceland was seeking a rescue package from the international lender.

“We will certainly keep this option open, but we have not yet made a decision,” Mr. Haarde said Thursday at a news conference.

The I.M.F. managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said in Washington that he had activated an emergency financing system, last used during the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, to help countries in crisis. Though not mentioning Iceland by name, he said: “We are ready to answer any demand by countries facing problems.”

Iceland has approached Russia about a 4 billion euro, or $5.5 billion, loan to help see it through the crisis, but Mr. Haarde said no agreement had been reached.

An I.M.F. intervention in Iceland, which would necessarily involve accepting a series of harsh measures to restore fiscal and monetary stability, would underline the extraordinary reversal in the country’s fortunes after a decade-long, debt-fueled binge by the country’s banks, businesses and some private citizens. The banks, while avoiding the toxic mortgage securities that have humbled Wall Street, expanded aggressively at home and abroad. When credit tightened and the krona fell this year, they were unable to finance their debts.

In these circumstances, going to the I.M.F. “is probably the only thing Iceland can do,” said Richard Portes, an economist at the London Business School.

Events have moved so fast that the full import of national bankruptcy has yet to sink in here. It has happened before, of course, but in places like Argentina and Thailand, not a country that likes to think of itself as close to Europe.

Eins er Alþjóðagjaldeyrissjóðurinn farinn að undirbúa sig undir aðgerðir vegna krísunnar í heiminum. Og það þykir til marks um að hann reikni með að koma að málum einhverstaðar fljótlega

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