Word: icelander
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Reykjavík, Iceland In the Icelandic language the words for "money" and "sheep" are the same. But under Iceland's current economic conditions, goes a joke doing the rounds, only one will put food on the table and a coat on your back - as long as you eat mutton and wear wool. With a flagging currency and a crippled banking sector, Icelanders are fast losing their jobs, savings and businesses. The government fears that some may even be losing their minds: the Icelandic Ministry of Health has set up an emergency mental-health center in downtown Reykjav...
Need to start a war? No problem. While stock markets gyrate and financial institutions (and even whole countries, like Iceland) teeter on bankruptcy, one global industry is still drawing plenty of high-end trades and profits: weapons...
...same moment Iceland, a NATO member and until very recently a prosperous Western nation, seemed ready to bite the dust in the global financial crisis, a cavalry rode to the rescue, just as it does in the movies. Except the cavalry in this case came from an unexpected direction: Russia...
...would Russia promise $5.4 billion to bail out Iceland, when Iceland's traditional allies weren't offering the money? After all, Russia has its own grave financial issues to deal with. Does the country really expect to be paid back in "the famous Icelandic herring, popular in Russia since Soviet times?" as Victor Tatarintsev, Russian ambassador to Iceland, noted in an interview on Russian television. More likely, this act of benevolence is being viewed as a way for Russia to help secure a bridgehead for an advance into the Arctic regions to claim the vast hydrocarbon and other mineral deposits...
According to a Westminster source, the British government urged Iceland to apply to the International Monetary Fund for assistance. Instead, Iceland is negotiating a loan from another country accustomed to being regarded as the bad guy by Britons: Russia. With relations between Moscow and London in a deep freeze since the 2006 murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, the display of Russian-Icelandic amity helps confirm Reykjavik's status as a British bogeyman. That won't worry the British government at all. In times of crisis, it's good to have friends, but it's even more useful...