26 August 1991. From left: David Oddsson, Jon Baldvin Hannibalsson, A. Saudargas, Lithuania, J. Jurkans, Latvia, og Lennart Meri, Estonia.

Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, RNH Academic Director, attends the annual Lennart Meri conference on international affairs in Tallinn in Estonia 24–26 April 2015. Speakers at the conference include Toomas H. Ilves, President of Estonia, Radek Sikorski, former Polish Foreign Minister and now President of the Polish Parliament, Ana de Palacio, former Spanish Foreign Minister, Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, former Danish Foreign Minister, Swedish analyst Anders Aslund and government ministers from the Baltic countries. Some of the scheduled speakers have visited Iceland on the invitation of RNH or related organisations, for example François Heisbourg and Andrei Ilarionov. The theme of the conference is “Limits to Order”, but the main topic is the situation in Russia and its neighbouring states, in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in Ukraine. Professor Gissurarson’s attendance at the conference forms a part of the joint RNH and AECR project on “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”. The conference is held in honour of Lennart Meri, who visited Iceland in 1991 as Foreign Minister and was President of Estonia from 1992 to 2001. Friday 24 April, the President of Estonia invites Professor Gissurarson and some other conference attendees to dinner.

Moscow 1957: Icelandic communist leader Einar Olgeirsson (with hat and glasses to the left) with other Nordic communist leaders.

Tuesday 28 April 2015 Professor Gissurarson gives a lecture at the University of Tartu on “Soviet Influences on the Icelandic Communist Movement”. He provides a brief history of the movement, from 1918 when two Icelandic students in Copenhagen entered into contact with a Comintern agent, Fredrik Ström, who gave them money in the spring of 1919. Before the foundation of the Icelandic communist party in 1930, Comintern sent five agents to Iceland to organise the party, and some twenty young Icelanders were trained in revolutionary camps in Moscow, not only in Marxist-Leninist theory, but also in carrying arms, sending and receiving coded messages and falsifying documents. There is only one example of the Socialist Unity Party which replaced the communist party in 1938, not towing the Moscow line: It refused to condemn Titoism. One reason why communists were relatively influential in Icelandic cultural life was that they received generous support from Moscow. In the autumn of 1998, the history of the Icelandic communist movement ended not with a bang, but with a whimper, when the last act of the leadership before dissolving the party was to accept an invitation to visit the Cuban communist party.

Professor Gissurarson will also touch upon incidents in Iceland relevant to the Baltic countries, such as a 1923 lecture tour on bolshevism undertaken by Latvian Liba Fridland, newspaper articles in 1945–6 by Lithuanian refugee Teodoras Bieliackinas, a 1957 visit by Estonian Premier-in-Exile Dr August Rei, the 1973 translation by then law student David Oddsson of Anders Küng’s book on Soviet oppression in Estonia and the re-recognition by Oddsson’s government in 1991 of the independence of the three Baltic countries. Professor Gissurarson’s lecture forms a part of the joint project by RNH and AECR on “Europe of the Victims: Remembering Communism”.

Mart Laar

Wednesday 29 April, Professor Gissurarson will address a meeting in the Estonian Parliament, organised by Dr Mart Nutt, historian and Member of Parliament. His topic will be similar to that in Tartu University, aspects of the history of the Icelandic communist movement. This lecture also forms a part of the joint project by RNH and AECR on “Europe of the Victims: Remembering Communism”. In Tallinn, Professor Gissurarson meets with prominent Estonians, including former Prime Minister Mart Laar, whom he has known for decades. Thursday 30 April Professor Gissurarson gives a lecture at the Business School of Tallinn 17–18.30 on Piketty’s challenge. He argues that the celebrated French economist Thomas Piketty systemically underestimates the income of the poorest, while overestimating the income of the richest. Statistical errors have, according to Professor Gissurarson, crept into his analysis. Piketty does not seem to have realistic grasp of the fragility of capital: Wealth is the most precarious and unfaithful of friends. What really matters is to have opportunity to better one’s conditions, and this opportunity is created by economic freedom. Piketty should be more interested in the perils of strong government than in the accumulation of wealth. Moreover, nothing is really wrong with an inequal distribution of income provided it is the consequence of free choice, not of coercion. Professor Gissurarson’s lecture forms a part of the joint RNH and AECR project on “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”. After his stay in Tallinn, Professor Gissurarson will travel to Helsinki to do research in connection with his current research project for the Icelandic Ministry of Finance, “Foreign Factors in the Icelandic Bank Collapse.”

FIH Bank (from its website). Did the CBI lose 60 billion Icelandic kronur because of blunders?

Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, RNH Academic Director, will read a paper at the spring conference of the Institute of Business Administration Studies at the University of Iceland Tuesday 21 April, 13–14.30, in the University Centre, in meeting room HT-101. The title is “Icelandic Asset Sales Abroad After the Bank Collapse.” Professor Gissurarson will argue that Norwegian, Finnish, Danish and British authorities were responsible for heavy and unnecessary losses of the Icelandic banks during and after the 2008 bank collapse. In the beginning of the collapse, both Norwegian and Finnish authorities refused to provide liquidity to domestic banks owned by Icelanders, thus forcing the owners to sell them to local businessmen at a pittance. A similar thing occurred in Denmark two years later, with FIH Bank, whereupon the buyers outwitted the Central Bank of Iceland which had taken a collateral in the bank for the debts of Kaupthing to the CBI. Because of blunders, the CBI there lost about sixty billion Icelandic kronur.

In October 2008 the British Labour government closed two British banks owned by Icelanders, Heritable and KSF, at the same time as it provided other British banks with a large and unprecedented rescue package, both with liquidity and recapitalisation. Now the two banks have mostly been wound up, and it has become clear that they were quite solvent. Professor Gissurarson estimates total losses in those examples in the four countries involved to amount to 270 billion Icelandic kronur or about £1.4 billion. Some of this money could have been used to reimburse Icelandic taxpayers for costs incurred in the bank collapse, since it would have been fair that the fallen banks had borne those costs. Professor Gissurarson’s lecture forms a part of the joint project by RNH and AECR on “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”.

Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, RNH’s academic director, will give three lectures in April and attend two events in April and May 2015, in connection with two ongoing RNH-AECR projects. The first lecture is at a morning seminar at the Swedish think tank Ratio in Stockholm Thursday 9 April 2015 at 10 am, Sveavägen 59, 4th floor. Its title is “Sweden, Iceland and the 2008 Bank Collapse”. There, Professor Gissurarson mentions three little-known facts about Swedish-Icelandic relations: In the 14th Century, Iceland was for a while in a personal union with Sweden, neither with Norway or Denmark. In 1814, when Sweden acquired Norway by the Kiel Treaty, as a compensation for losing Finland, it did not want to include Iceland and the two other North Atlantic Norwegian dependencies, probably for strategic reasons. And the first leader of Iceland’s liberal-conservative party, the Independence Party, engineer Jon Thorlaksson, was much influenced by Swedish economist Gustav Cassel. Professor Gissurarson submits that during the bank collapse, Swedish authorities were more helpful than their counterparts in Norway and Finland (that assisted local businessmen in snatching Icelandic assets for a pittance), while unfortunately Sweden supported the United Kingdom against Iceland in the Icesave dispute. Professor Gissurarson will argue that it is time for Iceland to return to the arrangements of the Kiel Treaty whereby it was correctly identified by the Swedes as a North Atlantic rather than a continental country. This lecture forms a part of the joint RNH-AECR project on “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”.

Milton and Rose Friedman with H.H. Gissurarson, Tokyo 1988.

The second lecture is at the annual conference of the European Students for Liberty om the Kinosaal at the Humboldt University in Berlin Friday 11 April 2015 at 10 am. Its title is “Three Modern Masters: Hayek, Popper and Friedman. Personal Recollections.” There, Professor Gissurarson recalls these three liberal thinkers, two of whom he knew quite well, Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, while Karl Popper he visited at his home in Penn, Buckinghamshire, spending a whole day with him in January 1985 discussing philosophy. Professor Gissurarson will quote some comments on both ideas and current affairs made to him by these three thinkers and not previously known or published. He will also compare them, Hayek being in his opinion the most profound thinker, Friedman being a very effective defender of liberty as well as a true academic, and Popper being very reasonable and moderate, trying to minimize identifiable evil instead of maximizing contestable ideals. Other speakers at the conference include English MEP Daniel Hannan, author of the recent book Inventing Freedom, French Professor Pierre Garello, Dr. Tom G. Palmer of the Cato Institute and Danish Flemming Rose, Editor of Jyllandsposten and internationally acknowledged as a champion of press freedom. Professor Gissurarson’s lecture forms a part of the joint RNH-AECR project on “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”.

The third lecture will be at the Spring Conference of the Institute of Business Research at the University of Iceland Tuesday 21 April 2015, 13–14.30 in the University Centre, Haskolatorg, meeting room HT-101. It will be in Icelandic, and the title is: “Icelandic Assets Abroad after the Bank Collapse.” Professor Gissurarson will argue that Norwegian, Finnish, Danish and British authorities were responsible for heavy and unnecessary financial losses of the Icelandic banks during and after the 2008 collapse. The Norwegian and the Finnish authorities refused all liquidity assistance to Norwegian and Finnish banks owned by Icelanders and practically forced their fire sale to local businessmen. A similar thing happened in effect two years later in Denmark, with the FIH Bank, while the buyers also outwitted the Central Bank of Iceland which held the bank as a collateral. In October 2008, the British Labour government closed down the two British banks owned by Icelanders—Heritable Bank and KSF—at the same time as it helped all other British banks with a generous liquidity and recapitalisation programme. These two banks have now been wound up, and were seemingly sound and solvent at the time they were closed down. Professor Gissurarson estimates that the total financial loss in these cases in four countries amounts to about 270 billion Icelandic kronur, or about £1.4 billion. Some, or perhaps all, of this loss could have been used towards covering the enormous expenses of the Icelandic taxpayers incurred by the bank collapse. Professor Gissurarson’s lecture forms a part of the joint RNH-AECR project on “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”.

Reykjavik 26 August 1991: PM David Oddsson, Icelandic FM Jon B. Hannibalsson, Lithuanian FM Algirdas Saudargas, Latvian FM Janis Jurkans and Estonian FM Lennart Meri (later Estonian President).

In 24–25 April 2015, Professor Gissurarson will attend the annual Lennart Meri conference on international affairs in Tallinn, Estonia. Professor Gissurarson was one of the guests at a dinner party which Prime Minister David Oddsson gave for Meri, then Estonian Foreign Minister, and the two other Baltic Foreign Ministers in Reykjavik 26 August 1991, after Iceland had become the first state to reaffirm its recognition of the three Baltic countries as sovereign states. Professor Gissurarson has also given lectures and written about Baltic-Icelandic relations. In 4–6 May, Professor Gissurarson will attend a conference on memory and conscience in Tallinn. His participation in the two Tallinn conferences forms a part of the joint RNH-AECR project on “Europe of the Victims: Remembering Communism”. Professor Gissurarson translated and edited the Black Book of Communism in 2009 and published a history of the Icelandic communist movement in 2011. In May 2015, Professor Gissurarson will also lecture at several conferences in Brazil organised by the Estudantes pela liberdade, the Brazilian Students for Liberty. His topics there will include a critique of recent demands for redistributing income by force coming from French economist Thomas Piketty.