Jubilee Prosperity

There are difficult times,

there is a labor dispute,

I have nothing to offer,

not a scrap I can give,

but my hope and my life

whether awake or asleep,

this hope that you gave me

it is all that I have.

There are difficult times and a hard winter lies ahead. Let us never forget the darkest hour is always before dawn. There is hope if we find it together.

In order for this to happen we must square up with the past and implement real changes for real progress.

If we can see a purpose with our sacrifices, our nation can continue to perform small miracles and make the impossible possible. Then this depression will perhaps not last as long as it seems at the moment.

It is unrealistic to argue that next year we will see the end of the crisis. It is realistic to set goals we can all agree on.

What these goals are is ours to decide and ours to implement.

[1] http://us.mc304.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&
extraargs=%26.rand%3D810979427#_ftnref1

[Icesave refers to the branch banks set up by the Iceland-based private banks Landsbanki and Kaupthing in the deregulated banking sectors of Great Britain and the Netherlands. These branches were seized by London and The Hague at the height of the Lehman Brothers panic in September-October 2008. The British and Dutch, backed by the IMF, then demanded more than $6 billion from the Icelandic government to bail out the depositors.  This is the attempted extortion of which Ms Jonsdottir speaks.]

[2] http://us.mc304.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?
&extraargs=%26.rand%3D810979427#_ftnref2

[Laxness is the most beloved modern Icelandic writer and the author of Independent People; he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955.]