"The Critic of Megalomania," an interview by Bjarni Brynjólfsson, 2008 winter issue of Iceland Review, 7 June 2009, quotes "firebrand business professor Vilhjálmur Bjarnason" about how Icelanders started to catch the Wall Street greed bug in the mid-1990's:

Bjarnason: ...Something happened when genetics company deCode was founded and marketed to the public between 1995 and ’97. Normal business procedures were turned upside down. People suddenly started looking at the deal instead of the product: DeCode managed to sell shares for 15 billion ISK to the public with the assistance of the banks, without even having a defined product to sell. This money was taken out of the pockets of normal people and never returned.

According to Icelandic Review interviewer Bjarni Brynjólfsson, Professor Bjarnason "Has been fighting for years to get a straight answer from the banks and other public companies. As an advocate for small investors and a former bank manager, he was Iceland’s Cassandra with his gloom-and-doom prognostications about the financial system. However, with the economic boom in full swing, people were reluctant to heed him."
Between 1995 and 2005 I worked as a retail stock broker at Dean Witter, later Morgan Stanley, in which I handled Iceland-related initial public offerings as well as other types of IPO's from other places. I remember well the Internet, telecom, and other high-tech-related bubbles.
Megalomania was certainly a factor during this period, but I think that ultimately the problem is vastly deeper and more "sociological" in nature than just excessive self-confidence or "market exuberance." The evidence is overwhelming that Icelanders were egged on by high level Zionist subversives.

Enter "The Bad"

Former U.S. Naval Intelligence Officer Wayne Madsen has issued a series of reports that document manipulation on many different levels by billionaire Rothschild front man George Soros, ranging from the Icelandic currency to use of the alleged open source intelligence web site Wikileaks as a "limited hangout":

March 29, 2010 -- Soros's game plan for Iceland and its "freedom of information" zone was hatched years ago
...Soros has long preyed on Iceland's economy. WMR's sources reveal that during the winter of 2007-2008, Soros hedge funds were shorting the Icelandic krona. There are reports that the U.S. Justice Department is now investigating Soros's SAC Capital for shorting the euro and the British pound.
The collapse of the Icelandic economy, aided and abetted by Soros and Rothschild financial interests in Britain and the Netherlands, set the stage for Soros to make the approach to financially-broke Iceland to become a global information "safe harbor."
Wikileaks critics also point out that the website has produced information that had previously been available elsewhere, including such "exposés" as U.S. detainee abuse, use of chemical weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan, and U.S. military propaganda operations. The recent revelation of a  2008 U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center report citing Wikileaks as a threat to national security is a red herring. The document proposes to identify those who leak to Wikileaks to "damage and potentially destroy" the Wikileaks "center of gravity." According to WMR's sources, Wikileaks's use of TOR has already exposed the leakers. At the least, the U.S. Army's fears about the Wikileaks site is an extreme over-reaction. At the most, the Army was attempting to boost the website's bona fides as part of a cyber-psychological warfare campaign.

Interestingly enough, Judicial-Inc.biz has reinforced Madsen's suspicions about Wikileaks. It is certainly suspicious that it would draw funding support from a number of Zionist-owned mainstream media establishments. Madsen provided even more important background on Soros in two preceding reports, to include a probable Mossad-CIA connection to Wikileaks :

March 26-28, 2010 -- Wikileaks and Iceland media law are stalking horses for Soros
....Soros has been heavily involved in Iceland since 1998 and it is Soros who helped found the small Democracy Movement. The website Reykjavik Grapevine took the Democracy Movement to task last October 22 when it wrote, "A speculative column appearing on Vísir.is points out that billionaire George Soros has enough money to buy Iceland . . . Foreign investment - or foreign exploitation - of Iceland has been on the minds of a lot of Icelanders lately, especially as more companies from abroad express an interest in Iceland's natural resources . . . And look at this, Obama's OMB director Peter Orszag (the name is Jewish from Hungarian-Romanian Transylvania like fellow vampire Soros) and his connection to Iceland: "In 1998, after serving in the Clinton administration, Orszag co-founded an economic consulting group company with his brother and Joseph Stiglitz called Sebago Associates, where he served as president through 2007. The firm's clients have included the World Bank, the Nordic Council of Ministers, and most notably, the Central Bank of Iceland. The once prosperous economy of Iceland has been devastated by the current economic crisis, which its citizens say was carried out by a gang of financial criminals who followed disastrous policies and advice - provided by Peter Orszag and Company."
...Soros appears to have been partly behind the collapse of the Icelandic economy and now his minions in Reykjavik and his contrivance, Wikileaks, wants to transform Iceland into an information technology safe harbor from [where] he and his NGO network can engage in massive propaganda campaigns and destabilization efforts around the world without the fear of legal ramifications.
WMR's sources report that the Soros Private Equity group (since renamed TowerBrook Capital Partners) invested $10 million in TradeDoubler, a Swedish online provider and platform, in cooperation with the Icelandic venture firm Arctic Ventures. TradeDoubler handles online financial payments and transactions but mainly online advertising, and is big in online betting throughout Europe. The downfall of Iceland's banks was enabled by online banking and investment. Ragnar Thorisson, an Icelander, worked at VBS Securities before founding Arctic Ventures (where he invested in E-Trade Nordic). He then invested in Argnor, a wireless service provider. Ordinary members of the TradeDoubler Board of Directors include Niclas Gabrán and Ramez Sousou of Soros Private Equity group, now TowerBrook Capital Partners.  Thorisson reportedly sold his shares in TradeDoubler.

March 25-26, 2010 -- Suspicions abound that Wikileaks is part of U.S. cyber-warfare operations
...It is also believed by informed sources that Soros is behind the operation to move Wikileaks to Iceland. By becoming a power in Iceland, Soros can prevent Icelanders from paying back the British and Dutch investors in Icelandic online Ponzi scheme banking and continue his all-out war against British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has, in turn, targeted Soros for betting against pound sterling. 
Iceland is classic prey for Soros. The Icelandic krona has been decimated as a currency and has no where to go but up in value, especially if the British pound and the euro depreciate. Soros is currently talking down the euro, planning its fall and shorting it, just like he did versus the pound in London in the 1980s. After the UK's and Europe's currencies are devalued, Soros will buy every euro note in sight, thus making trillions.
Soros and his Wikileaks friends have in Iceland a practically unregulated banking system desperate for an influx of capital -- money that will come from the exiled Russian tycoons in Israel, London and the United States. Israeli investors like Bank Leumi, and awash in siphoned-off Bernard Madoff cash, will do their bit for this smash-and-grab operation by Soros's Quantum-linked hedge funds.
With Wikileaks firmly ensconced in Iceland, the "brave" and much-heralded information leakers will run an international blackmail operation against Soros's foes and launch computer break-ins against Soros's business rivals and non-Quantum banks. Wikileaks will be used as the info-hitmen against President Obama's and Rahm Emanuel's enemies in the 2012 re-election campaign.
From Iceland, Soros will be well-positioned to gain control over the massive mineral resources under the melting ice sheet of Greenland. Under the ice are the only major rare-earth deposits outside of China and with such minerals at his disposal, Soros can control the world's electronics industries....

Regarding Soros as a Rothschild front man, I encourage the reader to refer to Chapter 5 of my Mission of Conscience series "Profiling the Opposing Forces Commander and His Kosher Handlers," where I provide important additional background on the Rothschilds, their co-tribalists, and their modus operandi. This includes extracts from landmark books by Michael Collins Piper such as The New Babylon and The High Priests of War. In Chapter 30, I discuss how George Soros-sponsored front organizations have very likely been involved with Israeli plutonium smuggling through the port of Houston, Texas and the likely Mossad-orchestrated assassination of CIA operative Roland Carnaby. in broad daylight. In Chapter 32 I describe how Soros sponsored a "Rose Revolution" for control the country of Georgia, and other Mossad-CIA-related intrigues that led up to the Georgian attack on Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia in 2008.
It is very important that the reader grasp how the Rothschilds operate through front men and front organizations. A prime historical example of an American front man is John D. Rockefeller, as described by the well-regarded American researcher Eustace Mullins in Chapter 10 of his classic work Murder by Injection:

...The ancient calumny of John D. Rockefeller as a man obsessed by greed (a category in which he has plenty of company) obscures the fact that from the day the Rothschilds began to finance his march towards a total oil monopoly in the United States from their coffers at the National City Bank of Cleveland, Rockefeller was never an independent power, nor does any department of the Rockefeller Syndicate operate as an independent power. We know that the Cosa Nostra, or Mafia, with which the Syndicate is closely allied has somewhat autonomous power in the regions which have been assigned to that particular "family" by the national directors, but this always implies that that family remains under total control and answerable for everything which occurs in its territory .
Similarly, the Rockefeller Syndicate operates under clearly defined spheres of influence .  The "charitable" organizations, the business companies, and the policy groups always meld into a working operation, nor can any department of the Syndicate strike out on its own or formulate an independent policy, no matter what may be its justification.
The Rockefeller Syndicate operates under the control of the world financial structure, which means that on any given day, all of its assets could be rendered close to worthless by adroit financial manipulation; This is the final control, which insures that no one can quit the organization. Not only would he be stripped of all assets, but he would be under contract for immediate assassination . 

It would be simplistic to assume that just George Soros and the Rothschilds were involved. In fact, according to the former American Free Press journalist Chris Bollyn, there was a significant cast of characters involved, including high level Mossad agents, as documented in his 22 May 2010 article The Israeli Role in the Plundering of Iceland, Part One and his 22 June article The Israeli Role in the Plundering of Iceland, Part Two, The Hallmarks of an Israeli Operation.
On 22 June 2010 Bollyn summarized his findings in an interview by the Iranian journalist Kourosh Ziabari:

KZ: In one of your recent articles, you’ve reviewed the bankruptcy of three Icelandic banks and related it to the Israeli regime’s plundering of Iceland’s economy. Would you please elaborate on this for us and our readers?
CB: The bankrupting of Iceland’s three biggest banks in the fall of 2008 was caused by a foreign-run operation which involved people connected to the Mossad and the most extreme right-wing politicians from the Likud, including Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Olmert. The First Lady of Iceland also happens to be an Israeli. The operation basically gained control of the privatized and deregulated banks and puffed them up as it sucked money out of them in the form of billions of dollars in unsecured loans.
The privatized banks were simply loaded up with debt and pushed off a cliff. The Icelandic banks were lending huge amounts of money to dodgy Jewish financial tycoons left and right – without any collateral of real value. The largest Icelandic bank to fail, Kaupthing, for example, lent more than $2.5 billion to the Tchenguiz operation, which is run by Victor Tchenguiz in Israel. Robert Tchenguiz, who received billions from Kaupthing, was also one of the largest stockholders in the bank.
The plundering of the banks of Iceland is very similar to the Bernard Madoff scam, the bank failures, and the huge bail-out that occurred at the same time in the United States. Madoff was the chairman of the Sy Syms business school at Yeshiva University. His partner, the late Sy Syms, was also a long-standing director of the privatized Israel Discount Bank of New York, which has a branch in Switzerland that operates under Swiss bank secrecy laws. Kaupthing also had a bank in Luxembourg that had a Swiss branch in Geneva. When Kaupthing collapsed, their Luxembourg subsidiary with the Swiss branch were taken over by David Rowland, an offshore financier who works closely with Israeli intelligence. When the Icelandic banks collapsed under a mountain of debt, the national government and international lenders were called in to absorb the losses while the bank robbers escaped with the money they stashed in secret bank accounts in Switzerland.

Dr. William Pierce revealed another general pattern we have seen over and over again in America where high level Jews use gentiles as their front men in his insightful March 2002 article "Enron, Fastow, and the Looting of America:"

The general pattern is this: Jews will move into an area of economic activity and with a lot of fast patter and sleight of hand persuade the Gentiles in charge that they are financial geniuses who can benefit the economy generally with their activity and along the way can make a lot of money for any Gentiles fortunate enough to be allowed to collaborate with them. The greediest among the Gentiles climb on board, and for a while there is a flurry of activity, with a great deal of money changing hands and moving to and fro. Then the bubble bursts, the Gentiles all find that their wallets are missing, and the Jews claim that it wasn't their fault, while they count their profits.
Remember Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Marty Siegel, Dennis Levine, and the insider-trading scandal that nearly wrecked Wall Street a dozen years ago--and incidentally bankrupted tens of thousands of ordinary Americans who lost their investments as a result of the artificial manipulation of stock prices? Every major actor in that scandal was a Jew.
Remember the enormous savings-and-loan catastrophe during the 1980s that ended up costing American taxpayers 500 billion dollars? A big part of the reason for the collapse of the savings-and-loan industry in the 1980s was the huge investments in so-called "junk bonds" by so many savings-and-loan institutions. Junk bonds are bonds issued by corporations in need of cash that are unrated by Standard and Poor's or Moody's because they are considered too risky, but which have much higher yields than rated bonds. And the man behind the junk bonds --the financial genius persuading the savings-and-loans to buy them--was none other than Michael Milken. At the height of his junk-bond promotions, Milken had a personal income of more than $500 million a year: a fast-talking Jewboy, still in his 30s, taking home more than half a billion dollars a year in personal income by selling junk bonds to savings-and-loan institutions.
Well, that bubble eventually burst, and it took hundreds of banks and savings-and-loan institutions with it. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans had their life savings invested in these institutions. By the time the bubble had burst, however, Milken already was a billionaire several times over. There was much chatter in the media and in the Congress about the failures of all of these financial institutions, much dark talk about foul play, but nothing ever came of it, primarily because many politicians--including members of both Bill Clinton's family and George Bush's family--had accepted money from Milken or from one of the failed savings-and-loans. With so many corrupt but powerful people standing to be burned if a thorough investigation and exposé took place, none ever did, and the scandal was allowed to die quietly with the full collaboration of the mass media.
A few politicians were thrown to the wolves to protect the rest--the most notable sacrifice being Speaker of the House Jim Wright, who was forced to resign from Congress in 1989 as a result of his involvement. And remnants of the scandal continued to haunt a few of those involved for years--Bill and Hillary Clinton, for example, who were targets of the so-called "Whitewater" investigation--but most of the perpetrators were never called to account for their crimes and were allowed to sneak away with their loot. The real victims of the looting of America's savings-and-loan institutions ended up being you and I and the rest of America's taxpayers, who were forced to cough up the $500 billion lost when the institutions collapsed.

Please recollect earlier mention from the article "Is Russian mafia financing Icelandic expansion abroad?," Iceland Review Online, 17 June 2005, about "British high street and the City of London." It is also important for the reader to get more background on this realm that was so welcoming to highly opportunistic Icelanders.
Brother Nathanael Kapner of realzionistnews.com provides this background in his article "How the Jews Took Great Britain"

A PRIVATE FINANCIAL CORPORATION exists today in England known as “The City.” It is also known as The Jewish Vatican located in the heart of Greater London.
A Committee of 12 men rule The Jewish Vatican. They are known as “The Crown.” The City and its rulers, The Crown, are not subject to the Parliament. They are a Sovereign State within a State.
The City is the financial hub of the world. It is here that the Rothschilds have their base of operations and their centrality of control:

* The Central Bank of England (controlled by the Rothschilds) is located in The City.
* All major British banks have their main offices in The City.
* 385 foreign banks are located in The City.
* 70 banks from the United States are located in The City.
* The London Stock Exchange is located in The City.
* Lloyd’s of London is located in The City.
* The Baltic Exchange (shipping contracts) is located in The City.
* Fleet Street (newspapers & publishing) is located in The City.
* The London Metal Exchange is located in The City.
* The London Commodity Exchange (trading rubber, wool, sugar, coffee) is located in The City.

Every year a Lord Mayor is elected as monarch of The City. The British Parliament does not make a move without consulting the Lord Mayor of The City. For here in the heart of London are grouped together Britain’s financial institutions dominated by the Rothschild-controlled Central Bank of England. The Rothschilds have traditionally chosen the Lord Mayor since 1820. Who is the present day Lord Mayor of The City? Only the Rothschilds’ know for sure…

In Chapter 5 of my Mission of Conscience series "Profiling the Opposing Forces Commander and His Kosher Handlers" I provide a quotation from Michael Collins Piper's The New Babylon to explain how Jews patiently built up their power base in the UK in the centuries following their readmission into England during the Cromwell era. On page 151 of The New Babylon, Michael Collins Piper quotes the late Vincent Cartwright Vickers--"a former governor of the Bank of England and a major arms manufacturer in whose company the Rothschilds held a major share." Vickers wrote:

Financiers took upon themselves perhaps not the responsibility but certainly the power of controlling the markets of the world and therefore the numerous relationships between one nation and another involving international friendships or mistrusts.
Loans to foreign countries are organized and arranged by The City of London with no thought whatsoever of [those] nations' welfare but solely in order to increase indebtedness upon which The City thrives and grows rich.
This national -- and mainly international -- dictatorship of money which plays off one country against another and which, through ownership of a large portion of the press, converts the advertisement of its own private opinion into a semblance of general public opinion, cannot for much longer be permitted to render democratic government a mere nickname.
Today we see through a glass darkly, for there is so much which "it would not be in the public interest to divulge."

Enter "The Ugly"

Having just now provided an overview of "The Bad," let us now consider how Björgólfur Guðmundsson and his son Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson serve as two strong candidates for "The Ugly, " namely, minions of the Rothschild empire groomed to serve as Iceland's version of "John D. Rockefeller" in order to "crack" Icelandic society for Zionists.
First, to get on the radar screens of the Dark Lords of London, it helps for individuals to get accused of doing evil things, and then display cool and craftiness in slithering out of trouble. The Huffington Post article "Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson: 2nd Richest Man In Icelandic History Is Bankrupt" dated 31 July 2009 by Herdis Sigurgrimsdottir, explains how Godmundsson probably got the attention of City of London "talent scouts":

[The Icesave debacle] is not the first time the Gudmundsson has gotten into trouble. Already a successful shipping executive in the 1980s, he was charged with fraud and embezzlement in the aftermath of the 1985 collapse of his firm Hafskip. He was eventually found guilty on five minor counts and escaped a jail sentence, serving 12 months' probation.

One can just imagine the reaction of a global crime boss like Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the fictional head of SPECTRE in the James Bond movie Thunderball, who runs a clandestine meeting in Paris of top international criminals, sitting behind a bullet-proof shield while calmly petting a cat:
"Bravo! This man has potential!"

Speaking of James Bond novels, Dr. David Duke had some interesting commentary on an article titled "Bond's Semitic Villains" [see archive link; original link no longer active] by Robert Moss that appeared in the Jewish Forward. Dr. Duke noted:

The Jewish Forward recently published an article exposing the fact that Ian Flemming, the author of the James Bond book series, expressed what it calls “anti-Semitic” opinions. It is not, however, anti-Semitic for art to simply imitate life. The Bond books are rife with extremely rich Jewish-like oligarchs stealing Billions (such as Goldfinger) and fomenting wars and making mischief such as Blofeld in You Only Live Twice. Long after Flemming wrote his popular books that later became the most successful movie series in history, life indeed did imitate art in the former Soviet Union when 11 oligarchs (10 of them Jewish according to Jewish-owned Fortune Magazine) stole 60 percent of the wealth of the richest resource nation on earth. They did it through, bribery, extortion, fraud and murder. It was indeed the biggest criminal theft of all time, and yet the Jewish criminals such as Gusinsky, Berezovsky, Abramovitch, Khodorkovsky and others have been defended and protected by powerful Jewish influence Western nations and in the Jewish-influenced media. Many others are hiding out with their billions in Israel. There is even a popular TV program in Israel called “The Oligarchs” which chronicles the happy adventures of the Jewish oligarchs in Russia as they go about defrauding the Russian people. As far as fomenting wars, have not the Jewish oligarchs of wealth and media around the world fomented the Iraq War and the clash of civilizations? Have they not supported the murderous terrorism of Israel against the Palestinians, the Lebanese and others. Are they not the ones who are the main protagonists of a proposed war against Iran which would be catastrophic for the whole world? Art often does record history, and life does in its unfolding often imitate the truth of art.

In her 3 Aug 2009 article Iceland's Independent People: It's Time to Clean House, Iris Erlingsdottir describes how Björgólfur Guðmundsson and son suddenly found themselves on the launch pad for bigger and better capers:

Any doubts as to whether Iceland's elite has declared war on its people were dispelled this weekend.
...Guðmundsson made several hundred million dollars in St. Petersburg in an astonishingly short time after being convicted of fraud in Iceland. He returned to Iceland with his son to amass billion dollar fortunes after some insider deals, creative bookkeeping, and the alleged assistance of the Russian mafia. Guðmundsson was a major owner of Landsbanki and a major debtor to Kaupthing Bank, two of Iceland's failed banks. Strangely, his son's fortune does not appear to have been affected by the economic downturn; the suspicion is that all of the family's debts were transferred to the father, and all of the assets to the son.

The failed state of Iceland, by Elliot Wilson, Euromoney (PDF), 5 March 2010 discusses the strange ability of the "two Bjorgolfurs" to grab control of one of Iceland's crown jewel economic assets:

...[A] group was headed by Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson and his father Björgólfur Gudmundsson, a man connected to two corporate scandals that rocked Iceland in the mid-1980s involving the shipping line Hafskip and the near-collapse of Utvegsbanki, Iceland’s fisheries bank. To that list he can now add West Ham United, the English football club Gudmundsson bought, then brought to the brink, and Landsbanki – the septuagenarian was chairman of the board of the Icelandic lender when it filed for a $50 billion bankruptcy in October 2008.
Many now connect that sale – which placed control of a venerable 124-year-old banking institution in the hands of a group of questionable investors – with the unfettered Icelandic financial expansion that followed, lasting just six years and culminating in the emergency renationalization of the entire first-tier banking sector. Yet the sale of Landsbanki eight years ago raised surprisingly few dissenting voices. One of the very few came from Euromoney, which in a November 2002 article ["Questions over Landsbanki's new shareholder"] questioned whether this father-and-son outfit was a "suitable choice" to control such an important component of the Icelandic economy

Iceland Review Online explored these strange events further in its 17 June 2005 article " Is Russian mafia financing Icelandic expansion abroad?"

TV-station Stöd 2 asked yesterday on its evening news broadcast if it is Russian mafia money that's financing Icelandic expansion abroad.
The question was provoked by an article that appeared yesterday in the British daily Guardian titled "Next-generation Viking invasion" by  Ian Griffiths (http://www.guardian.co.uk).
Prompted by rumors about Icelanders preparing a bid for British retailer Marks & Spencer, Griffiths, who was selected Business Journalist of the Year at the 2005 British Press Awards, asks "They've got the cash to buy big UK groups like M&S. But where does it come from?"
Griffiths finds the rags to riches story of three Icelanders in post-communist Russia incredible. While their competitors in St. Petersburg's mafia-ridden brewing business were being murdered or having their factories mysteriously burned down during the 1990's, Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson, Björgólfur Guðmundsson and Magnús Thorsteinsson escaped not only unscathed out of Russia but also, they claim, with piles of money after selling their Bravo International brewery to Heineken for USD 400 million in 2002.
Returning to Iceland in 2002, the threesome purchased a controlling share in state bank Landsbanki in a controversial sale.
(For background on the banks and the privatization, see Iceland Review, Daily News, May 31, "Privatization of banks draws heavy fire";  June 14, "Prime Minister's feelings hurt but announces he has been exonerated"; and June 15, "Icelandic banks are vulnerable".)
Griffiths points out that inflows of foreign capital into Iceland from the offshore centers Luxembourg and the Channel Islands, where Landsbanki has subsidiaries, grew substantially from 2002 to 2003. He also observes that Icelandic "predators" bought GBP 894 million worth of British companies last year, up from only GBP 26 million in 2002. Meanwhile in Iceland, Landsbanki and affiliated parties have engaged in several takeovers and acquisitions, and the Icelandic stock index, ICEX-15, has risen by almost 300 per cent.
Griffiths notes that Björgólfur Guðmundsson, who now reigns as Chairman of the Board at Landsbanki, was sentenced to 12-months' imprisonment, suspended for two years, when a shipping company under his management went bankrupt in the late eighties. He, his son, Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson, Iceland's first dollar billionaire, and their St. Petersburg business partner, Magnús Thorsteinsson, now wield direct or indirect control over many of the largest companies in Iceland. Griffiths refers to the holdings of the two Björgólfs as a "powerful empire that takes in pharmaceuticals, telecommunications and financial services."  
(For coverage of the ongoing takeover attempt of Íslandsbanki by parties related to Landsbanki, see Iceland Review, Daily News, June 10, "Deadlock at Íslandsbanki?")
Griffiths observes that around the same time as the three gained control of Landsbanki, Icelandic companies have increasingly started striking out abroad. In the UK Baugur has been most visible, acquiring several British retailers. Griffiths names several, including Big Food Group, Oasis, Karen Millen, Goldsmith's and Hamley's.
Griffiths acknowledges that the persistent rumors of Russian money driving Icelandic expansion are "persistent but unsubstantiated." He goes on to write about the country's economic development, calling it a "miracle that has allowed Icelandic businessmen to march into the British high street and the City of London, capturing assets along the way - even though Iceland's output is about the same size as Mark & Spencer's market capitalization. Iceland's corporate cheerleaders have been swift to attribute their success to economic performance and dismiss the mafia money speculation as unfounded."
Stöð 2 did not draw any conclusions but ended its report yesterday by observing that Griffiths's Guardian story must reflect what British financial circles are talking about these days.

A wide variety of sources ranging from BBC News to numerous articles by the late white civil rights leader Dr. William Pierce equate "Russian Mafia" with "Jewish Mafia." The "Jewish Mafia" is also usually closely associated with "Mossad," such as in the book Final Judgment where Michael Collins Piper describes how Meyer Lansky, Jewish boss of American organized crime up until the mid-1960's, was joined at the hip with the leaders of Israel and the Mossad (which controls Israel). Lansky rode herd over Italian, Sicilian, Irish Catholic, and other lower level crime lords in New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas, and other major metropolitan power centers in America. He also controlled Havana, Cuba and other offshore crime bases before Fidel Castro's revolutionary overthrow.
The following are some sample articles that document the Jewishness of the "Russian Mafia," which is in turn linked to Israel and the Rothschild empire run out of the City of London and New York.

"How Russia's mafia is taking over Israel's underworld," BBC News, 21 November, 1998 "There are alarming signs that the Russian mafia has taken over the Israeli underworld and is using the country to launder its vast profits..."
"The Jewish Mob in America" by Dr. William Pierce, August 2000. In regard to the book Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America, by Jewish author Robert Friedman, Dr. Pierce explained that while the author "adopts the standard media ploy of referring to the gangsters as `Russians,' he really cannot help revealing that nearly all of them are Jews. For example, when he comments on the reluctance of the FBI and local and state police to crack down on the so-called "Russian Mafiya" or even to investigate it, he notes: . . . [I]n general, state and Federal law enforcement agencies were loath to go after Russian mobsters, instead devoting their energies to bagging Italian wise guys . . . . And because the Russian mob was mostly Jewish, it was a political hot potato, especially in the New York area."
"Paying the Organizatsiya" by Dr. William L. Pierce, June 1998. "We cannot have growing communities of Chinese, Vietnamese, Haitians, Mexicans, Soviet Jews, and a hundred other alien races springing up all across the United States, taking over our cities, spreading into our suburbs, and still have any realistic hope of maintaining White values and a White morality as the basis of our own community life. The poison eventually will infect us, sicken us, and destroy us. This is in no case more true than with the Soviet Jewish gangs which have established themselves here during the past decade. When the Organizatsiya decides to move into an area of criminal activity, whether it be gasoline-tax fraud, insurance fraud, or exporting stolen cars, they do it efficiently and in an organized way which dwarfs the activity of other criminal gangs and typically brings them billions of dollars in loot and makes it possible for them to engage in bribery and political corruption on a massive scale. Bill Clinton accepts political donations from them, and you can be certain that police chiefs, mayors, and other politicians and public officials do too. No government, even one which initially is honest, can remain uncorrupted by the sort of money these organized Jewish criminals have at their disposal. And the controlled media cover for them. When, occasionally, the newspapers are forced to report on some Organizatsiya racket, the criminals are never referred to as Jews. Instead they are called "Russians." The media customarily refer to the Organizatsiya as the `Russian mafia.'"

During the time that Björgólfur Guðmundsson and son were getting rich through their alleged "Russian mafia" connections, let us take a look at the social costs that this mafia was inflicting on Russian society during the "Russian" version of the "privatization" game. According to Dr. Pierce in "The Jewish Mob in America:"

The name of the game in Russia after the breakup of the USSR in 1991 was "privatization." It was praised by the bought politicians and the controlled media in the West as a giant step toward a free-enterprise society, with inefficiently managed state-owned enterprises and natural resources being sold to private businessmen, who, spurred by the profit motive, would manage everything much more efficiently, resulting in a great increase in Russian productivity and prosperity. That was the theory. Actually, privatization was a massive looting of Russia's wealth by the Jews. The Jewish bureaucrats inside the government made "sweetheart" deals with the Jewish mobsters outside the government, who in any case were the only citizens with the capital to buy anything.
Everything which previously had been owned, in theory, by all the people collectively and managed by the state ended up in the hands of the Jews, and the Russian people had nothing, not even in theory. Instead of becoming more prosperous, the Russian economy has declined every year since the end of communism in 1991. The Russian people have been reduced to a state of beggary. While Russian and Ukrainian peasants kill one another fighting over a few potatoes in the fields, in Moscow and St. Petersburg and Odessa Jews cruise the boulevards in their Mercedes, wearing diamonds and furs, eating in glitzy restaurants where a meal costs more than a real Russian earns in a month, and patronizing sex clubs stocked with beautiful Russian women.
The Jews aren't even trying to use the stolen wealth of Russia to get the country back on its feet. Like a plague of locusts they have devoured everything they could, and the rest they have moved out of the country. Hundreds of billions of dollars of Russia's capital is taken out of the country every year by the Jews as the looting continues. It's not just that they want to be the richest people in a rejuvenated, capitalist Russia. Their greed is purely destructive. It's a grab-and-run operation. When the U.S. government, through the International Monetary Fund, sends billions of dollars in loans to Russia, it simply disappears. The Jews squirrel it away, and it's never seen again in Russia. And over here the politicians pretend that they don't know what's going on.
But they do know what's going on. The CIA's spies send a steady stream of reports back to Washington. They reported that Boris Yeltsin and the crowd around him were all on the take and were controlled by the Organizatsiya. But the Bush administration and then the Clinton administration pretended not to know. All the Bushites and the Clintonistas cared about was that Yeltsin was the candidate being promoted by the Jews in Russia -- and of course, by the Jew-controlled media over here -- and so they promoted him too.
I don't know whether or not you remember when Yeltsin was running for reelection in 1996, but I do. All of the Jewish media people over here were sweating it. They were afraid that a real Russian nationalist, a Russian patriot, might win. The Clinton government was holding out the promise of more money for Russia only if Yeltsin won. In fact, Bill Clinton was campaigning as hard for Yeltsin's reelection as Yeltsin was.

In addition to their alleged Russian Jewish mafia connections, there are quite a few other questions about the "two Björgólfurs" that have been raised about their operations by Icelandic, UK, and other media.
For starters, given their background, how could these individuals be allowed to grab control of Landsbanki, one of the pillars of Iceland's banking establishment?
The Nov 2002 Euromoney article "Questions over Landsbanki’s new shareholder" asked:

Is it a good idea for such a large stake in the bank to be controlled by individuals with no track record in banking? And what’s the background of these people who apparently earned their fortune in the beverages business in Russia? Indeed the validity of one of their first, key acquisitions in Russia – a soft-drinks bottler in St Petersburg – has been challenged vigorously in Russian and Icelandic courts by the original owners.
Several judgments have gone against the father and son. Even within Iceland this does not seem to be well known.
There’s another question. Why is it that the prime minister’s office, the privatization committee, the finance ministry and the central bank seem so unconcerned by Björgólfur Gudmundsson’s contribution to bringing a bank in Iceland to the point of insolvency in the 1980s?

In her July 15, 2009 Huffington Post article "Fury in Iceland as Disgraced Banking Moguls Request Loan Write-off," Alda Sigmundsdottir provided more details on the highly questionable process of "privatization" that gave the "two Bjorgolfurs" so much control over a venerable Icelandic bank:

The privatization process itself was riddled with corruption allegations. The government had decided to privatize two of Iceland's largest commercial banks - the century-old Landsbanki, a banking institution as solid and reputable as they come, and Bunadarbanki (now called Kaupthing). The privatization was undertaken on very clear terms: distributed ownership, so that no one large investor could have too much control. After all, the move was designed to be a step up from the status quo, in which the state (read: the political sector) had for years had undue power to decide who should receive favor from the banks, and who should not.
Before the privatization of the two banks was completed, however, there was an uproar in the privatization committee. The head of the committee abruptly resigned, stating that the terms of the privatization had been grossly violated and that the leaders of the two coalition parties in government were intervening excessively in its execution. He famously remarked that never in his life had he encountered working practices of the sort that were being employed in the privatization process and he refused to be a part of it.
A short while later, Landsbanki and Bunadarbanki were both sold. A controlling share in the former was sold to the holding company Samson, owned by the two Bjorgolfurs plus a business partner, who were favored by the Independence Party (IP). A deal was allegedly struck between the Bjorgolfurs and the IP that the former would install high-ranking party members as bank executives and continue to grant favors to IP members and their supporters. This was followed by the swift appointment of the IP's executive secretary as vice-chairman of the Landsbanki board, alongside Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson as chairman.
Bunadarbanki (now Kaupthing) was subsequently sold in large part to brothers Agust and Lydur Gudmundsson, who were favored by the Progressive Party -- the party that made up the other half of the coalition.
In a classic case of incestuous nepotism - so prevalent in the Icelandic commercial sector of the past several years - Bunadarbanki loaned Samson some ISK 6 billion to acquire the share in Landsbanki. This is the very same loan that the two Bjorgolfurs have now requested be written off by half.
Of course, as those who have been following the sorry demise of Iceland's banking system will know, Landsbanki was driven into the ground by its owners and management in the years following the privatization. Today, six years later, the Icelandic nation presides over the charred remains of a bank that previously had a spotless reputation and endless goodwill. As if that were not enough, the debts incurred by Landsbanki -- partly acquired on the strength of Landsbanki's stellar reputation -- are too colossal for a normal person to comprehend. This was the bank that launched the ill-fated Icesave online savings accounts in the UK and Netherlands, which are already the cause of heavy social dissent in Iceland and look set to drive the nation into severe hardship and poverty in coming years. To add insult to injury, it has been revealed that the banker who headed the loans department at Bunadarbanki and was instrumental in approving the loan to Samson, one Sigurjon Th. Arnason, was subsequently made CEO of Landsbanki and became the mastermind behind the Icesave accounts.

Once the father-son team was able to expand Landsbanki operations into the UK and Netherlands, many observers wondered how they could now offer new "Icesave" accounts that offered depositors market-beating rates of return. In other words, the aura of a relatively secure, venerable old savings bank could be hiding the back room risk-taking of investment banker gunslingers.
Please note in this online Icesave page how the listing of regular savings accounts also lists aggressive yield and "structured finance" options offered by investment banking firms such as Barclays and Morgan Stanley.
In his 7 March 2010 article "Russian Mafia / Mafiya comes to Iceland – From Hafskip to Landsbankinn & Icesave Hafskip / Samson and the Philistines of 2010" Dr. Diego Rodriguez commented:

Icesave was the internet banking operation of Landsbanki. By offering high interest rates, this racket attracted lots of deposits in England and Netherlands. Money “disappeared”, causing the collapse of the operation. England and Netherlands want the working people of Iceland to pay for the losses. But are careful not to mention the billionaires who ran this racket. This is the story of economic parasitism on a massive scale.

After the crash, the rags to riches story went back to rags, except the father accepted the rags while the son appears to have figured out a way to retain the riches, to include continuing to leading a nice life outside of Iceland.
In her 31 July 2009 Huffington Post article "Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson: 2nd Richest Man In Icelandic History Is Bankrupt," Herdis Sigurgrimsdottir reported:

In her July 15, 2009 Huffington Post article "Fury in Iceland as Disgraced Banking Moguls Request Loan Write-off," Alda Sigmundsdottir described the shamelessness of the "two Bjorgolfurs:"

And now, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson and son Bjorgolfur Thor Bjorgolfsson (who was pictured a few short weeks ago hob-knobbing on a yacht in Cannes) would like the loan they took to finance the bank they ruined to be written off by the Icelandic people, who are already saddled with debts amounting to billions of US dollars as a result of their mismanagement. Not only that, it has transpired that the mere dividends that the pair received in the six years they owned Landsbanki were higher than the amount that they would now like to have written off. Meanwhile, in the six years that they owned the bank they went on to purchase a private jet, a UK soccer team, and a sundry of other toys and businesses - yet they did not see reason to pay up their loan.
Predictably, there was a public roar of indignation in Iceland when news of the proposed loan write-off surfaced. So great was the fury that Kaupthing bank saw reason to break the bank secrecy code and to issue a statement - saying that no - and repeating NO - decision had yet been made on whether the loan would or would not be written off. (In the initial news item it was reported that the proposal by the Bjorgolfurs to pay off only half their debt was being considered "viable" within the bank). This came in the wake of news that Kaupthing employees - including Kaupthing's CEO and his wife - had been the target of threats after the news broke.
Even Iceland's Finance Minister Steingrimur J. Sigfusson was quoted in one of the main daily papers as saying that, as a regular citizen of this country, he felt that this debt was "the last thing under the sun" that should be written off (but emphasized that, "in his role as minister", he could not comment on the situation). The paper also spoke to Gylfi Magnusson, Minister of Banking Affairs, who claimed he had "choked" when he read the news, and said that he would - like most Icelanders - find such a write-off "a hard thing to swallow".
Possibly the understatement of the year. Others have warned that, if the loan is written off, massive civil unrest is imminent and, at the very least, people will, en masse, stop their own loan payments to the banks. Personally I think it would be the spark that could set off an explosion of anger in this country, similar to the Rodney King ruling that sparked the LA riots back in 1992. Kaupthing is totally playing with fire.

Before closing out this section, it is worth mentioning other possible sources of high level influence that could be helping the likes of George Soros, Goldman Sachs, Mossad-CIA, and other "handlers" who have probably been trying to work Iceland from the inside.

But then again, according to They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israeli's Lobby by former Congressman Paul Findley and Stealth PACs: How Israel's American Lobby Seeks to Control U.S. Middle East Policy, by Richard H. Curtiss, Parker L. Payson, and Andrew I. Killgore, both the U.S. Congress and U.S. Senate are also "heavily Jewish-influenced." Leading American politicians like Obama, McCain, and Hillary Clinton routinely ingratiate themselves with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). So perhaps it went with the turf with Icelandic politicians as well.
Iceland's President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson is also considered "heavily Jewish influenced." His wife is the daughter of a Jewish jewelry tycoon. Grimsson has also been seen jetting about with Jewish billionaire and Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.
The 20 Nov 2008 article "Icelandic Bank Rip-Off: Behind the Scenes" carried at the web site of British historian David Irving commented:

EARLY IN September 2008, four weeks before the country went bankrupt, the President of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, made a "private visit" to Israel, accompanied by his well-connected Israeli wife, Dorrit Moussaieff.
Well-connected, you say? Well, her family own a big chunk of the 'Bukhari' quarter in Jerusalem, established by her great-grandfather Shlomo Moussaieff who settled there from Uzbekistan in 1893.
Her father, also called Shlomo, is a jewelry dealer in London who supplies sparkling objects to Arab royalty. An average necklace at his store in the London Hilton Hotel costs more than a million US dollars. Ahem: Also on his CV is a spell in a reform school for robbing antiquities from graves.
Here's a source for the Israel visit in September [link]. Of course, we are not implying any skulduggery (or skull-diggery either).
But: When you think how Peter Mandelson and Paul Myners (from Rothschilds and Marks and Spencer respectively) were dropped into senior UK Government positions as 'men of the moment' to deal with the recent financial upheavals, it makes you think. You've got to wonder what's next on the agenda.

S.L. writes:

I WAS struck that the President/Prime Minister of Iceland has a Jewish wife. I recall, even within the text of such «careful» publications as National Geographic Magazine (which had a member of the Rockefeller family on it's board of directors for an number of years), that, to qualify for permanent residency in Iceland, one had to: 1) convert to Lutheranism, 2) "Icelandize" one's name. In order to qualify for citizenship. The presence of an Israeli Jew in Iceland really is an legal, administrative, as well as a sectarian anomaly.
Furthermore, in order to preserve the what may only be termed the "racial hygiene" of the population, I recall, that when as an undergraduate I worked quite some years ago now as a rigger for a telecommunications company in the Kitchener-Waterloo area of Southwestern Ontario, one of the company's drivers, who had previously served in the Royal Canadian Navy as an diver, told me that when foreign military vessels (which, in the context of the conversation, must have been American), called at Reykjavik, Black crew members had to remain aboard. There was no shore side "liberty" for them. The Icelanders wouldn't stand for it.
I wonder what administrative/sectarian dispensation must have been sought in order to get her into the country. I think an act of the Icelandic Parliament, the "Allthing" [sic], may well have been necessary. I doubt whether this person is an regular attendant at the monstrously ugly Lutheran cathedral in Reykjavik.

Iceland's First Lady - International Banking's Femme Fatale? by "gretavo" on Sun, 1 March 2009, commented:

Dorrit Moussaieff was born in Jerusalem in 1950, the daughter of Shlomo Moussaieff, an Israeli who traces his ancestry back to Bukhara, the fabled city on the Central Asian silk route, and whose family has been designing jewelry and trading diamonds and other gems for six centuries. Shlomo's wife, Alisa, Moussaieff's mother, was an Austrian refugee whose family had fled to Palestine one step ahead of Hitler and who became personal assistant to and translator for Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. Shlomo's clientele included a range of Arab royalty: Egypt's King Farouk, Iraq's King Faisal, Jordan's King Abdullah. But the Israeli-Arab war of 1948 ruined that end of Shlomo's business. The Moussaieffs emigrated to London in the 1950s. Her parents "didn't see much of a future living in Israel," Moussaieff tells me.
Moussaieff's husband began cultivating celebrities as well. "Dorrit knows a lot of rich, influential people in London and New York, and Olafur picked up new contacts and connections," Sigfússon says. One of the most prominent and controversial was the Russian oil billionaire Roman Abramovich, crony of Vladimir Putin's and owner of the Chelsea Football Club. One day, Grimsson flew in a private jet from Alaska to watch a soccer match with Abramovich in London. Sigfússon recalls, "A lot of people said, ~Our president? Why is he getting a lift from Abramovich halfway around the globe to watch a football match? It's not presidential.'"

According to Victor Ostrovsky, author of By Way of Deception, Mossad can typically expect about one third of the global Jewish population to actively assist its espionage operations as sayanim, or "helpers." Ostrovsky describes how the Mossad is the most admired organization in Israel. It runs the Israeli government behind the scenes.
It would be inconceivable that Mossad-CIA would ignore Mrs. Grimsson, particularly in view of the way the CIA aggressively approaches governors of American states and has heavily penetrated American mainstream media. See Jesse Ventura's Sept 2008 video embedded in Chapter 8 of my Mission of Conscience Trilogy where he describes how he was approached and monitored by the CIA while governor of Minnesota. Also, David Mcgowan's Derailing Democracy quotes William Colby, former CIA Director as follows: "The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
It is interesting to consider who Mrs. Grimsson is sitting next to at the globalist meeting pictured above. Madeline Albright is a pro-New World Order Zionist and suspected "Troll woman," who cold-bloodedly stated that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children was "worth it" during the Clinton administration blockade.
In contrast, Bill Clinton is apparently a more complex figure. He resisted Zionist schemes to invade Iraq and initially balked at designs to bomb Serbia. However, he was willing to let Mossad-CIA use the Mena, Arkansas Airport to ship drugs while he was governor of the state. According to the Hillary (and Bill) Trilogy by Victor Thorn, Bill Clinton is very likely a longstanding CIA asset.
Jews have a long tradition of infiltrating women into high places to act as "listening posts." In the Book of Genesis, Abraham lies to the Pharaoh, claiming his wife is his sister, so that she can infiltrate the Pharaoh's court as a concubine. In the Book of Esther, the basis of the major annual Jewish holiday called Purim, a Jewish "case officer" named Mordecai infiltrates an attractive Jewish girl named Esther into the court of Persian Emperor Ahasuerus where she eventually acquires intelligence that thwarts an anti-Semitic plot. (See "PURIM: Hostility Toward Christians Rooted In Boisterous Major Jewish Holiday" by Willis Carto).
According to Asimov's Guide to the Bible, serious scholars believe that the story of Esther originated as a work of religious fiction around the 3rd-4th century B.C. It was later adopted by Jews as a real event a few centuries later. None of the independent Persian or Greek sources which recorded history at the alleged time of Esther verify this tale, just like there are no independent Egyptian records that explicitly reconfirm other Bible stories as well.
Similarly, Dr. Shlomo Sand, author of The Invention of the Jewish People, and other Israeli scholars call into question how much of the Abraham and Moses stories in Egypt (as well as most other parts of the Old Testament) are pure fiction as well, since there are no independent Egyptian accounts that confirm these "Bible stories" either.
This makes one wonder if the Old Testament was simply invented as a form of religious window dressing or "protective camouflage" for "hybridized" Neanderthals who operated like "borderless mafia" from their self-secluded ghettoes in myriad ancient cities. This would have been reminiscent of the way they previously lived in scattered caves across the European countryside and similarly dealt with Cro-Magnon Man in an arms-length, covertly hostile manner. Today, the black hat, beard, Star of David pendant, rituals, and black garments may simply disguise a same old hybridized Neanderthal cave man underneath it all

Regardless of ones position on these issues, Dorrit Moussaieff herself is very real. Her husband has served as President from 1996 until present, and Wikipedia calls him "the longest-serving left-wing president in the history of Iceland." Wikipedia also states "Ólafur's second marriage was to Israeli-born Dorrit Moussaieff, to whom he became engaged in May 2000. The wedding took place on his 60th birthday, 14 May 2003, in a private ceremony held at the presidential residence."
This three year period of engagement and apparent cohabitation at the Presidential mansion raised some eyebrows, not to mention "the Jewish connection."
It is impossible to remove all suspicions because Mossad-CIA likes to use people from relatively "clean" countries as cover for dirty operations, since they themselves lack credibility. Various global transparency indices typically rate the Scandinavian countries as the least corrupt in Europe, and Israel as the most corrupt. In addition, I recollect seeing a PBS documentary about how shelters for mistreated and battered wives are common in Israel, whose men typically reflect chauvinistic attitudes more typical of Mediterranean and Asian countries that Scandinavia.
Norwegians in particular go out of their way to cultivate a "nice global citizen" image, in fact, in the 1990's I recall seeing an opinion research piece in the old Norway Times that headlined "It's Cute to Be from Norway." Not surprisingly, in the Cherbourg Boat Affair of 1969, the Israelis used a "Norwegian" shipping owner and Nordic-looking Israeli sailors to snake torpedo boats right out from under the French. In Chapter 38 of my Mission of Conscience Trilogy, I describe intrigues involving Kenya, former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland, and the Norwegian Nobel prize Committee. It appears that Mossad-CIA traded favors in order to steer the Nobel Prize towards Obama in 2009.
Other countries like New Zealand or the Netherlands have relatively clean images awaiting exploitation as well. In 2004 we witnessed the passport scandal where "The prime minister of New Zealand angrily denounced Israel and imposed diplomatic sanctions after two suspected Mossad agents were jailed for six months for trying on false grounds to obtain a New Zealand passport."
These intrigues are finally creating blowback against the global Zionist agenda in Nordic countries, just as the disastrous Georgian invasion of South Ossetia in August 2008 sponsored by Israel and the U.S. has fostered a pro-Russian tilt in Azerbaijan and other central Asian countries, according to Dr. Mathew Raphael Johnson (See Chapter 32).
Nevertheless, Mossad-CIA remains very dangerous. In Chapter 38 of my Trilogy, I explain how the Mossad and its sayanim may be viewed as the "Mongols" of covert 4th generation warfare, using the "four generations of warfare" paradigm advocated by military analyst William S. Lind.
Before closing out this chapter, I need to address one other likely avenue of infiltration and corruption of Iceland, as discussed by John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman in his 27 Aug 2010 interview with Mel Fabregas, host of the Veritas Show (download MP3 Here). The segment below starts at 28 minutes, 40 seconds into the interview:

Mel Fabregas: ...Not too long ago we saw how in the headlines Iceland went from being one of the richest countries per capita to going through a massive economic implosion. I know you recently traveled to Iceland. What motivated you to go there, and what did you learn, what did you find out?
John Perkins: A film crew from Iceland visited me three, maybe closer to four years ago now and interviewed me and described what was going on in Iceland with the big aluminum companies, particularly Alcoa. Iceland was taking huge amounts of debt. Going deep into debt in order to build big hydro electric projects for the exclusive use of the aluminum companies. And they asked me what I thought about this. And I said "Well, Iceland is being hit by economic hit men. I predict that you are going to go bankrupt." So this was a major movie. It actually had a budget of a million dollars, which is big for a documentary. And by the time it was finished and ready to be premiered in Iceland, in fact Iceland had gone into bankruptcy, exactly as I had predicted several years before that. At the time that I predicted that, everybody in Iceland was thinking "Oh my God, this is going to help us. We are going to have this huge industry there." This huge aluminum industry will really help us. But in fact it destroyed Iceland's economy. And so for the premiere they invited me to come to Iceland and sit with the President of the country for the premiere and go around and speak at universities and other forums there. I meet with people. I meet with ministers of state and so on. And I did that.

Earlier in the interview, (at 19 min, 13 seconds) Perkins explained the modus operandi of "economic hit men."

Mel Fabregas: What is an economic hitman, and who do they work for?
John Perkins: Well I think it is fair to say Mel that economic hitmen have created the world's first truly global empire. And it is the first empire in history that has been established primarily without the military, through economics. And obviously we work in many different ways, but the most common, sort of the general approach, is to identify a country with resources that corporations covet, like oil, and then arrange a large loan to that country through the World Bank or one of its sister organizations, and yet the money does not actually go to the country. It never goes to that country. Instead it goes to our own corporations to build big infrastructure projects in that country. Things like power plants and highways and industrial parks that benefit a few wealthy families in those countries as well as our own corporations, of course, but don't help the majority of the people who are too poor to buy much electricity. There is not many jobs given by industrial power. People don't have cars, they cannot drive on the highways, and yet they are left holding a huge debt. The whole country is. This is a debt they cannot ever possibly repay. And so at some point the economic hitmen go back and say, "Since you can't pay your debts, you owe us a pound of flesh." Sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies without any environmental restrictions or allow us to build a military base on your land. Or go with us on the next critical United Nations vote. Things along those lines, which in essence we have created an empire. We have brought this country into our zone of influence. Into our empire. And in a few instances, when these economic hit men fail, and I talk in my books how I failed with the president of Ecuador, Jaime Roldós [Aguilera], democratically elected president, and Omar Torrijos of Panama, when we fail the jackals come in. They either overthrow governments or assassinate their leaders. In the case of Roldós of Ecuador and Torrijos of Panama they were assassinated because I and other economic hit men couldn't corrupt them. They had great integrity, and they would not sell their countries down the tubes the way others did. So they were taken out. Of course that served as a great example for any future leaders of other countries who might be tempted to defy the system too. Who would not play the game. They could clearly that it was a very dangerous game not to play.

Of all the areas I have discussed so far in this chapter, the possibility that Iceland's aggressive hydropower and aluminum industry development policies involved some kind of "economic hit man" ploy is the most complex and tricky area to assess.
In Part 4 I argue that on the surface of things, developing hard industries like hydropower and aluminum smelting makes a lot of sense for Iceland from a nationalist perspective, given the character of Iceland's people, and its particular endowment of natural resources. However, like most issues involving business and economics, we cannot settle for superficial appearances. We have to "kick the tires" and "look under the hood" and inspect the particulars of any situation before we can make any sound judgments.
In the case of Iceland's industrial development policies, we have to ask how much ownership and control of projects was given to potentially hostile aliens as opposed to native Icelandic interests. A healthy industrial policy makes the native people of Iceland wealthier, more self-sufficient, and more in control of their own destiny (more sovereign) over the long run, and not poorer, more indebted, and more dependent on foreigners.
We also have to inspect the quality of the business plans, to see if they are both competent and suitable for Icelanders, as opposed to representing wasteful boondoggles that might benefit only malefactors, or might reflect wasteful investment in excessive or nonproductive capacity (also known as malinvestment).
Generally speaking, prudent investment (which is competent and suitable) is good. This can include shrewd investments in the aluminum industry capacity that involve realistic entrepreneurial calculations of likely aluminum market demand and sober assessments of global competition. In contrast, malinvestment, which can include inappropriate and wasteful investments in aluminum capacity, is obviously bad.
The article Iceland's Banking Crisis: The Meltdown of an Interventionist Financial System by Philipp Bagus and David Howden, June 9, 2009, Mises Daily, states:

In the Icelandic case, the malinvestments were made mainly in the aluminum and construction industries. Both aluminum mines and residential and commercial housing represent long-term investment projects that were financed by short-term funds and not by savings of an equal term.
Another consequence of malinvestment was that resources were drawn into the financial sector, which expanded enormously. Thus, resources were redirected from consumer goods' industries into the financial sector. As one professor noted, fishermen became investment bankers to meet the insatiable demands of the newly profitable financial sector:

"Everyone was learning Black-Scholes" (the option-pricing model), says Ragnar Arnason, a professor of fishing economics at the University of Iceland, who watched students flee the economics of fishing for the economics of money. "The schools of engineering and math were offering courses on financial engineering. We had hundreds and hundreds of people studying finance."[5]

As a result, Iceland became an exporter of financial services and an importer of goods. As Iceland basically stopped producing "real" goods and services, a substantial trade deficit developed...

In other words, the individuals who were most responsible for managing Iceland's economy allowed it to become severely imbalanced with debt finance well ahead of realistic projections of market demand for aluminum, fish, and other exports.
This supports the contention by John Perkins that sinister forces were at work behind the scenes to destabilize Iceland with both a left hook punch that overleveraged the aluminum industry, and a right hook jab that severely distorted its banking and construction industries.
Getting back to my earlier discussion of George Soros, the Russian Jewish mafia, the Mossad, the City of London, and other covert Jewish operatives in this chapter, I need to explain how these things relate to the "economic hit man" concept described by John Perkins, although Perkins himself does not use the words "Jew" and "Zionist" in his Veritas Show interview.
Jews are heavily involved with the World Bank and other U.S.-backed international banking organizations that support "economic hit man" activities. Note, for example, how arch Zionist neocon Paul Wolfowitz was able to easily hop from helping to hijack American foreign policy for Israel as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense from 2001-2005 to become the president of the World Bank from 2005-2007.
Jews control the Bank of England, U.S. Federal Reserve Banking System, and other important central banks. (See, for example, Chapter 33 Wall Street Coup de Etat and Banker False Flags Against America in my Mission of Conscience series).
Jews have also been closely associated with predatory (or usurious) lending activities for well over two thousand years, not to mention "smash and grab" business raiding tactics. Therefore, on a broad conceptual level, there is nothing particularly new about the "economic hit man" concept that has not already been done for ages on the gutter level near Yiddish ghettoes and shtetls throughout Europe and Asia.
For some additional historical perspective on Jewish skullduggery and oppressiveness within nations, I invite the reader to look at Chapter 5 of my Mission of Conscience series, where I provide an extract from a lecture by Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson about how the Polish people got reduced to the worst form of slavery in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries on account of an unholy alliance between a corrupt Polish nobility and the largest Jewish population in Europe. I also provide a valuable extract from The New Babylon by Michael Collins Piper about how Jews infiltrated the English aristocracy and took over the Bank of England.
Last, but not least, we should consider the central Jewish Bolshevik role in the mass murder of over 66 million victims (the estimate by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn), not to mention the chart from Revenge of the Neanderthal, by Willis Carto, May/June 2010 Barnes Review, which depicts the amazing frequency in which Jews have been banished from European countries for their "economic hit man" activities and other bad behavior. As Mr. Carto notes:

A partial list of all the areas from which the Jews have been banished, sometimes on numerous occasions, over the last 998 years is lengthy. The list includes Mainz (four times), France (four times), Upper Bavaria (twice), England, Saxony, Hungary (twice), Belgium, Slovakia (twice), Austria, Lyon, Cologne, Netherlands, Brandenburg (twice), Warsaw, Spain, Italy (twice), Lithuania, Portugal, Naples (three times), Navarre, Nuremburg, Prussia, Genoa, Prague, Bavaria, the Papal States, Hamburg, Vienna, Moravia, Bohemia and Moscow. (A chart of these states/municipalities with the year of expulsion is found at left.)