Vefþjóðviljinn 191. tbl. 18. árg.
Fjármálaráðuneytið hefur ákveðið að verja 10 milljónum króna af fé skattgreiðenda til að skoða erlend áhrif á hrun íslenska fjármálakerfisins. Einn helsti þátturinn sem til skoðunar er mun vera hvers vegna bandaríski seðlabankinn neitaði þeim íslenska um svonefnda gjaldmiðlaskiptasamninga árið 2008.
Kannski mætti spara íslenskum skattgreiðendum nokkrar milljónir af þessum 10 með því að lesa síðu 33 á þessari uppskrift frá fundi „Federal Open Market Committee“ 28. og 29. október 2008.“ Þar segir einn af hagfræðingum bankans og nefndarinnar um forsendur bankans fyrir gjaldmiðlaskiptasamningum:
As outlined in the memo and then also my remarks, the first is that we are looking for economies that are large and systemically important. The second is that we are looking for economies in which their policies have been strong and it appears that they are largely being influenced by contagion. The third piece is countries for which we believe that the swap line might actually make a difference.
Now, let me just give you a concrete case of the third criterion because that’s a little more abstract than the first two. Iceland came to us and requested a swap line of approximately $1 billion to $2 billion, which would have been 5 to 10 percent of Iceland’s GDP—so it was fairly large relative to the size of the country. But the liabilities of the banking system were on the order of $170 billion, and the underlying problem was really that there was a loss of confidence in its banks. We came to the conclusion that a $1 billion to $2 billion swap line was very little ammunition to use against a potential loss in confidence in this $170 billion financial system. For that reason, we as the staff recommended against a swap line for Iceland.
Og var það ekki í raun blessun fremur að böl að Ísland uppfyllti ekki skilyrði bandaríska seðlabankans fyrir slíkum lánamöguleikum? Flest bendir til að hefði slík lánalína verið nýtt í björgunaraðgerðir íslenska fjármálakerfisins hefðu 2 milljarðar bandaríkjadala einfaldlega bæst við skuldir ríkissjóðs Íslands í erlendri mynt.