No AC

It´s been pretty warm for the last couple of days and we´re going through the whole summer with no air conditioning and three fans. So far so good. Although I´ve never really liked ACs and I certainly don´t care for how it´s overused here, I must admit that during days like these, I do miss it. So what do we do when it get´s too hot? We take a cool bath or a shower. This being Óðinn´s first summer, I guess he hardly misses the AC.

Pecora

Why on earth has Hollywood not yet made a movie about Ferdinand Pecora?

He is the man who led the investigation of the fraud and other criminal behaviour that led to the Wall Street crash of 1929, which started off the great depression. The story of his investigation is amazing, and couldn´t be more appropriate for a major film production. It has everything, including the David and Goliath theme, where Pecora was a lowly Italian immigrant, who was aided by a staff of two people, taking on the giants of Wall Street on behalf of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency. With only a staff of two people, obviously they weren´t supposed to uncover anything. Except they did, and the Committee hearings became major news at the time, letting out a huge public outrcy over the greed and fraud that had brought about the depression. The populist nature of the hearings irritated a lot of people, including a senator who compared the hearings to a circus. This comment was famously siezed by a Wringling Brothers promoter, who brought along a circus dwarf to sit on the lap of J.P. Morgan, who had been grilled by Pecora.

All of this was huge news at the time and it seems like the action of bringing in these people for public questioning led to a sense of justice being done, that these powerful bankers could not act with impunity (at least not all of the time). More importantly, the hearings led to the Glass Steagal Act of 1933 and the foundation of the SEC (Securitites and Exchange Commission), which stabilzed the U.S. economy for about half a century until neoliberal ideas of deregulation got the best of us.

Go to the excellent Bill Moyers Journal for more info on Ferdinand Pecora the Pecora hearings and an interview with Michael Perino who´s writing Pecora´s biography.

Coming back

It's been a while since I wrote here. Work was really busy for a while, with the 8th session of the Permanent Forum going on, and then we went up to Canada for a week trip to visit family up in Ottawa. I'm glad we drove up there, getting to see a bit of the country. I particularly liked Vermont for a lot of reasons, including the ageing hippies, fantastic cafés, great food and a generally chilled out atmosphere.

Óðinn did remarkably well in the car, considering how unused he is to driving around. This will be the last time he uses this car seat, which is already too small. He´s teething these days, which makes him pretty grumpy and disrupts his sleep a lot, so the poor guy is constantly waking up his parents. Such is the way of things...

We had elections back home a week and a half ago. The left wing parties won a majority for the first time ever in Iceland. The primary reason for this is not so much Icelanders´ happiness with these parties, but rather their profound anger towards the conservative party and to a lesser extent the progressive party - the two parties that bear most of the responsibility for the failed neoliberal policies that made Iceland bankrupt.

Now we´re one step closer to the EU and who knows? Maybe some of the crooks that bankrupted my country will be brought to justice? Not very likely... and anyway, although it would be pretty satisfying to see these bastards get what they deserve, that in itself would not right the wrongs that have been done.

What I do hope for we´ll end up with a better society, where values such as brotherhood, sharing, integrity and kindness become more important than the competition, greed, entitlement. Where professions, such as teaching or caring for the elderly are valued for their true worth... I'm not holding my breath though.



Óðinn´s doing very well these days. Making lots of noises and getting to be pretty good at recognizing people. One grandma just left and another has taken over looking after him and I´m so thankful for having such great families who have our back. He and I enjoyed some harðfiskur (dried fish) recently. I was surprised at how much he liked it. I suspect he liked how it felt on his gums, which often irritate him.

Trying out video

We just got ourselves a camera with a video function. Nothing special, but fun to play around with.

Back at work

Paternity leave's over and I'm back at work. Mixed feelings about that of course. My mom's been with us for a couple of days now and my dad came yesterday. They're taking care of the little one these days.
This shot is taken in South Slope Coffee (19th St. and 6th. Ave.) who make the best coffee that I've found in Brooklyn. For that matter, they're better than any of the places I've tried in Manhattan.

As an Icelander living in the United States, I frequently compare my current home with my homeland. One of the recent things that has interested me is how differently the two countries are responding to the financial crisis. In the US it's all about stimulus packages and using the economic downturn as an opportunity to invest heavily in education, healthcare, infrastructure and energy independence. In Iceland, guided by the IMF, it's all about austerity measures, repaying debt and massive budget cuts in health, education etc. How is it that the IMF (which is pretty much run by the US) always instructs countries to cut government budgets and privatize as much as possible, but when the US is in trouble, the Americans do the opposite?



My sister has recently complained over the paucity of color photos on this blog. The thign is that I´ve been having so much fun developing film recently and I only develop B&W, so I haven´t done much digital shooting recently. From here on, I´ll look for a more balanced approach. This is from last Sunday, when we went to Prospect Park.