Lately I\u2019ve had a bit of trouble sleeping. In spite of being mortally exhausted every night, at 2:00am I wake up\u00a0and can\u2019t get back to sleep for a while. But you know, it just lasts an hour or two and eventually I fall fast asleep.<\/p>\n
That can\u2019t be true today for Sigmundur Dav\u00ed\u00f0 Gunnlaugsson, prime minister of Iceland, who is among those called out in The Panama Papers<\/a>\u00a0for stashing money in offshore tax havens. In an interview<\/a> before the story broke, Gunnlaugsson\u00a0explained why his government has found it important to pursue tax dodgers. He said, \u201c\u2026 Society is seen as a big project that everyone needs to take part in, so when somebody is cheating the rest of society it is taken very seriously in Iceland. \u2026 To some extent is is a question of preserving the values that most people share, at least in our part of the world, that you have a responsibility to pay taxes.”<\/em> \u00a0<\/p>\n The interviewer followed up, \u201cWhat about yourself, Mr. Prime Minister\u2026\u201d<\/em> And it didn\u2019t go down well for him from that point on.<\/p>\n \u201cMyself?\u2026\u201d<\/em> he stammered, \u201c\u2026I have always given all of my assets and that of my family up for taxes, so there has\u2026 never been any of\u2026 me\u2026 my assets\u2026 hidden anywhere.\u201d<\/em> Then\u00a0he chuckled and said, \u201cIt\u2019s an unusual question for an Icelandic politician to get, because it\u2019s almost like being accused of something, but I can confirm that I have never hidden any of my assets.”<\/em><\/p>\n They then asked him about a specific company, at which point he must have known that he was toast. Evidently not all his assets have been on the table, and evidently some have been hidden.<\/p>\n His halting speech was now accompanied by moments of silence in which he was hopelessly trying to triangulate out of the mess. After a few moments, he just stood up and left.<\/p>\n Now I bet he<\/em>\u00a0is\u00a0having real<\/em> trouble sleeping.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lately I\u2019ve had a bit of trouble sleeping. In spite of being mortally exhausted every night, at 2:00am I wake up\u00a0and can\u2019t get back to sleep for a while. But you know, it just lasts an hour or two and eventually I fall fast asleep. That can\u2019t be true today for Sigmundur Dav\u00ed\u00f0 Gunnlaugsson, prime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3795"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3795"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3799,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3795\/revisions\/3799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}