Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated on this day in 1986. He was an internationalist and the last social-democratic leader to really believe in a world beyond capitalism.Jacobin
Fifteen years ago, Swedish citizens were asked if they wanted to join the eurozone. Of the more than 80 % of registered voters participating in the referendum close to 57 % said NO.
Yours truly — unlike the ‘usual suspects’ among establishment economists — participated actively in the fight against the euro — and it’s still something I’m immensely proud of....Lars P. Syll’s Blog
I've been reading The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn by Avner Offer, Gabriel Söderberg, an interesting critique of the use of the Nobel Prize to undermine the Welfare State, essentially by conservative groups in Sweden, that were influential within the Central Bank (Riksbank), that disliked the Social Democratic policies in place in the 1960s.…My comment on section of the post on laws. Economists need lose the term "law." There are no "laws of economics," or any other social science, that are comparable the laws of nature discovered in the natural science, owing to the differences in subject matter. There are no "laws of history," and economics is historical — regardless of how much formalists would like to believe otherwise.
During Palme’s tenure, there were more than a hundred antisubmarine alerts: the media reported stories of people witnessing Soviet frogmen manipulating something near a Swedish naval base and published undersea tracks left by the mysterious submarines.
Every time, the USSR was blamed, and although it denied everything, no one believed it. From 1981 to 1983, the number of Swedes who perceived a Soviet threat increased from 27% to 83%.…
Sweden's week-long hunt for a "Russian submarine widely anticipated by military specialists and the media" produced nothing more than a 2.2 million euro invoice and a blurry photographof ... the Loch Ness Monster?
To add insult to injury, a Swedish signal intelligence (SIGINT) source told the Dagens Nyheter daily that there was no distress call from a damaged Russian sub, as was widely reported by the media last week….Russia Insider
Sweden’s Riksbank has torn up the rulebook of global central banking, cutting interest rates to zero even though the economy is in the grip of a credit boom.Telegraph
The extraordinary step is intended to stave off deflation but it comes at a time when the Swedish economy is growing at almost 2pc and property prices are rising briskly. The bank has abandoned earlier efforts to curb asset bubbles by “leaning against the wind”.
The Riksbank cut the deposit rate to -0.75pc in what looks like a preparatory move to drive down the krona. Governor Stefan Ingves said the bank has a toolkit of extreme measures in reserve, including use of the exchange rate. The comment is the first hint that Sweden may follow Switzerland and the Czech Republic in imposing a currency floor through unlimited purchases of foreign bonds.
Spy agencies in Germany, France, Spain and Sweden are carrying out mass surveillance of online and phone traffic in collaboration with Britain, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the Guardian newspaper reported Saturday.
Britain’s GCHQ electronic eavesdropping centre — which has a close relationship with the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) — has taken a leading role in helping the other countries work around laws intended to limit spying, the British newspaper said.
The report is likely to prove embarrassing for governments including those of Germany and Spain, which had denounced earlier reports that the NSA was electronically spying on their citizens.The Raw Story
"Intelligence indicates that Miranda is likely to be involved in espionage activity which has the potential to act against the interests of UK national security," according to the document.
"We assess that Miranda is knowingly carrying material the release of which would endanger people's lives," the document continued. "Additionally the disclosure, or threat of disclosure, is designed to influence a government and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism..."
Some people seem to consider the case of Latvia the ultimate Keynes killer, showing that austerity policies suffice to get you out of deep recessions and not having to fall back on Keynesian stimulus.Hmm …What are the facts? Latvia today has a real GDP that still is far below its pre-crisis peak. Its unemployment rate is close to 15 %. Indeed an impressive success …Latvia and Sweden — the ultimate Keynes killers? (video)
Sweden is according to new statistics from the Statistics Sweden now in a state of deflation. The inflation rate was -0.2 percent in February, down from 0.0 percent in January. The inflation rate according to CPIF was 0.9 percent in February 2013, and HICP has increased by 0.5 percent since February of 2012.Lars P. Syll's Blog
So yours truly thought he should give the Swedish finance minister - Anders Borg – a suggestion for reading …

Zoltan Pozsnar and Paul McCulley have written an absolutely splendid essay on what a liquidity trap means and why mainstream neoclassical economics has nothing to offer in way of solving the problems that it brings along – and why it is so important to get hold of the insights that Fisher, Keynes, Minsky and Krugman have given us on debt-deflation processes and liquidity traps:
So, I’m sorry Paul, but Sweden is no longer the model country it once was, in the heydays of the 60s and 70s. It’s no longer the country of Olof Palme. Just as in your own country, neoliberal ideologies, economists and politicians have crushed the Swedish dream that once was. It’s sad. But it’s a fact. And facts – as Gunnar Myrdal used to say – kick!
