Listening to Sweden's finance minister Anders Borg presenting the budget for 2011, it is very obvious he’s not really happy with how the world looks. Time and again he points out how a “dark cloud” hang over several countries and that we need to prepare for a shaky future with a potential downturn a couple of years down the line.
Another clear sign of bad times ahead is that in the budget proposition there’s 57 billion kronor put aside for “unforeseen expenditures”, an almost unheard of number in Swedish history. Makes you wonder what the Finance Mentalist know about the future…
Sadly this is not obvious when reading the budget proposal as a whole, but still kind of interesting. Sweden’s oppositional political parties seem to buy that reality, although the lefties, as usual, have many magical billions more to hand out to those screaming loudest.
I don’t pretend to know everything about other countries and their political debate, but I cannot recollect that this view on the world and this obvious unison when it comes to a shaky financial future can be found anywhere else. Gives me a bit of hope about the future.
Sweden will still crash and burn as all the rest, mostly because of the dependency on foreign trade, but also because of a huge housing bubble and too much socialism, but maybe there’s some hope, just maybe.
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