The Great Scandinavian Divergence
From @MineforNothing on Twitter comes this chart: Now, we know Finland is in a bit of a mess. A series of nasty supply-side shocks has devastated the economy. When Nokia collapsed in the wake of the 2007-8 financial crisis, ripping a huge hole in the country's GDP, the government responded with substantial fiscal support. This wrecked its formerly virtuous fiscal position: it switched from a 6% budget surplus to a 4% deficit in one year, and although its deficit has improved slightly since, it is still outside Maastricht limits. Because of this, the current government - under pressure from the insane Eurocrats - is implementing fiscal austerity to bring the budget deficit back below 3% of GDP. For an economy which has suffered a serious reduction in its productive capacity, this is disastrous. The austerity measures will neither reduce the deficit nor restore the economy. On the contrary, they will cause the economy to shrink and consequently - through simple arithmetic - i...