circle). Sweden wants in and has tied the SKR to the European Monetary
"A fox in the
System.
Banks insolvent mean an increase in their
Bank. It is harassed by rumours of more heavy losses from speculation in US dollars. * henhouse"
The other reason is more scary. It is connected to the fact that a hot
ALREADY reeling from the economic dog in Stockholm is cureffects of the collapse of the Soviet rently half the price of a
Union, Finland has also been hard hit share in the Scandinavian Enskilda Banken, turbulence. In response, the Finnish the biggest bank in
Scandinavia.
government is proposing a swingeing
As in Japan, the Swedish property market
The proposals centre around the started to collapse about privatization of everything except
18 months ago. Then small finance firms went rescue services like the ambulance
Now the bankrupt.
and fire services. Education will now whole Swedish financial be free up until the age of 15 only, system is disappearing into the same "black unemployment benefits will be cut hole", with credit losses estimated at betdrastically and the conditions for claiming them tightened, ween SKR 75 and 90bn in the coming subsidies to companies and farms will be practically years.
abolished, all tax benefits for single parents and families
Nobody really knows how much - it is with children will disappear and the pension age will be possible that one bank, the Handelsbanken, is not drowning in the credit swamp. But raised and pensions cut in value.
every day new figures and discoveries fuel
Peter Lindgren spoke to two leading members of the Left fear in the Swedish business world.
League, the former Finnish Communist Party, on the extent
In the mid-'80s the then social democraof the crisis and how it might be resolved. The Left League tic government decided to release the creative powers of the market" and remowon 11% of the votes at the last Finnish elections and has ved all restrictions on bank lending. With
19 of the 200 seats in parliament.
loans guaranteed by property assets, the banks handed out lorryloads of money to finance companies and speculators coun ting on the "estimated price increase" of their property assets. Thus a building worth 10 million on the market was the guarantee for lending out 12 million.
Over the past ten months, the new bourgeois government has already stepped in with SKR 20bn for the state owned Nordic
Bank and close to that figure for two other banks — one of which, the Gotha Bank in
Gothenburg, was declared bankrupt a few days before the French referendum, finally brought to its knees by the Riksbanken's
500% marginal interest rate.
Thus a total of around SKR 40bn of taxpayers' money has been spent to avoid a