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Mon. 29/7 – 2 out of 129 ain’t bad

Sweden edged up a notch and landed at #2 on the Global Innovation Index, SvD reported today (). Sweden lands behind leader Switzerland (have they confused the two of us again??) and ahead of third place winner the United States. Rounded to their nearest whole number, the rankings are 67, 64 and 62 respectively. The Netherlands and the UK fill out the top 5 rankings.

The Index, published by Cornell University, the business school INSEAD, and by the World Intellectual Property Organization (an agency with the UN), ranks countries’ innovation capabilities and results, looking at a lot more than just the usual R&D blah blah of each country. The report goes way more in depth, and looks at innovation input – elements of each nation’s economy that further and nurture innovative activities: Institutions; Human capital and research; Infrastructure; Market sophistication; and Business sophistication. Then they go ahead and look at the output, in knowledge and technology as well as creative output. That’s a lot of measures. And Sweden still came out on top (or next to, at any rate). Not so shabby!

If you want to go whole hog and just roll around in their methodology and results check out the report in full at globalinno vationindex.org.

Sat. 27/7 – Sweden agrees to disagree

Minister for Energy and Digital Development, Anders Ygeman
pic: svd.se

SvD.se reports today that the Swedish government is ready to go against the EU when it comes to regulating electricity companies. As reported earlier in this blog, and indeed it comes up repeatedly in Swedish news, the cost of electricity has rocketed upwards in large parts of this generally cold and snowy/rainy country.

In a perfect world, electricity prices should only rise when the income is needed for improvements in the electricity infrastructure. However, this has not happened, says the government: Prices have gone up but the infrastructure has not been improved upon. Furthermore, Minister for Energy and Digital Development Anders Ygeman says, while electricity companies can have a reasonable profit, they shouldn’t be able to profit at the expense of the consumer (). Therefore, the government wants their Swedish Energy Markets Inspectorate ( it’s less of a mouthful in Swedish – “energimarknadsinspektion”) to regulate it more, and presumably better.

Here’s where it gets tricky: The EU says no. According to the EU Commission, the government’s proposals go too far and too much against the EU’s energy market directive.

Sweden doesn’t agree (and neither does Germany, who wants to regulate its electricity companies more too). For its part, Sweden is going ahead with its new regulations, which are to take effect starting 2020. Lucky electricity consumers who have been hit hard by price increases can hope for up to a 20% cut in their elecricity bill.

Stay tuned for the EU’s response to these crazy rebels.

Sat. 27/7 – omg what is that stuff?

Just when you want to throw yourself out of your office window from the heat, and preferably right into the nearest swimming hole, the swimming hole in question is closed because of algae blooms. Stockholm city has closed one major beach, Lövstabadet, and even warned people from coming into direct contact with the ground around it (!).

EU, in cooperation with Stockholm County Administrative Board (länsstyrelsen), is tracking algae blooms, hoping to find them before they hit the beaches and hit all the people that are hitting the beaches ().

An algae bloom (algblomning) is that green, soupy mess that looks like huge vats of stringy pea soup were just poured into the water right where you want to go swimming. Don’t swim in it. The stuff is seriously bad for you, and for the environment. Algae blooms are entirely natural and can happen even without human interference. But they are worse, and more frequent, when fertilizers full of nitrogen and phosphorus wash away from farmland and into water.

Nitrogen and phosphorus are not just the greatest thing for growing crops, the also grow algae. All these sunny days, plus water, plus carbon dioxide plus the extra fertilizer? It’s one big bonanza for algae, and also for all the itsy bitsy bacteria in there. The bacteria start to hog all the oxygen that is naturally dissolved in the water, leaving less and less oxygen, and eventually none, for the fish and other air-needing organisms. So yes, fish death. Lake death. Baltic Sea death. It’s all bad. The soupy green stuff is often also toxic as all get out to us humans as well. These particular algae blooms in English are generally called HABs, or harmful algae blooms (so original!) and are the home of a particularly unpleasant strain of bacteria called cyanobacteria. Don’t even think about swimming in it, even if you’re really really cool, or really really hot. This goes for your pets too.

Shout out to Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algal_bloom ), for the concise explanation of algae blooms.

Fri. 26/7 – Rocky IX: behind bars

A new movie?

So much to say. Is there a diplomatic crisis? This is Trump, people. He’ll milk it for as long as he wins home opinion with it and then forget it. Why is he being taken so seriously? Perhaps it is as Elsa Kugelberg writes in DN – that Sweden is unfortunately so dependent on the US for its security, mostly via NATO (to everyone’s irritation), that it is forced to take the president seriously.

Plus, it’s summer, and there is no-other-news.

There is, though, more Rocky news. For one, he’s still releasing music even though he’s behind bars. “Live fast” was recorded well before Rocky’s Sweden visit. The single has been described as “dark” (bit.ly/DNRockySingle).

Then, some woman went crazy screaming at the staff of the Swedish Embassy in Washington. She kicked a tent, and turned over a table, and has apparently admitted to throwing a can of soda at the door of the embassy and yelling that she wanted to blow the f’n place up (). These are bad times on the mental health front.

Former Prime Minister Carl Bildt has responded to Trump’s tweets, but so far (and to his credit because what could he possibly say?), Löfven has declined. Nothing that Carl Bildt, Stefan Löfven or Sweden’s ambassador to the US can say will have any effect on Trump because, well, he isn’t actually speaking to them.

Wed. 24/7 – Sweden in straits

scenes we don’t want to see
pic: newyorker.com

The Swedish shipping company Stena Bulk finally got in touch with the crew of its ship, Stena Impero, which was taken over by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz last week. The 23-man crew, who are of Indian, Russian, Latvian and Filipino origin, report that they are in good physical health, though under a lot of psychological stress.

The Swedish government may also be under a certain amount of stress as pressure grows for them to take a stand as to whether or not they will partake in a collaborative security effort in the Strait of Hormuz, helping to guarantee the safe transit of ships through one of the busiest and most economically important seaways in the world.

Jeremy Hunt, the UK’s Foreign Minister, has floated the idea of a common European (not NATO) defense of the seaway, to which Denmark, France, Italy and the Netherlands have responded positively. Here, the Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallström’s spokesperson says Sweden hasn’t been formally asked to participate. By this, they are able to avoid committing to a yes, or a no. It doesn’t help the UK’s case that they are essentially asking for help in defending the unharrassed passage of oil tankers. Oil tankers don’t exactly have a lot of likes in Sweden. As the Swedish government is a coalition that includes the Swedish Green Party, it likely doesn’t jibe well.

The larger issue is of course to what degree Sweden is willing to stand up in some sort of military cooperation with its neighbours. Just recently, Sweden signed an agreement to look into the posiblility of developing fighter jets together with Great Britain (). But, in case you didn’t get it the first time, it was an agreement just to look into the possibility of working together. Aligning itself militarily with one part or another isn’t something Sweden does easily.

Everyone knows Peter Hultqvist, Minister for Defense, and Margot Wallström don’t row the same boat, and this recent non-request by the UK falls under the purview of the Foreign Ministry when it comes to a dialog.

Tues. 23/7 – do your tax evasion here

Sweden got a thumbs down from the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) regarding its measures to counter tax evasion, SvD reports today (). Sweden has done nothing, they say, (zip zero nada) to make illegal the kind of money-moving that resulted in the “cum-ex files” international financial scandal last year.

Basically, the scheme involved asking tax authorities for tax refunds on taxes that were actually never paid. In Sweden, (and this is grossly simplifying), it mostly involved what was called a cum-cum deal (pronounced kume, presumably) in which investors “loaned out” their holdings to a frontman to avoid paying withholding tax.

It’s complicated. Plus, and this is obviously embarassing for Skatteverket and its fans, it wasn’t actually illegal in most cases – it was just sort of morally corrupt.

ESMA is urging Sweden to get a move on fixing this issue. Germany’s already done their part.

Tues. 23/7 – IKEA goes electric

Ikea plans to go all electricity in their home deliveries in Sweden within the next 5 years, Dn.se reports today (). Their deliveries in the Stockholm region are already delivered in electric vehicles, and 90% of Ikeas’s transport in Sweden is also fossil-fuel free, but Ikea is going for more on the domestic side. Already in Shanghai, Ikea’s last-mile deliveries (from store or warehouse home) are zero-emission, and NY, Paris and Amsterdam are next in line.

According to Ikea itself, Ikea’s total transport distances, not even including these last-mile home deliveries, equal 71 trips to Mars. Ikea plans to reduce their entire emissions worldwide at least 15% by 2030. NASA is planning on reaching Mars sometime in the 2030’s (www.mars.nasa.gov). Let’s see who gets to their goal first.

Tues. 23/7 – an SOS for the SEK

Although the Swedish Central Bank (Riksbanken) had a darn cheery economic prognosis for Sweden earlier this month, a report from Capital Economics (a pretty huge, international, economic research company) predicts that the krona may sink to a new low by the end of the year – 11 kronor to the Euro. DN.se reports (bit.ly/DNekonomi) that Capital Economics has Swedish household consumption down 1% in May compared to last year – the largest drop in a decade. This bodes ill for the economy as a whole.

So why is the krona so weak? Why doesn’t it buy so much anymore? Why does so much seem so much more expensive? It’s good for people bringing over money, or if you’re a tourist, but it’s not generally good when you have to pay a lot more for things than normal.

Some people think that the krona has simply been overvalued before and this is the new normal (see Handelsbank’s economists on Affärs Världen ). Or, that it’s not really that bad – if you compare it to even smaller currencies. But if you don’t think that way, then there are a bunch of different factors to consider. DN.se’s Carl Johan von Seth had a few ideas a while back ():

Low interest rates. You’ve probably noticed how nobody is getting any interest on the money in their bank account. It’s the same on a country scale. Other countries are simply not buying the krona because they won’t make any money on it, and if no one’s buying, it further weakens the krona. Snow, meet ball.
Trump. Let’s just go ahead and blame him for this too, right? But we can! The dollar is super strong, and every time the Fed even thinks about raising the interest rate to keep things on an even keel, Trump is right there tweeting some really dark shade. The tax reform he implemented is also keeping the dollar strong (and possibly the economy good but that’s another, complicated, blog post). Plus, the trade war he’s engaged in with China makes people (read: economies) nervous, and nervous economies don’t buy weak currencies, like the krona. Especially when it’s known how dependent Sweden is on international trade.
The European Central Bank. The Euro is pretty strong these days, (which also makes the krona look weak), but has an even lower inflation than Sweden. In that comparison, Sweden’s higher inflation is unfavorable.
Sweden’s Minister for Finance, Magdalena Andersson. Some argue that Andersson’s relatively restrictive budgeting and the resulting budget surplus is part of the reason. If she had spent a bit more, maybe the krona would be stronger. (Then again, the budget surplus is a good thing to have if/when the economy weakens. Always an argument.)
The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (“Finansinspektion”). The housing market is an acknowledged hot mess, and the Finance inspection’s new demand for paying off one’s mortgage and a higher down payment requirement has had both the desired effect (dampening the housing market) and an unwanted side effect (dampening the housing market). Less building can be good in some ways but also affects Swedish economic growth negatively. Exactly, contributing to a weak krona again.

Congratulations on making it all the way through this blog post. Now go out and spend some money to bring up our economy. Or save the money in your mattress for the worse days to come. No advice here, this is just a blog post.

Mon. 22/7 – Mello – now (soon) on Netflix

Netflix has bought rhe rights to show 2019’s Eurovision Song Contest – more popularly know as Melodifestival here in Sweden, and even more colloquially as ”Mello” – SvD reported this afternoon. True, this news item was pretty buried under more important news like Iran taking a British-flagged cargo boat hostage in the Strait of Hormuz, but anyone that has lived in Sweden during the almost interminable run-up and final show knows that this, for some, is huge. According to SVT (https://blogg.svt.se/melodifestivalen) about 4.5 million people in Sweden alone saw the final. That’s very nearly half the population here folks. Maybe this news shouldn’t have been so buried after all (just kidding).

Netflix has also bought the rights to air the 2020 show in the Netherlands (after it has aired here in Europe that is), and – wait for it – is even planning an American version.

Sun. 21/7 – electricity companies busted

The Swedish Consumer Agency (Konsumentverket) criticized a slew of Swedish electricity companies for hard to read, and even harder to understand, cost information, Dn.se reported today. The Agency took a look at the websites of 13 companies, and found every single one of them lacking: One example was not being clear that the distribution charge (nätpris) wasn’t included in the cost they were quoting on the website. Since the distribution cost is a huge part of any electricity bill, and is completely seperate from the cost of the electricity you actually use, this is a good thing to be aware of.

According to SvD (https://www.svd.se/se-hur-mycket-ditt-elpris-forandrats) the cost of electricity delivered to the average home has increased 24% between 2013-2018. In many areas, up north in particular, the cost has increased up to 60%. There are a few teeny weeny counties where the cost has decreased, but they’re as easy to see as stars in the night sky over Manhattan.

The electricity companies have until the 30th of August to respond, after which the Consumer Agency may take further measures.