Free Republic

THIRTY YEARS AGO Margaret Thatcher turned Britain into the world’s leading centre of “thinking the unthinkable”. Today that distinction has passed to Sweden. The streets of Stockholm are awash with the blood of sacred cows. The think-tanks are brimful of new ideas. The erstwhile champion of the “third way” is now pursuing a far more interesting brand of politics. Sweden has reduced public spending as a proportion of GDP from 67% in 1993 to 49% today. It could soon have a smaller state than Britain. It has also cut the top marginal tax rate by 27 percentage points since 1983,...

The successful trademark registration of “Nordic Model” by Sweden’s Social Democrats has prompted a sharp reaction from the rest of the Nordic region's political establishment. The move has led other political bodies to protest the Social Democrats' move, which has put the question of who created the Nordic Model into ever sharper focus. "We may have understood if they had (trademarked) the 'Swedish Model', but when it comes to the 'Nordic Model' we have no choice but to protest," Jens-Erik Enestam, who heads the Nordic Council representing opposition parties from across the region, said in a statement Tuesday. Sweden's opposition...

SHOULD America try and become more like "Socialist" Sweden? COULD Americans aquire the English skills, become as beautiful and get as successful at establishing healthy multinationals as Swedes? Some would say so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDAQWJbEl9U

Bo Lundgren, Sweden’s minister for fiscal and financial affairs, stared down a financial crisis in the 1990s and lived to tell the tale. In a Daily Beast interview, he says the US could learn a thing or two from his famed solution. In happier times the words "Swedish model," were more likely to be found in a Budweiser ad than a Wall Street Journal op-ed. But with the financial sector in ruins, a debate over whether to follow Sweden's lead and nationalize America's weakest banks has given the phrase an ominous new context. At one point last month Sweden's plan...

The US debt rescue plan has sought inspiration from the work to tackle the Swedish banking crisis at the beginning of the 1990s. "I have been in the USA several times this year to explain what we did," said Bo Lundgren at the Swedish National Debt Office. "There can be significant similarities," Lundgren added. Lundgren was finance minister in the 1991 right-wing government and, together with current and former Riksbank heads Stefan Ingves and Urban Bäckström, was the architect behind the bank support committee (Bankstödsnämnden or Bankakuten) which did much to alleviate the crisis that raged in the Swedish banking...