Advertise On EU-Digest

Annual Advertising Rates

5/15/09

Daily Finance: Norway's success in socialism has me turning red with envy - Sarah Gilbert

For the complete report from the Daily Finance click on this link

Norway's success in socialism has me turning red with envy - Sarah Gilbert

Bring on the 12-month paid maternity leaves, the all-access-pass to nationalized health care. Because while capitalism was showing America who's your daddy (in our country, he who has the least morals and the most hunger, laughs all the way to his weekend house in the Hamptons), Norway's socialist finance minister was smugly buying our companies' depressed stock. The country has a cushy 11% budget surplus, zero national debt, and an economy that grew 3% last year while Uncle Sam was dancing a jig into a 12.9% deficit, $11 trillion in debt, and the Recession we now all know and love.Having recorded comfortable amounts of income from the North Sea oil, Norway saved the money in its sovereign wealth fund; the one that was buying U.S. stock as the markets crashed last fall.

The U.K. spent its oil money during the market's upswing. But are our governments feeling guilty? Nope. There should be, says Norway expert Anders Aslund, "in Norway, there is instead a sense of virtue. If you are given a lot, you have a responsibility." Those who still believe socialism is evil? Please, feel free to blackball me. I'd be happy never to work in this town again if it would mean the U.S. would finally wake up and smell the integrity it hasn't had for a century or more. Give us socialism, or else, you know.

No comments: