Advertise On EU-Digest

Annual Advertising Rates

6/19/10

Does anyone have a view on how Norway fits into the global picture?

Here in Norway, the crisis is over, and never really started. We’ve divested ourselves of most parts of our industrial-export companies over the last decades, and are currently mainly selling oil and fish, produced at competitive production costs. The state is a net buyer of foreign debt, and government deficit spending is financed by over-consuming the interest from the 0.5 trillion USD ‘oil fund’, at a few ten-billion USD a year. Hardly a critical situation as I see it for now.

Privately held debt is fairly high, with the banks being the prime debtors (bank-issued debt is at about USD50k pr citizen - source http://www.ssb.no/brutgjeld/tab-2010-06-…). At the peak of the crisis, the banking-sector was bailed out as ‘too big to fail’, so that’s certainly a risk factor.

I’d also worry about the energy-dependency of the fish-industry, but I have not yet had any chance to investigate what’ll happen there if oil-production drops significantly.

For more: Does anyone have a view on how Norway fits into the global picture? | The Market Financial | Stock Market & Wall Street News

No comments: