sweden

sweden

Sweden And Norway Are Moving Toward A Cash-Free Society

The payment market in Sweden and Norway is being digitized. To give an international comparison, the cash in circulation as a percentage of GDP variable is used as a proxy for the demand for cash. In 2018, the cash in these two economies was equivalent to 1.3% and 1.5% of their GDP, respectively. In contrast, in the United States and the Eurozone, this variable was at 8.2% and 10.9%, respectively.


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The Refugee Crisis And The Beast Within

Nick Malkoutzis via Macropolis | As symbols go, the imaginary pig’s head in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies requires little explanation. Its meaning is summed up in one line of the unnerving classic. “Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill!” says the fly-infested head. “You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?”


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Central Banks that make the same mistake are ‘rewarded’ with similar outcomes

SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes via Historinhas | While the Riksbank can focus exclusively on Sweden, the ECB has a more complicated task, having to ‘oversee’ a bunch of countries. Both central banks have an exclusive mandate: “Price stability”. While in Sweden that is understood as 2% inflation, in the EZ it is something slightly lower. Nevertheless, the two ‘countries’ central banks acted in tandem, tightening as a reaction to higher than target inflation due to oil price shocks.


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The idea that central banks “need a financial stability mandate” keeps coming back

SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes via Historinhas | Even in Sweden, where 4 years ago the Riksbank decided there was “too much debt” and raised rates to “calm people down”. That, as we know, ended in grief and with the head honcho being outvoted (first time that happens) in the last policy committee meeting, when the policy rate was lowered by 50 basis points to 0.25%.


Swedens loss of faith

Sweden’s loss of ‘faith’

SAO PAOLO | By Marcus Nunes | According to Per Bylund, “during the recent financial crisis, Sweden has emerged as one of very few financially sound economies.” However, now the country successfully rolled back its unsustainable but world-renowned welfare state.


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Highly tax-charged: it’s personal in Sweden, corporative in France

Taxpayers may be under the impression that their pockets have suffered an increasing attention from their countries’ administrations. They are right to complain. The average standard VAT rate in the EU has risen strongly since 2008. In 2012, the standard VAT rate varies from 15.0% in Luxembourg and 17.0% in Cyprus to 27.0% in Hungary and 25.0% in Denmark and Sweden,  data from the 2012 edition of taxation trends in the European…