Englund

DN 31 maj 2015 Med tanke på Europas demografiska utveckling, med en åldrande befolkning, kommer efterfrågan på enklare service- och tjänstejobb att växa. Arbetskraftsinvandringen blir bara viktigare. Det ligger i Europas ekonomiska egenintresse att motverka trenden med ett sjunkande antal förvärvsarbetande i förhållande till andelen pensionärer. Full text - Immigration helps defuse the “pensions time bomb”.  This is doubly false: immigrants age, too; and the so-called time bomb can (and should) be dealt with directly by raising the retirement age in line with longevity.  It is false to argue that a high rate of net immigration is required to avoid an unsustainable rise in the dependency ratio. Martin Wolf FT 3/4 2008 Full text REFUGEE FACTS OF LIFE: 1) EU countries accepted 185,000 asylum applications from 625,920 applications in 2014; 2) Sweden accepts eight times as many asylum applicants per one million citizens as France. Sweden's rate is al

Mohamed A. El-Erian,  Bloomberg  25 May 2015 Many of these private entities had been paid handsomely for their willingness to take on the sovereign credit risk of Greece and, thanks to generous bailout funding from the official sector, quite a few have been able to exit without much cost. Failing to see much sustainable improvement, Greek citizens have been pulling their cash out of banks. This has contributed to wider capital flight that sucks operating oxygen out of the country’s economy and puts a growing number of institutions at risk of bankruptcy. Full text Nobody was forced to lend to Greece.  Initially, private lenders were happy to lend to the Greek government on much the same terms as to the German government.  Then, in 2010, it became clear the money would not be repaid.  Rather than agree to the write-off that was needed, governments (and the International Monetary Fund) decided to bail out the private creditors by refinancing Greece. Martin Wolf, FT 21 Apr

I dag kan vi konstatera att Krugman haft fel inte bara om Baltikum, Grekland, Sverige och USA utan också om Storbritannien.   Märkligt nog har han fått stöd av den traditionellt konservativa internationella valutafonden som borde ha vetat bättre men nu får dela skammen med Krugman. Anders Åslund, SvD 24 maj 2015

The proposal is to see member states’ border guard corps pooled under the command of a new, EU-level agency.  The bloc’s existing border control agency, the Warsaw-based Frontex, where Avramopoulos spoke, is to give intelligence-gathering and logistical support. The project is to be discussed by home affairs ministers and by EU leaders in Brussels in June. euobserver 21 maj 2015 http://www.nejtillemu.com/frontex.htm

Diagrammet visar EUR och USD mot SEK. Diagrammet nedan visar Riksbankens intervention, för vem skulle det väl annars vara?

Åsa Linderborg har förklarat sig vara kommunist. Hon har skrivit om hur förtvivlad hon blev när Berlinmuren föll. Linderborg är utnämnd av LO. Som en följd av pakten kom vinterkriget mellan Finland och Sovjet 30 november 1939. De svenska kommunisterna förklarade att Sovjet tvingades skydda sig mot de finska generalernas angrepp. En av dem som försvarade Sovjet var Ivar LO Johansson. LO delar årligen ut ett litteraturpris till hans minne. Det får hyllningar i statsradion och på kultursidorna. Full text här

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay15/Greece-default5-15.html

Financial Times skriver i dag den 11 maj: The distribution of asylum seekers within the EU is highly uneven. Germany, for instance, received approximately one-third of the 626,000 asylum applications made within the EU in 2014 — more than any other state.  Sweden took in more than 80,000, the second highest number. Kommentar 1/3 av 626.000 = 209.000 Tyskland har 80 miljoner invånare. 209.000/80  = 2.612 Sverige har runt 9 miljoner invånare av olika ursprung. 80.000/9 = 8.888 Slutsats: Sverige tog emot mer än tre gånger så många asylsökande som Tyskland.