Wonkette
Do you know what is happening to your America, America? Communism! Yesterday our friends at the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP invited a crazy European monster to our country to outline the nuclear option — “The Swedish Model” — for fixing our banks. Boo! Go “fix” yourself!
Dr. Sweden’s actual name is “Bo,” but we prefer Dr. Sweden, so take that.
Bo Lundgren, the steely-eyed head of Sweden’s National Debt office, played a leading role in averting the collapse of the Swedish banking sector when a property bubble burst in the early 1990s.
What an asshole!
Now, US President Barack Obama cites Sweden as a possible model of how best to tackle failing banks. Mr Lundgren, who was fiscal and financial affairs minister at the time of the last crisis, yesterday outlined the Swedish solution to the Congressional Oversight Panel, which supervises the US administration’s troubled asset relief programme.
“I am a market liberal. I was even called the nearest Sweden had every come to having a party one could call libertarian,” said Mr Lundgren, the former head of the Moderate Party with links to the Conservatives.
This did not stop him nationalising two failing major banks in 1992: the already majority state-owned Nordbanken, and the privately owned Gota bank.
“In the case of a crisis, the state needs to be strong,” he said. “If it decides to act, it should become an owner.”
Dr. Sweden has taken at least 10,000 of your jobs while here.
US calls on “Mr. Fix It” [Telegraph]
Does this mean we’ll all be getting government-issued Ikea furniture? Cause I’d be down with that.
Nationalization has potential, and the best part would be to sit back and watch the shit show the wingnuts throw should that happen. The rage rallies will make tea bagging look like a San Francisco tea party. Get me a bucket of popcorn. Then again, doesn’t mere mention of Nationalization (insert ghostly music here) cause Wall Street to shit it’s pants and the Dow to plunge? But at this point does it even matter if it plunges?
Fuck it, I’m sick of all this anyway. When do we got to be rich again?
…I can haz Volvo’s?
Gota bank? Well, no, actually.
Cool! When do we get bread lines?
This is the kind of consultant they call in when a project is well and truly fucked, and the people who fucked it won’t resign or commit suicide.
Well, Zeig Heil Mr Bo Lungren! Nationalize my taint! FREEDOM FOR THE MARKETZ! I WANTSZ MIE HOBOLIFE!
Incidentally, you were fabulous in Universal Soldier.
Now that’s communism you can believe in!
I can haz bonus paid in Gravalax?
I keep hearing about this Swedish Model, and then we end up with some guy named Bo. That’s not change I can believe in.
AngryBlakGuy: dammit!
Also, is Bo Todd’s brother, because inquiring minds need to know.
While we were all busy screaming RAGE! at AIG and retards, Sweden snuck into America and turned us all communist.
4tehlulz: Yes. Swedish porn is not what you might expect.
StephanieInCA: I’ve long held a theory that Ikea was part of a communist plot, because why else would you make your customers assemble your products except to prepare them for the workers’ paradise? Now all of my theories have been confirmed. That’s it, I’m going Galt. I can put up with a lot, but not with the dehumanizing brutality of assembling Ikea furniture.
THE DAY MY COUNTRY GOES COMMIE IS THE DAY THE MATCH GETS STRUCK WE ARE OUT THERE
As long as he comes bearing Swedish meatballs, I’m down.
In Poland, they tell dumb Swede jokes.
While we’re at it, can we have another Dag Hammarksjold for U.N. Secretary General?
StephanieInCA: All your basics are belong to us!
up_yer_snufflegus: Those frozen ones from Ikea are pretty good. Also.
I personally don’t give a fuck if nationalizing the banks will work, but it is worth trying just to watch Sean Hannity’s head explode.
Can we nationalize Tiger Woods’ wife, for America?
Let me just say that if there were a Moderate Party in the USA of America, I for one would join it right now!
If Bo Derek and Dolf Lundgren had a baby…
…it would nationalize the Swedish banking sector.
For my own part, my own house is always open to Swedish models.
The Moderate Party - that’s a cause you could really get behind.
“What do we want?”
“MODERATE CHANGE!”
“When do we want it?”
“IN DUE COURSE!”
I got to “Swedish libertarian” and part of my brain just froze. That’s like oily vinegar or wet fire or free-love celibacy.
up_yer_snufflegus: …Fukk that! I want tall blond hair, blue eyed, leggy, swedish women in wooden clogs(ok maybe stilettos)!
WadISay:
Have I got a website for you!!!!! More Swedish models than you can shake your stick at.
NoWireHangers: they are. and i know balls. also.
This is enough to give Glenn Beck another chin.
Shit, we’re so fucked the Swedish Chef couldn’t get us outta this soup…
up_yer_snufflegus: I like their little candy fishes, if that counts.
jagorev: And the busiest Ikeas in the world are their stores in Moscow, which confirms the Swedish-Soviet/communist link…
Bo Lundgren “will crush you”.
nice PrOn name as well
the nationalization of swedish banks was only a temporary measure. as soon as the banks started making money, the govt. sold off their shares, producing a profit for the taxpayers.
of course such a rational course of events would never happen in the “land of the grave and the home of the fee.”
but since the banks in sweden seem to be going under again, they may need Mr Lundgren back here again. these losses are now due to over-investing in the once hot Baltic economies that are rapidly drifting down the toilett.
-resident of Stockholm
Didn’t Sylvester Stallone already fight Bo Lundgren? Well he can do it again. USA!!
Does he come bearing hot blonds? ‘Cause I hear Hef is still looking for the 50th anniversary playmate centerfold…
So instead of this “victory garden” stuff this means our government actually wants us to make supplemental income the traditional Swedish way, by picking lingonberries in the forest and then selling them by the side of the road, right?
NoWireHangers, AngryBlakGuy, bitchincarmo:
Meatballs, beautiful women, and candy fish. God I love Sweden =).
inedalo: -resident of Stockholm .. so he Will “Crush Us”?
SayItWithWookies: “I got to ‘Swedish libertarian’ and part of my brain just froze.”
They do exist, rare as they might be. Anders Åslund, a guy who is basically in exile from Sweden for advocating privatization via shock therapy there has supported the notion of bank nationalization in the U.S. on the Swedish model. It only makes the various Drudge sirens on this proposal (”EUROPEAN SOCIALISM!”) all the more ridiculous when all of these hardcore neoliberal economists are advocating it…
For God’s sake, don’t let Bill Clinton find out that there are Swedish models on Capital Hill.
Can I be moved to a nice apartment in Oslo to spend my remaining years?
SayItWithWookies: He’s pulled some notoriously libertarian stunts up in Sweden. Like, this one time, he opted out of the neighborhood car pool and cold drove into town by himself. Then this other time, he was seen buying mouse traps instead of letting the mice live free, unfettered lives.
There’s a rumor that he does not wash out his yoghurt cartons before recycling.
chascates: If you don’t mind living in Norway.
Dammit! I thought inviting Dr. Sweden to speak was just a clever ruse to tie him to a bed and whack him with pillow-cases full of human feces! We can’t let him escape unscathed!
While he’s here, he should attend a karaoke night and teach Barry “Sommertider.”
Roger the Shrubber: No one who is the product of the U.S. educational system could have that kind of working knowledge of world geography. Clearly you are a witch! Burn him!
Larry Fine: In Sweden, they tell dumb Finn jokes. And in Finland, they don’t tell jokes - too drunk and inbred.
Will Dr. Sweden walk around with his giant blue dong hanging out, like Dr. Manhattan?
Dr. Sweden sounds like the villain of a ridiculously poor D.C. comic, possible featuring some pitiful second-stringer like the Elongated Man.
Roger the Shrubber: DOH! Actually anywhere thereabouts would be fine. Portugal, Netherlands, Monaco.
Leopolt: Don’t forget “Dr. Shrinker” — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAxPNais54Y
Ahhh, Sig & Marty Croft, we so miss you.
wheelie: Beware - the Moderate Party has links to the Moderate Terrorists, who plant fish soup on planes. If you don’t meet their demands the soup will go off.
Welcome America to the wonderful world of herrings!
up_yer_snufflegus: Sid & Marty Krofft - when acid alone won’t do!
Now that Americans are all Swedish, who will the Canadians have to talk shit about?
StephanieInCA: All products manufactured in American will now be put together exclusively with allen wrenches and will always be missing one piece.
Suds McKenzie: why do you ask if Bo will “crush us?”
america is already crushed by the crooks in the govt. and the super-crooks on wall st.
this swede is a very mild-mannered bureaucrat who ran for high office a few yrs back-
wanted to be Prime Minister, but got soundly beaten.
he couldn’t hurt a fly. just another pacifistic softy swede; but he got the banks to straighten out and grow up.
yes, i live in sweden now but during my “wild” youth, i worked at the US Census Bureau in Suitland, MD. lasted one year at that exciting censusy place - that’s about par for the course for my dotted and dotty career steps.
imissopus: Dat’s de funnies!!! Onlees a grajut uv de Umeriken K-12 sistem would be stewpid enuf to finds a peace remayning afters compleeting de assemblies uv der Svedish bookcase…
Larry Fine: they do in Minnesota too. or maybe Wisconsin.
We need another bubble to invest in (so sayeth The Onion). Maybe Dr Sweden can help us find a new Ivar Kreuger (the Swedish Match King).
I for one welcome our new viking communist overlords and their volvos.
Leopolt: Heh, yeah who needs Acid when they have this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-xlQR3lk-Q&feature=related
Hell, why stop at nationalizing our banks, which don’t have any money anyway. Lets nationalize the Canadian banks while we’re at it.
Dammit, all products manufactured in AMERICA, not American. Stupid typos.
Does this mean I have to celebrate Lief Erickson Day?
They just seem to be some happy people. I particularly like Joan Steffen on “Decorating Cents.” She’s so happy!
“I am a market liberal”
He’s lost 95% of the GOP’s interest now because he used the word liberal, and in the ironically correct way.
AngryBlakGuy: Saab’s likely to be screwed because of GM/American mis-management. It still makes no sense to me why the Big 3 cannot mass produce domestic cars at a decent price when they have the technology from companies like Saab that they’ve acquired.
Well, since they were smaller and got bought up, they must be stoopider and therefore Saab cars suck and Caddies rule. But for some reason no one wants to buy a Caddie. When will these customers just do as they are told?
Fuck you and your rickrolls, Newell. I’m not clicking that ’swedish model’ link.