17/08/2012
It was
Wall Street Journal Deutschland that reminded us yesterday in a feature piece via
Die Welt that the Finns were unhappy with the euro bailouts.
Low debt, a stable economy and low unemployment in many ways made Finland a model euro-student. But the common currency has a price. And more and more Finns seem to regard that price as too high, ran the report.
Meanwhile, having virtually ignored the growing political crisis in Germany, the
Failygraph has despatched Ambrose Evans-Pritchard to Helsinki to offer a
new euro story that wasn't about Greece, to keep the declining readership entertained.
On the capital of one of the small counties in the eurozone, Ambrose interviews Finnish foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja in Helsinki, thereby earning a report in the
Helsingin Sanomat to the effect that Finland is prepared for the break-up of the euro.
"We have to face openly the possibility of a euro-break up", Tuomioja tells Ambrose. "It is not something that anybody - even the True Finns [eurosceptic party] - are advocating in Finland, let alone the government. But we have to be prepared".
So, after stories have been flying around the world for months, about the banks, the EU commission, virtually every member state, and
professional groups openly talking about the possibility of a euro-break up, the observations of a minor politician in a minor country to the same effect are somehow news?
Interestingly, even the local
Helsingin Sanomat doesn't make this dog-bites-man story its lead (pictured above), taking care to cite Tuomioja â the good European â saying that: "the break-up of the euro does not mean the end of the European Union. It could make the EU function better".
This is translated in
Failygraph terms as, "The Nordic state is battening down the hatches for a full-blown currency crisis as tensions in the eurozone mount".
On the other hand, the
WSJ goes one better than Ambrose, citing an interview from the prime minister, Jyrki Katainen, who expresses his dislike of the bailouts, telling us that: "That's why we want to actively participate in it [the eurozone], to solve the problems".
The conservative government under Katainen, we are told, remains committed to the euro, despite the prime minister's
criticism
of the bailouts. And a survey by the Finnish television station MTV3 showed that although half of the Finns would approve of a Greek withdrawal from the euro, only 17 percent want Finland to leave the EU.
To put the matter further in perspective, Katainen has also been speaking to
der Spiegel telling it that two-thirds of Finns supported the euro. For those looking for a revolution, Finland is not the place to be.
