Editorials and columns

Nordic Model is So Last Century!

By Risto E. J. Penttilä
CEO, Central Chamber of Commerce of Finland

The Nordic Model was the talk of the town ten years ago. Now everyone wants to copy Singapore. What happened? Why did Singapore overtake Finland and the other Nordic states? And, most importantly, is there still life left in the Nordic Model? Who is the most influential person in the world? This is the question that I ...
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Pipedreams and Nightmares

By Risto E. J. Penttilä
Director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA

Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin must be pleased. The construction of the Nord Stream, a gas pipeline the two leaders concocted in the 1990s, is about to commence. Hundreds of kilometres of gas pipes are waiting to be laid on the bottom of the North Sea. The governments of Russia, Germany, Poland, Finland and S...
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NATO Goes North

By Risto E. J. Penttilä
Director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA

The word North regained some of its lost political significance when Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently became the head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation aka NATO. This is likely to be followed by the membership of Finland and Sweden in the alliance. Sounds preposterous? It is not. Plent...
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It’s the End of the World as We Know It

By Risto E. J. Penttilä
Director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA

An American rock band called R.E.M. had a big hit in the late 1980s. I remember the song very well because I was finishing my doctoral dissertation in the UK at the time. The song was called ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’. The lyrics seemed to describe what would happen if I did not finish ...
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Convergence of Economic Systems – Take Two

By Risto E. J. Penttilä
Director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA

During the Cold War era, there was plenty of talk about convergence between socialism and capitalism. In the aftermath of Senator Barack Obama’s tour of Europe, there is talk about convergence between US capitalism and European market economy. This convergence may well prove to be more real than the previous one....
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State Capitalism in Finland

By Risto E. J. Penttilä
Director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA

Big lay-offs are always bad news. The news is even worse if the closed plant is the biggest employer in a remote corner of a country. The news becomes inflammable if the company behind the lay-offs is partially owned by the state. Stora Enso, one of the world’s leading forestry companies, ignited a storm of pro...
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