As the presidential election recedes, politics returns towards normality. For instance, the Centre party head Annikka Saarikko is resigning, and this has initiated speculation on who’s going to follow her. Whoever it is, it’s going to be a tough hoe to row, despite their party candidate’s good performance in the election. However, here, I’ll still mostly just concentrate on the new president.
I'm not trying to present Niinistö as a technocratic genius of a finance minister here — he's just as ready or more to rant about belt tightening as any Finnish right-winger, equating good household finances with proper state policy and so on, and he's rumored to be very stingy personally as well — but ACTUALLY, aren't tight budgets during *good times* text-book correct and good counter-cyclical fiscal policy? Sure, it's not like we fiscally expanded ourselves out of the depression in the early 90s, but since we managed to switch to brisk growth a bit later on, wasn't it particularly the Lipponen goverments who actually managed to do proper policy in that sense, though? (Nevermind that it was probably at least initially branded as just continuing the all-holy "säästölinja" to "keep the confidence of the markets" or whatever.)
Can't recall exactly right now, but wasn't it the Vartiainen and Pekkarinen book from the 90s about post-war Finnish economic policy that included some good ranting already about a kind of absolute debt dread being one of the defining features of Finnish economic policy, including some case of leaving government employees and officials without pay for a considerable period some time in the 50s or so rather than paying back government debt as planned (although no one else cared, really), or something like that? Well, anyway, I think it was Tommi Uschanov who dug that up probably for his 2012 book "Miksi Suomi on Suomi" (Why Finland is Finland"), if I recall correctly.
I'm not trying to present Niinistö as a technocratic genius of a finance minister here — he's just as ready or more to rant about belt tightening as any Finnish right-winger, equating good household finances with proper state policy and so on, and he's rumored to be very stingy personally as well — but ACTUALLY, aren't tight budgets during *good times* text-book correct and good counter-cyclical fiscal policy? Sure, it's not like we fiscally expanded ourselves out of the depression in the early 90s, but since we managed to switch to brisk growth a bit later on, wasn't it particularly the Lipponen goverments who actually managed to do proper policy in that sense, though? (Nevermind that it was probably at least initially branded as just continuing the all-holy "säästölinja" to "keep the confidence of the markets" or whatever.)
Can't recall exactly right now, but wasn't it the Vartiainen and Pekkarinen book from the 90s about post-war Finnish economic policy that included some good ranting already about a kind of absolute debt dread being one of the defining features of Finnish economic policy, including some case of leaving government employees and officials without pay for a considerable period some time in the 50s or so rather than paying back government debt as planned (although no one else cared, really), or something like that? Well, anyway, I think it was Tommi Uschanov who dug that up probably for his 2012 book "Miksi Suomi on Suomi" (Why Finland is Finland"), if I recall correctly.