Sweden, most socialist country in the world, won't save SAAB...not a DU titter

[BannedFromDU]

RamboLiberal  Donating Member  (1000+ posts)  Journal  Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Mon Mar-23-09 05:23 AM
Original message
Sweden Says No to Saving Saab, a National Icon
   
Edited on Mon Mar-23-09 05:25 AM by RamboLiberal
Source: NY Times

TROLLHATTAN, Sweden — Saab Automobile may be just another crisis-ridden car company in an industry full of them. But just as the fortunes of Flint, Mich., are permanently entangled with General Motors, so it is impossible to find anyone in this city in southwest Sweden who is not somehow connected to Saab.

Which makes it all the more wrenching that the Swedish government has responded to Saab’s desperate financial situation by saying, essentially, tough luck. Or, as the enterprise minister, Maud Olofsson, put it recently, “The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories.”

Such a view might seem jarring, coming as it does from a country with a reputation for a paternalistic view of workers and companies. The “Swedish model” for dealing with a banking crisis — nationalizing the banks, recapitalizing them and selling them — has been much debated lately in the United States, with free-market defenders warning of a slippery slope of Nordic socialism.

But Sweden has a right-leaning government, elected in 2006 after a long period of Social Democratic rule, that prefers market forces to state intervention and ownership. That fact has made the workers of Trollhattan wish the old socialist model were more in evidence.

“I don’t think the government knows the situation in this town, how many people depend on Saab,” said Therese Doeij, 25, a clerk at a photo shop who has several friends who work at the company. “To them it’s just a factory. They don’t see the people behind it.”

Where's the outrage?


     About 30 replies there and not ONE comment that the biggest nanny state in the world sees fit NOT to save their own automaker. Thousands will lose jobs.

     Yet somehow the mere mention that a UAW member MIGHT just be slightly inconvenienced by the recession, and they howl.

     Good lord.

[USA4ME]

You're right.  Nothing but comments about how Sweden is a RW country. 

Of course, anything less than gov't tucking them into bed at night is RW to those quacks.

.

[NHSparky]

Sweden?  Right-wing?  Oh, that has to be one of the stupidest comments ever uttered at DU, or anywhere on the Web, for that matter.

[The Village Idiot]

I imagine in 1920 the left was fighting to save the buggy and buggy whip industry. I bet they would have too.

[JohnnyReb]

I thought the DUmmies would have been suckers for such a SAAB story.

[Karin]

Boo, JohnnyREb, did you get a bunch of bitchslaps for that awful pun? 
The DUmasses think that MSNBC is right wing, too.   I don't know how they think anymore. 

Sweden subsidizes their paper industry, making it very difficult for us to compete, so I don't know why they're holding back on cars. 

[The Village Idiot]

Boo, JohnnyREb, did you get a bunch of bitchslaps for that awful pun? 
The DUmasses think that MSNBC is right wing, too.   I don't know how they think anymore. 

Sweden subsidizes their paper industry, making it very difficult for us to compete, so I don't know why they're holding back on cars. 

I am sure SAAB has all sorts of subsidies and tax benefits. Its just too dang expensive for them to ask for more I guess.

[miskie]

I thought the DUmmies would have been suckers for such a SAAB story.

Ive come this far away from delivering a BS for that ( -->|<-- ) -- not for the comment mind you, but because you made it before I did

[BlueStateSaint]

I thought the DUmmies would have been suckers for such a SAAB story.

I almost spat coffee on my keyboard at reading that.

Supposedly, the Swedish government has communicated to the US, "You're taking this socialist bent waaay too far.  You're scaring us."  What does that tell you?