<\/a><\/p>\n\u201dActions are necessary,\u201d Liikanen said in the end, not surprisingly.<\/p>\n
Necessary actions, according to Liikanen, include improving cost competitiveness and restructuring the pension system and social security system. People should a have more active work years in their lives, he continued.<\/p>\n
\u201dElectronic and forest industry are highly cost competitive areas of business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Electronic industry have suffered from Nokia\u2019s collapse. It used to be the biggest employer of Finland and played a major role in exports. Forest industry is still the basis of Finland\u2019s exports. But:<\/p>\n
\u201dSalaries have risen more than in the eurozone on average, and at the same time, Finnish companies\u2019 ability to pay salaries have gotten worse. Companies must be able to offer their products overseas with competitive prices,\u201d Liikanen said in his laconic style.<\/p>\n
He added that Finland needs less regulation and more competition. He undoubtedly meant that trade unions have too much much power. Finland is ranked 103rd out of 144 countries for labor flexibility in 2015 by the World Economic Forum.<\/p>\n
\u201dWhen there are new entrepreneurs, there is more competition and thus more innovations,\u201d Liikanen said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As the Governor of the Bank of Finland Liikanen is also a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank and a Governor of the International Monetary Fund for Finland.<\/p>\n
He has strong ties to European Union\u2019s institutions. In 1990, he became the first Finnish ambassador to the European Union and in 1994 he became the first Finnish Member of the European Commission. He was Commissioner for Budget, Personnel and Administration.<\/p>\n
I wouldn\u2019t expect him to critisize euro. But I would have expected him to talk more about ECB:s monetary policy.<\/p>\n
All he said was: \u201dMonetary policy is already supporting the recovery of national economics but as the interest rates are low, we must take care that negative side effects do not occur. So macroeconomical stability policy is needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liikanen pointed out that statistics show that Finland has used more mechanisms of finance policy than any other country in eurozone to help its\u2019 economy to recover.<\/p>\n
He rejected stimulation by saying:\u201d Because Finland\u2019s problems lie in exports, stimulation is not an answer. The biggest losses are in the industry, whereas the service sector has grown. This is why raising the internal demand by stimulus is not a solution. However, public investments that are likely to accelerate private investments are to be implemented.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finland\u2019s largest sector of the economy is services at 65.7 percent. Manufacturing and refining together make up 31.4 percent. Primary production is 2.9 percent.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Journalist Simon Nixon sounded just like the Finnish government on November 25, 2015, when he wrote on Wall Street Journal that \u201cFinland\u2019s Problem Isn\u2019t the Euro\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201dIt is easy to exaggerate the role devaluation played in the British and Swedish recoveries\u201d, Nixon wrote.<\/p>\n
Sweden has cut its public spending from over 60 percent of GDP in the mid-1990s to just over 50 percent now. Finland\u2019s public spending is at present 59 percent of GDP.<\/p>\n
Finland’s working-age population economically active is five percentage points below that in Sweden \u2014 “a serious problem for a country whose workforce is already shrinking as a result of having the worst demographic profile in the EU,\u201d Nixon compared.<\/p>\n
He reminded his readers that \u201dtwo of the fastest-growing economies in the EU now are Ireland and Spain, both of which are in the eurozone.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that Finland has benefited from unprecedentedly low funding costs since the start of the euro crisis. \u201dThat reflects Finland\u2019s high levels of fiscal credibility, based on its low debt and deficits and its commitment to complying with the eurozone\u2019s fiscal rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
Helena Yli-Renko, Assistant Professor of Clinical Entrepreneurship at University of California, also emphasizes the positive effects euro has had. Common currency has helped Finnish companies to grow global, she said to me. \u201dCommon currency has been a way of simplifying processes.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Opinions about euro are many and mixed so I asked even more of them.<\/p>\n
Unto H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4inen is eminent political commentator in Finland and senior editor of the leading newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. He pointed out that, first of all, Paavo V\u00e4yrynen has revenge going on with his petition.<\/p>\n
V\u00e4yrynen is bitter of not getting minister\u2019s post after this year\u2019s elections, after which he decided to stay in The European Parliament and get back at the party\u2019s leader, Prime Minister Sipil\u00e4. V\u00e4yrynen is an attention seeker, H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4inen said.<\/p>\n
H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4inen in convinced that Fixit won\u2019t happen and is not even discussed about because the two parties that were originally against euro are now the two ruling parties of Finland. In Finnish parliament, there is no party that would support Fixit.<\/p>\n
Another journalist, prominent economic writer Paavo J. Teittinen says that he believes Finland would be better off without euro. He himself supports Fixit, but he does not believe mark will ever come back. In Teittinen\u2019s opinion, it\u2019s ridiculous that Finnish politicians blame other countries for not following the euro regulations because the biggest problem in euro is the regulations themselves. Currency it\u2019s not planned well at all.<\/p>\n
Euro was just a mission of peace in Europe.<\/p>\n
It allowed Finland to position itself in the core of Europe and away from the unpredictable Russia.<\/p>\n
Ove the years the ones who have been against euro are the \u201dfoolish conservatives\u201d or the \u201dprovincialists\u201d. The populist right-wing party Perussuomalaiset had the departure of euro in their agenda \u2013 until they became a governing party.<\/p>\n
Many others are just unrationally attached to euro.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Teittinen hopes that the possibility of the exit would anyway be studied thoroughly and discussed seriously.<\/p>\n
We do not want to be in a situation where we face more troubles and ask ourselves silently if they are due to a malfunctioning currency.<\/p>\n
I agree.<\/p>\n
I will not climb to the attic to look for my envelope full of Finnish marks. Not yet.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sources also: The Wall Street Journal<\/p>\n
Bank of Finland<\/p>\n
Helsingin Sanomat<\/p>\n
The World Economic Forum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Year\u2019s Day is always special, but for Finland in 2002, the day was very, very special. In the afternoon, I walked across Esplanade Park in Helsinki heading to a restaurant and stopped by on an ATM to withdraw money. The cash machine did not give me Finnish marks, as it would have done the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":637,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/637"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}