Category Archives: Economy

Dear America,

Would you marry someone, who has the mentality of a criminal? Someone you know to be a bully. Someone, who has been caught lying regularly. Someone, who breaks promises, agreements and laws as if they didn’t exist. Someone, who has no problem with outright blackmail or even violence, if that’s what it takes to reach the wanted results.

Would you hire such a person to work for you, or go into business with that person? Would you want someone like that as your boss or closest colleague? Would you want someone like that to befriend your children?

If you wouldn’t, why in heaven’s name would you elect a man, who fulfils all of the above criteria, your President? America, how did you let this happen?

This is just biased slander, you may say. Our President is a dealmaker, who will Make America Great Again. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, you might add.

Let’s take a step back. In fact, let’s go all the way back to April 4, 1949; to the day NATO was founded after World War II. The treaty itself was signed in Washington, and it has served your interests, America, from thereon. You entered the treaty because you recognised the threat posed by the Soviet Union to Western democracies. A threat that once again became evident as Russia unlawfully invaded Ukraine in 2022.

You do remember, don’t you, that Russia was the driving force of the Soviet Union and that Vladimir swore to Make Russia Great Again long before Donald entered the picture. Vladimir would love nothing more than to grab a bite of your NATO allies and preferably you too. Donald may see this as one of the many inconvenient details that he is a master at forgetting, but you shouldn’t.

It’s clear that Donald has fallen hard for Vladimir. Like attracts like. If it was only the two of them, I would wish them happy. They deserve each other. But Donald doesn’t represent only himself, he represents you too, America.

Everyone has the right to change their mind. Even in a marriage that has lasted 75 years as NATO has. But the parties still have a prenuptial agreement signed and sealed. Promises have been made, including the future aid promised to Ukraine.

Donald is now breaking your promises by the dozen. It is nauseating to watch as he withholds promised aid and intelligence support from a country that is fighting against an invader that NATO, with you in the forefront, has considered a common foe for the past 75 years.

Not to mention the way he harasses Greenland and the Danes. It is an example of bullying and greed at its purest: barely veiled threats and muscle-flexing to gain something that never belonged to you and that no one wants to give to you.

America, you have essentially elected your own Vladimir. Vladimir has invaded your thinking more successfully than he ever managed to do in Ukraine.

You may say that Russia is not something Americans should worry about anymore; it’s Europe’s problem. I disagree. Unless you are ready to give up on democracy? If so, who am I to stop you. But before you do, please ask yourself: Do I really want America to become like Russia?

Just as Vladimir has done before him, Donald is all set to extend his presidency past its present term and to remove the need for future elections. He is taking over the army, FBI and CIA as we speak; or at least making a determined effort to do so. He is making sure no one will investigate his or his friends’ doings. His “team” even ensured that bad cops are free from public scrutiny in the future. These are all facts. You can track the nominations and decisions online, if you don’t believe me.

The similarities between Donald bullying Canada financially and Vladimir attacking Ukraine physically are more than fleeting. Actually, Donald is taking it a step further; he is coveting land all the way from Greenland to Gaza.

The way he is going, he may even try to mess with the Fed, thus singlehandedly upending the world economy. Banking is based on trust. Seriously, who would dare trust a Fed guided by Donald’s capricious hand? The financial gain you seem to be focusing on is only a hairsbreadth away from turning into unimaginable losses.

I can understand that it is hard to face the facts. It is often hard to leave a spouse that treats you badly too. When bad things happen, you may tell yourself that this is just an aberration; that things will soon get better. Why would they? Does Donald look like a man ready to change? It’s time to face reality.

Is this what the Founding Fathers envisaged, when they signed the Declaration of Independence: Musk firing employees summarily, aid withdrawn without proper process, treaties and promises broken, allies bullied? Is this something they would have condoned? Were their ideals based on pure monetary gain – preferably their own?

You may say that America has paid enough. Europe has paid just as much as far as Ukraine is concerned. When one totals the military, financial and humanitarian aid given to Ukraine, the sums paid by both parties are close to equal. Assuming you are willing to use the real, documented numbers – not the ones dreamed up by Donald. The only difference is that Europe is still keeping the promises it made, while you are now breaking them.

Or maybe you just don’t care anymore? If so, that is your prerogative. I just wonder what life without trust looks like? I think you should too. Do you really want your children and grandchildren to grow up in an environment, where a criminal mentality is just fine as long as there is something to be gained financially?

America, when Ukraine finally sees peace, it will be at a cost higher than it should have been – all because of you. This became abundantly clear to the whole world, when JD and Donald bullied Zelenskyy in front of the media – demanding a thank you from him, while they were actively working with Russia against the Ukrainians’ rightful efforts to preserve their nation.

Just as they are working to get a real estate deal in Gaza. All in the name of peace.

America, it is time to update The Star-Spangled Banner. Let’s face it. You are not the “land of the free and the home of the brave” anymore. You are fast becoming the land of the greedy and the home of the bullies.

Knots, knits and opinions

We all have opinions, whether we recognise them or voice them. They are there from the day of our birth. Some things we like, some things we don’t. Our opinions can be based on facts or feelings, but they are still opinions: our personal take on what those (perceived) facts or feelings mean.

Which is why it was a day for the history books, when I found myself in such a relaxed state during our summer holiday that I was unable to come up with a single opinion on anything.

My mind just decided to take a break. Not even the sunset (which was beautiful in hindsight) could move me to have an opinion. It was almost startling.

There we sat at our cosy dinner table, my partner in life and I, watching the sun set over “our” lake. We had bought, prepared and eaten early potatoes, all sorts of vegetables, and muikku (a.k.a. vendace, a species of freshwater whitefish); all straight from nearby farms and lakes. We had topped our meal off with delicious, just-picked strawberries. We were well-fed and well-rested.There was no need to think or speak. We just cherished the moment with our minds blank in the best possible way.

The war in Ukraine, climate change, Finland’s entry into Nato, the latest coronavirus news, the rising inflation numbers and interest rates, the promise of a cold winter with insufficient heating due to gas supply issues, recession speculations, rise of populism, not to mention the never-ending power struggle between the superpowers – nothing – not a single opinion on any of these was forthcoming.

Moments like this are as fleeting as butterfly stops. I hope you have had a chance to enjoy a few of them amidst all that is going on in the world.

Reality has a tendency to catch up with you, whether you wish it or not. My favourite newspaper made sure of that. It provided me with an in depth article on all the crises looming in the horizon. The list seemed endless: debt crisis, housing market crisis, commodity crisis (including but not limited to energy crisis), Euro-crisis, China- crisis (political and financial), and a recession for the history books. All of this on top of the war in Ukraine.

Reality even invaded our balcony as we returned to Helsinki from our holiday refuge. Instead of butterflies, we could count helicopters on the deck of USS Kearsage, a 257 m (843 ft) long, nuclear powered Wasp-class amphibious assault ship that slowly slipped past us into the port of Helsinki.

Talking about wasps: I sent one of the photos above to a friend. His answering text said it all: “Not half as scary as Nancy Pelosi”.

To a political outsider Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan looked like she was stirring up a hornet´s nest that might just create the butterfly effect that puts us en route to chaos. There is a time and place for everything. The whys of this particular trip remain obscure.

Pelosi has had an impressive career. Does she really need to top her CV with “Started World War III”? To paraphrase an old saying : With friends like this, who needs enemies to feel unsafe.

To continue with sayings: Life truly is like a box of chocolates. Over and over again you bite into something sugar/chocolate-coated without really knowing what you will find inside. My first taste of Nato tells me that I will probably not love it, but I will still keep it on the menu to ensure that I get enough sustenance to survive.

Chocolates come in many forms. Often the surprises they offer are delightful. While Pelosi was traipsing around Taiwan, we went to Fiskars; a picturesque village in Southern Finland known for combining design, art and architecture in a unique and inspiring way.

Pelosi and reality were once again forgotten, when we browsed the exhibition “U-joints: Knots&Knits”. U-joints is an ongoing research project and exhibition series by Andrea Caputo and Anniina Koivu. The exhibitions examine the functional and aesthetic relevance of this crucial design component.

Knots and Knits is the fourth chapter of the project. The exhibition was a piece of art in itself as well as in its details. It gave the viewer a new perspective on design.

I leave you with this thought: We may have managed to tie our world in knots, but hope still remains that we can continue to knit something beautiful out of it. Just look at all the ingenious things we have designed so far.

Doom-doom-doomers

I address my message today to the Terrifying Triplets, the authors of present day doom and gloom – not only in their respective superpowers but worldwide. I am not referring to the pandemic. I give the Triplets the benefit of doubt on that one. I am talking about the games they play with people’s lives.

Hey, doom-doom-doomers, please put some ice in your hats and cool it. Let’s not get crazy – or rather, let’s not get any more crazy.

To summarise the mess that the doomers have made so far:

Trump, America’s Darth Vader, managed to slice his country in two with his laser beam of alternative facts and bullying. While he was at it, he sliced a big chunk off the base of Western democracy and made us question its survival; trust and human decency were suddenly in short supply. Now he is trying to claw his way back into the presidential game.

In the meantime, Xi Jinping has been busy doggedly enacting Orwell’s 1984. After perfecting his mind control- surveillance- social engineering strategy on his test site, the Uighurs, he has been slowly rolling out the concept to all of China and is now ready for worldwide expansion.

It is understandable that Putin has felt a little bit left out. No to mention the fact that others have been picking on him. The Ukraine mess is not of Putin’s making alone. This may partially explain why he has gone into full Peter the Great mode. Traditional war is so old and out, but you use what you have, when trolling and cyberattacks alone won’t do the trick.

Seriously doomers, why are you wasting your energy on bullying, trolling and outright war, whether physical or virtual.

Any strategy adviser worth her or his salt would tell you that you should tend to your existing portfolios and turn around present businesses, not spread your efforts to markets, where establishing yourself will cost you dearly, only to result in failure.

While you are at it, beware of halving your portfolio as Trump did.

The first thing a strategist learns is that you need to understand the market. Is it worth the effort? Then you look at the business. What is key to market success: the people, the IPR:s, the technology (be it software or hardware), or other immaterial or physical assets? Can you hold on to those assets? Can you add value to the business? Can you scale the business? What about the culture? What obstacles will you face upon integration? Is it all worth the price you will have to pay?

As I am not that familiar with the ins and outs of other countries, I will take Finland as an example. Finland is very much a people business. The country has survived mostly on brains and Finnish ‘sisu’. The latter translates into strength of will, determination, perseverance and acting rationally in the face of adversity.

The market is small and the business is not scalable.

A hostile takeover would not end well in this case example. Even niceoldladies would turn nasty overnight. The end result would compare to the acquisition of a thriving consultancy business at a high price, only to find that the consultants you paid so much for are now fully committed to undermining your business efforts any which way they can.

Not-so-dear doomers, you should be focusing on sustainable organic growth rather than costly growth by acquisition. You should be cleaning up your political closets, tending to the needs of your people and addressing the crucial question of climate change.

As you, my readers, have noted by now, this is not a blog about the video game Doom. Some of you may even have noticed that I am paraphrasing Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin in my headline.

Pre-Omicron, Ms. Marin and her husband were caught clubbing with friends and acquaintances. Contrary to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s partying that is presently making the headlines, Marin’s clubbing was – at the time – fully in line with the COVID restrictions placed on Finns in general, albeit not fully in line with the added restrictions placed on cabinet ministers. Hence Marin’s political opponents and the media had a field day criticising her and dubbing her ‘the party princess’.

Normally the clubbing incident would be history by now. However, Marin unwittingly made it unforgettable at one sweep, when she tried to put a stop to the discussion on Instagram. The text of her post read: “Hey, boom-boom-boomer, put ice in your hat and cool it.” Needless to say, the post was not well-received by Finnish boomers.

Despite being a boomer myself, I was fine with the not-too-wild-at-all clubbing, but the Instagram post made me question Marin’s political acumen. The incident, once again, proved that prime ministers should not personally tweet or post on Instagram.

Not that Mr. Johnson did any better, when he tried to brush off the matter of the Downing Street party that broke the COVID lockdown rules by stating: “Nobody told me that what we were doing was against the rules.” Seriously man, is that really the story you want to go with? Who do you think is in charge of setting those rules?

Both PM:s were clearly off their game during these incidents. But the thing that strikes me as worse is all the petty politicking and scandal-mongering that was – and still is -taking place around matters like this. Leaders have enough on their plate these days. Let’s keep our eye on the big issues.

You might think that this blog post is prompted by Russia’s present warmongering. You would be right and wrong. It is just part of the picture. The spreading of doom and gloom has been going on much longer. First we saw the tip of the iceberg, now the bulk of it is slowly coming into view.

The Terrifying Triplets are dinosaurs, who have lost themselves in dreams of past and future glory instead of addressing the everyday needs of their people.

Leaders with untenable strategies inevitably find themselves in a position they never sought: Sailing off alone towards the final sunset.

One can only hope that we don’t end up on the brink of extinction before these present day dinosaurs sail off and give the world a chance to do better.

Divine intervention

Years ago my four-year old son came home from his day care centre in a huff. Someone at the centre had taken on the daunting task of explaining God to four-year-olds. My son’s take on the matter was that God resided in heaven and heaven was somewhere in the clouds.

If the story of Amazon kicking Parler off Amazon Cloud had broken that day, my son would probably have seen it as divine intervention.

However, as that story was to unfold some 40 years later, my son’s mind was instead wrapped around the – in his mind totally impossible – idea that people searched for God. How could that be true, he questioned. There is no ladder tall enough to reach the clouds.

On a more serious note, when global mega-actors like Facebook, Twitter and Amazon finally restrict the results of their own actions – their enabling of the spreading of fake news, hate and violence – there is nothing divine about their intervention. They are just scrambling to safeguard their backs.

It’s like the call for non-violence that Trump finally made. Too little, too late, and guided purely by self-interest.

None of these people should have been given the power they have today: not Trump, not the decision makers of Facebook, Twitter and Amazon. I think we all see it clearly, but have no idea what to do about it.

Yet the problem needs to be addressed. There has to be a reasonable way to make sure that social media giants can’t act as gods of free – or censored – speech on their platforms without any real outside control. Owners come and go, platforms easily remain, whether benign – or not.

It’s not only about allowing calls for hate and violence on worldwide platforms. It’s just as much about the ability to suddenly turn the off-switch on a president, however misguided he may be. None of these decisions should be solely up to a few decision makers, whose primary loyalty is to their investors.

Since self-restriction is difficult, there has to be enough outside pressure to ensure that the fine line between free speech and criminal, systematic misguidance is drawn by institutions that have been set up for that purpose with due process.

No border safety measures and defence programs are more important than this. The ever-existing missile threat may prove to be a small problem compared to the threat posed by the potential to subtly and systematically spread disinformation to billions of people.

This has to become a priority for decision makers, however long their to-do lists already are.

Trump did teach us something valuable. The Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has the right of it: We need to look infinitely harder at who we elect, including examining the candidate’s character and ethics.

However, since this is easier said than done, we also need to look infinitely harder at how lying and bullying could become the presidential norm overnight.

My favourite newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, published a remarkably thorough info package on the what, where, when and why of the Epiphany of Trump’s Presidency.

I am not referring to the Christian holiday Epiphany – although the dates do coincide. I am referring to the storming of the U.S. Capitol; the sudden manifestation of the essential nature of Trump’s presidency: Self-inflicted chaos.

One of Helsingin Sanomat’s excellent articles explained how the angry dissent that Trump built on has been steadily growing online since the early days of the web. What the article forgot to mention is that extremist groups become big much more easily, when they have access to big platforms with algorithms that speed up their growth.

Trump could write the manual on “How to lie and bully your way to the White House”, but he could not have succeeded in creating the chaos of today without Twitter and Facebook.

It’s time to move on and make sure that votes still matter, that good government still matters. We need international co-operation and legislation to ensure that reason prevails on and off social media in the future.

Note: My featured image is an excerpt from Angeles Santos’ painting “A World”. Since the painting is from 1929, it’s safe to say that is was never meant as a commentary on Trump or social media. But somehow it fits our world today. Sadly, my camera never caught the whole painting.

App attack

I am under attack. My life has been taken over by apps. Whether I am entering my home, calling an elevator, banking, buying, or using products and services; everything is “conveniently” handled through apps.

Continue reading →

Beyond COVID-19

I have tried to peer into the horizon and picture the world post the COVID-19 crisis. My mind lets me down time and again. My thoughts swing wildly between “this is just a short term crisis” and “this will change the world forever”.  I am not alone. Continue reading →

Liking as a way of life

These days everybody wants to “hear from me”. They are eager to empower me. They want to know what I like and dislike. Suddenly empowering others has become the easiest way to avoid responsibility and accountability in your chosen profession. Continue reading →

London calling

The EU-UK divorce is scheduled for Friday 29 March, 2019. To paraphrase The Clash: The ice-age may not be coming and London may not be drowning, but a Brexit-related meltdown is still possible. Will London be calling? Continue reading →

Say dog

Welcome to the nastyoldlady blog. For quality purposes your viewing may be monitored and recorded. Your privacy is important to me. To hear my privacy policy, press 1. For other languages, press 2. Due to higher than normal reader volume, the wait time for this blog may be longer than expected. Continue reading →

Freezers and royal escapism

A 19-year-old woman was found dead in a walk-in hotel freezer in Chicago some time ago. The incident caught fire on social media, and was widely covered by the more traditional media too.

I mention this only to illustrate what catches our attention these days. Continue reading →