Post-frenzy post

It seems rare to find a society-interested (ie non-myopic or navel-gazing) news-source that does not mention Obama. In Norway, we’ve been fairly clear on what we’d vote since the beginning of the race. There was some surprise when the supported candidate lost in the Democratic primaries, but perceptions changed to fit the landscape, and her opponent at least made the right party win. Parties are big in Norway, and thus we think they are elsewhere. Having the parties air out their laundry in public seems quaint.

At home, the world can now breathe out. The local scandals can continue, to the extent they have not been conveniently forgotten. For one, the current prime minister privately messaged his long-term friend, the director of the largest private bank DNBNor, only days before the Norwegian bank bailout was made public. Between this messaging and the publication, DNBNor liquidated a NOK2.3G portfolio of state-obligations. The bailout, to the tune of NOK350G, depressed the price of the obligations sold by some NOK70M, which could be considered a profit on their shorting. Luckily, the chairman of the finance supervising board Kredittilsynet is also one of this group of friends, and only after severe prodding in the media (and stating that no bad had occurred) did he remove himself from the investigation, after clearly stating that he was not too involved to supervise it.
The prime minister, of course, still has the messages barred from public as ‘nationally sensitive’, but the media is keeping this warm in a fashion – although most of them seem to think that nothing wrong has happened on the political side. Those greedy bankers.

Yes, the media. The largest TV channel here is NRK, Norsk Rikskringkasting. NRK is state owned, and the chairman is appointed by the department of culture. Like the state bureaucracy, NRK is supposed to be politically independent. This independency is seen most clearly in the fact that NRK stays pro-AP, regardless of who else may be in power at the time. The second scandal these days comes with the publishing of the memoirs of one of the old NRK journalists, who was receiving money from the labor-party to actively campaign for them in the 60s. As most scandals, this has a bit of hypocrisy to it, as all of NRK is funded by the department, and that department tends to be headed by the labor-party.

One could say that the scandal was that he was getting paid twice for doing the same job.

-rN

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