Swedes and the Euro

Forthe · Post by **Forthe** » September 10, 2003, 3:40 pm

Any Swedes want to weigh in on Sunday's referendum? Just curious.

Krimson Klaw · Post by **Krimson Klaw** » September 10, 2003, 3:52 pm

Well the Swedish Foreign Minister was almost stabbed to death, outspoken supporter of entering the Euro. But I'm not Swedish.

Dindolur · Post by **Dindolur** » September 11, 2003, 6:52 am

Not "almost" stabbed to death i'm afraid...
The Swedish Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh passed away this morning due to the injuries from yesterdays knife attack

Forthe · Post by **Forthe** » September 11, 2003, 7:33 am

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3098834.stm

Kylere · Post by **Kylere** » September 11, 2003, 9:40 am

If she was stabbed over currency, then I think that the world may be worse off than reading Kyoukan indicates it is.

That is truly damn sad, they can call my money anything they want to, I mean really, who cares.

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » September 11, 2003, 10:52 am

I read something disturbing the other day: Sweden has more murders per citizen than the US does. I wonder why Sweden is so different from Norway that way, considering how similar the countries are..

It's a sad day, the world lost what seemed like an actual good politician. Much like Palme back in the day

Krimson Klaw · Post by **Krimson Klaw** » September 11, 2003, 10:55 am

-edit- nm, I was thinking Swtizerland.

Adex_Xeda · Post by **Adex_Xeda** » September 11, 2003, 12:19 pm

Can Swedes easily own and carry firearms?

If their firearms laws are more restrictive than the USA, it might go to argue that gun violence is not as directly linked to legislation as it is other social issues.

Krimson Klaw · Post by **Krimson Klaw** » September 11, 2003, 12:34 pm

Well England has no guns but have a higher violent crime rate than America by far. Where you see the interesting turn is in the murder rates. England is more violent than America, but we commit more murders when we are violent due to firearms by something like 30:1.

Gildan · Post by **Gildan** » September 11, 2003, 1:00 pm

Hey everyone!

I just want to post this link in regards to Kelshara's post, it seems that Interpol is including attempted murders in Swedens numbers. When looking at the statistics from The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention the number for 2001 is 167 completed murders.

http://www.bertramonline.com/article/327/

vn_Tanc · Post by **vn_Tanc** » September 11, 2003, 1:20 pm

That is truly damn sad, they can call my money anything they want to, I mean really, who cares

Christ you should see all the conservative little-englanders go frikkin nuts when you threaten to take away the pound. It's like you've suggested a union with France or something. Fucking deranged.

Well England has no guns but have a higher violent crime rate than America by far

Got the figures on that?

Gildan · Post by **Gildan** » September 11, 2003, 1:25 pm

You can get statistics from this page, but as the figures in the documents only reflects what is reported from each country, it's almost impossible to compare since there is no standard for reporting this.

http://www.interpol.com/Public/Statisti ... efault.asp

Kylere · Post by **Kylere** » September 11, 2003, 1:56 pm

vn_Tanc wrote:
That is truly damn sad, they can call my money anything they want to, I mean really, who cares
Christ you should see all the conservative little-englanders go frikkin nuts when you threaten to take away the pound. It's like you've suggested a union with France or something. Fucking deranged.

Wow do you actually see (at a street level) objection to this, or is it merely at an editorial level? The can call dollars credit, shekels, salt, doobies, tinsel, fords, etc and I could care less if it did not affect the buying power of what I earned. Names are valueless.

On a second thought, not all names are valueless, Nike and Coke would disagree with me. But the names for our monetary units are...

Chmee · Post by **Chmee** » September 11, 2003, 2:25 pm

Well, actually it isn't quite the same (not that that means there is justification for stabbing people). Money today is not backed by anything tangible. How much a given currency is worth is largely determined by how stable people think it is (and how stable the nation/organization issuing it is). If whoever issues the money decides to double the amount in circulation suddenly, whatever you currently have of the currency will probably suffer a steep decline in value. So if people are worried that the new currency will not be as stable long term as their own, it can be a valid concern. As far as if that concern is correct in terms of moving to the euro, I don't know. But there are reprecussions beyond just using a currency with a new name.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » September 11, 2003, 2:49 pm

Gildan wrote:Hey everyone!

I just want to post this link in regards to Kelshara's post, it seems that Interpol is including attempted murders in Swedens numbers. When looking at the statistics from The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention the number for 2001 is 167 completed murders.

So Swedes can't finish what they start?

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » September 11, 2003, 3:58 pm

Man I don't know where in the world that sweden statistic came from but it's not correct. The US has about 5.5 murders per 100,000 thousand and Sweden is down around 1.3, one of the lowest in the world.

Oddly enough Ireland and Japan are tied for the lowest at about .6 per 100,000 and Northern Ireland is the highest among western nations with 6.

Krimson Klaw · Post by **Krimson Klaw** » September 11, 2003, 4:16 pm

vn_Tanc wrote:
Well England has no guns but have a higher violent crime rate than America by far
Got the figures on that?

That chart Gildan posted backs what I said, Englands crime percentage wise is almost 3 times greater than Americas at around 4% and 10% respectively. America has a population of ~280M with 11.84M crime occurences, England has a pop of ~52M with 5.17M crime occurences. If you weed out all the other crime and actually get the violent crimes like rape, murder, aggravated assaults etc. the gap widens even more.

vn_Tanc · Post by **vn_Tanc** » September 12, 2003, 4:57 am

Wow do you actually see (at a street level) objection to this, or is it merely at an editorial level?

Are you kidding? Over 50% of our population are against the Euro ("Defend our Pound!!!!111") at any given time. They see the pound as a symbol of our country as much as the queen or whatever other nonsense.

I think it's a position that's been pushed by those with vested interests (most newspaper editors for some reason) because frankly we would be somewat screwed by going to the Euro. Trading in Sterling is a fairly major portion of our commerce-driven economy.

Interesting stuff about the crime rates too. I'm gonna look more closely at that when I get time.