Labour, productivity, wages, ownership, value creation and capital markets.
2026-09-10 · Economy · Tools · EN
Petri Lehmuskoski, founder of Gorilla Capital, explains why product market fit is an unusable term: it has never been defined, so it cannot be measured. In its place his book More Scars Than Trophies offers four measurable proof stacks, the first two being buyer proof and value proof — and value is only counted after the customer's own cost, at worst the decision-maker's reputational cost, has been subtracted. Running through it is the concept of hull speed: more money does not raise the speed if the hull will not take it, and a company's hull speed is the product of the entrepreneurs in it. Lehmuskoski explains why revenue is a poor measure of value, why growth and scaling are not the same thing, why an exit has to be built from the day the company is founded, and how AI consumes hard-won evidence ever faster. It closes on the camel and the unicorn as investment strategies. Published 10 September 2026.
NeuvottelijaEP407Petri LehmuskoskiGorilla CapitalAngel investing
2026-09-09 · Economy · Tools · EN
Sami Miettinen recalls an invitation to Google DeepMind’s Slush event on 18 November 2025 and connects Gemini 3 and Antigravity with his interviews with Google’s Topi Manu and Fortum’s Heikki Keskiväli.
GoogleGoogle DeepMindGeminiAntigravitySlush
2026-09-03 · Research · Economy · EN
A media appearance. On Lasse Mikkonen's AI Kanava, Sami Miettinen and Anssi Nurminen of the wholesaler Kespro describe an experiment in which three people and three AI agents share a WhatsApp group and tag each other's agents across. Miettinen's justification is methodological: the group is a safe space where security is stress-tested live. The episode covers video production and the Chinese models, the open-versus-closed competitive set-up, Miettinen's contested claim that recursive self-improving AI has already arrived — and his own qualification that a general intelligence better than humans at everything does not exist — along with security, local models, the energy bottleneck and Europe's third-mover position. It closes on two markedly different forecasts of where Finnish organisations will be in three years. Published 3 September 2026.
Sami MiettinenAnssi NurminenLasse MikkonenAI KanavaArtificial intelligence
2026-09-03 · Economy · EN
Fundco managing partner Saku Sairanen shows how private equity's return advantage inverted in three years: in Bain & Company's report PE funds still beat the S&P 500 across every horizon in 2023, while in this year's report the index wins on every horizon except twenty years. The episode unpacks the mechanism: deals struck in 2021 at high multiples, rates rising from zero to five, leverage turning against returns — and then the secondaries and evergreen loop in which a stake bought below NAV is marked to 100 per cent the next day and the resulting IRR becomes the sales pitch to smaller investors. Includes two fact-checked case studies from opposite extremes, Bain's Kioxia and Thoma Bravo's Medallia, plus Finland's capital shortage and an open disagreement about a named competitor's business model. Recorded 3 September 2026. Contains conflict-of-interest disclosures; not investment advice.
NeuvottelijaEP405Saku SairanenPrivate EquitySecondaries
2026-08-30 · Economy · Tools · EN
Ali Omar, Jyri Engeström and Kim Väisänen discuss the same phenomenon from three different positions: an angel investor with 29 startups, a Silicon Valley fund manager, and a serial entrepreneur who has sold his company. Together they answer a question no single episode answers alone — when angel investing is worth doing, when it is a poor route to wealth, and what separates fund mathematics from a private investor's mathematics.
2026-08-25 · Economy · Research · EN
Mikko Alasaarela opens with a claim that sounds like a conspiracy theory and turns out to be an engineering calculation: Elon Musk has acquired control of the entire technology stack, from solar panels and batteries to chips, models, robots, space and communications. The missing piece was his own fabrication, and the Terafab rising in Texas removes the dependency on ASML, TSMC and Nvidia. This article works through the episode's claims and checks the key figures against public sources: Terafab's $16.8bn initial investment, the $1.25 trillion SpaceX–xAI merger, the $60bn all-stock Cursor deal, Starlink's 65 MHz spectrum purchase and Anthropic's ownership structure. It also carries a correction to episode 132 from 2022: Musk was not trolling with the Twitter share — he succeeded there too.
NegotiatorEP403Sami MiettinenMikko AlasaarelaElon Musk
2026-08-21 · Economy · EN
A guest appearance on MP Martin Paasi's Paasipodi. The conversation opens with Wille Rydman's NGO funding cuts and the trap the National Coalition Party would have walked into had it started complaining, moves through bloc politics on the Swedish and Danish models, and lands on what Miettinen argues changes election debate permanently: once anyone can run a political claim through a language model, rhetoric without analysis no longer survives the first fact-check. Along the way: Samantha's workflow on OpenClaw, Atte Harjanne's proposed superintelligence ban, open source as Europe's only sensible strategy, the zero-sum thinking behind data centre opposition — and Samantha's fact-check, on request, of the four test claims thrown at her in the episode.
NegotiatorSami MiettinenMartin PaasiPaasipodiEconomic policy
2026-08-17 · Economy · EN
Aktia chief economist Lasse Corin unpacks a forecast of 2.1 percent GDP growth for Finland. The episode separates what in that number is real growth from what is a statistical artefact, why the fighter jet procurement barely moves GDP, what rising productivity actually measures, and why Finland's public finance figures are unusually hard to read in international comparison.
NeuvottelijaEP401Lasse CorinSami MiettinenFinnish economy
2026-08-10 · Economy · Tools · EN
Topi Salin and Amos Ahola dissect structural flaws in welfare socialism, distorted economic incentives, and how high tax wedges accelerate AI substitution in the labor market.
NeuvottelijaEP400SocialismTaxationAI
2026-08-06 · Research · Economy · EN
MP Joakim Vigelius and Sami Miettinen analyse the Ceuta border crisis in Spain, European migration policies, and Finland's emergency border security legislation.
NeuvottelijaEP399BorderSecurityMigrationJoakim Vigelius
2026-07-30 · Research · Economy · EN
How Sami Miettinen used Gemini 3.6 Thinking, Codex GPT-5.6 SOL, Python and public FRED data to turn an intuition about AI, wages, tax bases and sovereign risk into a falsifiable working paper—and why the first test did not confirm the thesis.
artificial intelligenceAI deflationwagessovereign riskTIPS
2026-07-14 · Economy · Society · EN
Tax lawyer and Doctor of Laws Janne Juusela and Sami Miettinen work through the Orpo government’s tax decisions one by one: what was done well, what was left undone, and why. One principle runs through the hour — ability to pay, meaning tax falls only once money has actually arrived. It explains both the praise (contingent consideration, share exchanges, the reform of option taxation) and the sharpest criticism in the episode: inheritance tax falls due before a single euro has come out of the estate. It closes on due process in tax and on whether Finland needs a constitutional court, where guest and host end up on different sides.
NeuvottelijaEP395PerintöveroVerotusOptioverotus
2026-07-09 · Society · Economy · Tools · EN
Technology futurist Risto Linturi and Kari Angeria join Sami Miettinen to work through their book Elämän tarkoitus ja tekoäly. The question is not when AI surpasses people but what is left for them afterwards: where meaning comes from, where work comes from, and above all where power comes from. Linturi describes the 2,246-page technology report he curated for the Finnish Parliament’s Committee for the Future — written to be read by an AI rather than by a person — and makes two uncomfortable observations: withdrawal is possible but costs independence, and rebellion requires that the rebel’s labour still matters. Against that, concrete proposals — a five-robot quota, universal ownership — and practical lessons on why models hallucinate and how to stop them.
NeuvottelijaEP394TekoälyTulevaisuudentutkimusVallan keskittyminen
2026-07-03 · Society · Economy · EN
The summer 2026 row over the allocation criteria for STEA grants opens a larger question: what is the relationship between a state-funded NGO sector and the political parties. MP Tere Sammallahti and writer Otto Juote unpack the funding loop in which taxpayers' money goes to organisations, which buy influence communications, which lobby for more funding. It includes figures rarely set side by side: Finland has roughly 100,000 registered associations, and 724 of them received STEA support. The episode also covers Statistics Finland's GDP revisions, the weakness of GDP as a welfare measure, and parliament's own use of power — including Sammallahti's observation of how often it cannot be done becomes it can once a decision is genuinely demanded. Two right-of-centre commentators who disagree with each other at several points.
NegotiatorEP393Sami MiettinenTere SammallahtiOtto Juote
2026-07-02 · Tools · Economy · Society · EN
App developer Petri Kajander and Sami Miettinen work through what AI actually is. Kajander’s term is "temuäly" — Temu-grade intelligence: it guesses superbly and understands nothing. The weightiest part is not the bubble argument but what happens once moderation and customer support are automated — an account taken over by getting an AI support agent to bypass two-factor authentication, and an entire cloud account deleted over private drawings. Plus local models, the realities of the App Store, Gell-Mann amnesia, and two opposed views on whether inference pricing is a bubble. Both speakers are committed parties here, and that is disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP392TekoälyPaikalliset mallitAlustavalta
2026-06-21 · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen as a guest on Rami Kurimo's Puheenaihe, in the week SpaceX listed and Elon Musk became the first trillionaire. The sharper half is financial: a hundred times revenue tells you nothing about when the price comes down, because the multiple prices optionality — Musk's companies read as a stack of long-dated options, many unexercised and several created out of nothing. The second half is about Finland: imported Marxist class hatred repurposed as identity politics, a country that fails to appreciate even its own successes, and the danger of a subsidiary economy.
2026-06-05 · Economy · Tools · Society · EN
MP and long-time Rahapodi host Martin Paasi joins Sami Miettinen to unpack their talks at the Tampere investment fair. Paasi's core claim is arithmetic rather than opinion: because investor returns distribute symmetrically around the market return, costs alone shift the whole distribution left until three quarters of investors lose to the market — so zeroing costs tells you today that you will land in the top quartile. From that follow the five-thousand-euro newborn, a proposal to convert Solidium into a zero-fee national pension fund, and the question of why anyone would still own a company in Finland. Miettinen answers with the AI working group that justified an investment decision through analysis, and with an uncomfortable finding from the Hello Humans project about political bias in language models. Finally the data-centre acid test and Philip Aminoff on ownership with a face.
NeuvottelijaEP388Martin PaasiIndeksirahastotEläkejärjestelmä
2026-05-14 · Economy · Tools · EN
Both men are speaking at the Tampere investment fair the following week and neither has prepared, so they rehearse live. The result is the clearest account yet of how Miettinen actually uses AI for investing — foundation model, harness, memory and curated context as four separate layers — plus the €5,000 newborn pension, the small-cap drought, and a full-throated argument for building data centres in Finland.
Sami MiettinenMartin PaasiPaasipodiInvestingIndex funds
2026-04-30 · Economy · Society · EN
Two days after the Orpo government's 2026 spending-limits session, Martin Paasi and Sami Miettinen go through what actually survived: the self-employed pension reform, the rewritten taxation of employee share options, youth employment measures, the household deduction and first-home loans — and then the €17 billion annual deficit underneath it all. Preceded by a quarter-hour on the agent architecture both men are now running.
Sami MiettinenMartin PaasiPaasipodiFiscal policyTaxation
2026-04-24 · OpenClaw · Economy · Tools · EN
Curated local safe memory in practice: Stöbä retrieves IPO readiness and Translink SaaS valuation material as a junior investment banker would, with sources and discipline.
StöbäOpenClawAI memoryRAGIPO readiness
2026-04-22 · OpenClaw · Economy · EN
In the AI era, added value comes from understanding and the ability to explain — not from mere output. Open documentation is the new distribution channel for expertise.
OpenClawSamanthaStöbäAI workeradded value
2026-04-12 · OpenClaw · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen as a guest on Roni Arvonen's Kuuntelija for two and a half hours on artificial intelligence: why AI labour is not capital in the Marxist sense but a direct substitute for human work, what that does to a pension system funded by wage-linked contributions, which jobs go first and which go last, and why the case for labour immigration weakens at the same time. The most useful stretch is an hour on how he actually built and runs his own agent — a Mac Mini, OpenClaw, a WhatsApp channel, the security posture, and never building a dependency on a single vendor.
2026-03-23 · Society · Economy · EN
The Viisasteluklubi's original cast takes on gifts given to MPs, the Constitutional Law Committee, inheritance tax and the Social Democrats' harassment inquiry — and Tere Sammallahti announces publicly for the first time that he is running for deputy chair of the National Coalition Party. Onni Rostila, now the committee's deputy chair, defends ex ante constitutional review on three structural grounds, and Sami Miettinen proposes a thousand-euro birth endowment that would turn the pension system on its head over sixty years. Unusually, the Neuvottelija Sisäpiiri segment on the Iran war that closes the episode is included free: about thirteen minutes of material that normally sits behind a subscription. This article adds how the episode's two open questions were subsequently resolved.
NegotiatorEP377Sami MiettinenTere SammallahtiOnni Rostila
2026-03-22 · Economy · Society · EN
Topi Salin asks for a report card on the government and gets an argument that the whole left–right frame has expired. Miettinen's case: taxing human labour is a dying business model, superintelligence arrives on a timescale that makes the basic-income debate incoherent in euros, and the Marxist end state may arrive by accident — a planned economy run by free intelligence. Around it, the inheritance tax, the pension system as a negative-NPV contract for the young, and where he is actually putting money.
Sami MiettinenTopi SalinKeijon TuumaustuntiAIBasic income
2026-03-02 · Research · Economy · EN
Wolt founding team member and former Helsingin Sanomat journalist Juhani Mykkänen spent a couple of months meeting more than 60 decision-makers to find out how Finland is preparing for the AI transition — and found that nobody has the time. The episode works through Citrini Research's doomer scenario, in which AI first cuts corporate costs and then collapses wage-based purchasing power, and the question Hamilton Lane's chairman would not answer: which force is larger, companies getting more efficient or consumers getting poorer. The second half covers agentic governance as an accelerator rather than a brake, Klarna as the cautionary case, data-centric company architecture and sovereignty — closing on Tegmark's urn theory, Musk's simulation thinking, the first wave of AI-user burnout, and why your body is the only home you live in.
NeuvottelijaEP374Sami MiettinenJuhani MykkänenAI
2026-02-19 · Tools · Economy · EN
Sami Miettinen's fourth visit to Martin Paasi's Paasipodi is a practical field report from inside the tools. An investment banker who wrote Commodore 64 assembly as a teenager and then left coding for thirty years walks through what a modern AI development environment actually looks like, what it costs, how to start from zero — and ends the episode by issuing an official AI storm warning dated 19 February 2026.
Sami MiettinenMartin PaasiPaasipodiArtificial intelligenceVibe coding
2025-11-21 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen with MPs Tere Sammallahti and Onni Rostila on the pre-Christmas edition of Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 21 November 2025. The central moment is the one the title does not prepare you for: the panel defends the free speech of the chair of the Left Youth against its own political position, and asks for the law to be changed rather than for a prosecution. Alongside it, an audit office report on the previous government's spending increases, and a retail group's decision to drop Israeli products. The episode's audio was damaged and machine-restored — noted here.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloTere Sammallahti
2025-11-10 · Economy · Research · EN
Sami Miettinen joins Lasse Mikkonen and Harri Juntunen on AI Kanava, recorded at the Neuvottelija studio. An investment banker returns to coding through no-code tools, and the conversation moves from a security bug in a vibe-coded CRM to what happens to enterprise SaaS when AI becomes the interface, the capital allocation problem that leaves Finnish companies two-thirds foreign-owned, three regulatory models, and how far a negotiation can be delegated to a machine.
Sami MiettinenLasse MikkonenHarri JuntunenAI KanavaArtificial intelligence
2025-11-04 · Economy · Society · EN
Aleksi Tolvanen and Amos Ahola on the election win of Javier Milei's party in Argentina. Tolvanen had forecast 40% for La Libertad Avanza back in August, and the best passage in the episode is why 40 was the decisive number: it secures the presidential veto and closes off the juicio político route. The second core observation inverts the usual framing — Argentina's public debt relative to GDP is not exceptionally large; the problem is a default history that blocks refinancing. It closes on the Finnish State Treasury's interest-rate strategy and what should have been modelled. Published 4 November 2025.
NeuvottelijaEP358Aleksi TolvanenAmos AholaArgentina
2025-10-15 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen with MPs Tere Sammallahti and Onni Rostila on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 15 October 2025, after a long break. It opens on Finland's cross-party debt brake, which the panel considers more significant than its modest coverage suggested — while also saying what could go wrong with it. The middle is the Gaza ceasefire and the question of who fell silent when. It closes with one guest unpicking how his proposal for open learning materials became something else in print — and what he actually proposed.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloTere Sammallahti
2025-08-29 · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen's first solo appearance on Puheenaihe, hosted by Leevi Leivo. The argument is arithmetic: a household with €150,000 has nothing left to invest after the flat, while a €270bn pension complex quite logically wants large foreign targets. Founding a company without capital is hard. The angriest section is the YEL mess — entrepreneurs' pensions were never funded, the state carries a €600m expense, and the fix sits with a vague working group. The second half covers rates, tariffs, the dollar and his own portfolio: cash weight, bitcoin and gold.
2025-08-20 · Economy · Society · EN
A solo episode, made at the Sisäpiiri audience's request that Sami work through a theory without a guest to argue with. He reflects on monetary systems, the euro and the EU by way of the Hamilton musical in London. At its centre is the ECU-2 proposal from Libera's 2014 book: twelve countries entered the euro by tying their currencies to the ECU basket first, and ECU-2 runs that backwards. A floating currency is counter-cyclical and the euro pro-cyclical — Sweden and Poland took the winning position. The Hamilton half is about what a federation actually requires: a one-off assumption of state debts and a tariff-funded tax base, neither of which the EU has.
2025-08-08 · Economy · Tools · EN
The Neuvottelija half of a twin recording made with Kert Kenner's Myynnillä on asiaa podcast the same morning. Sales trainer Kenner and Miettinen map marketing, sales and negotiation onto a single funnel — with Miettinen's magnet as the new metaphor for the moment agreement snaps shut — then work through inbound versus outbound, the parasocial relationship a podcast builds, what AI agents are already doing to sales work, and why free is the worst price of all.
NegotiatorEP345Sami MiettinenKert KennerSales
2025-07-01 · Society · Economy · EN
A late June 2025 Negotiation Club on three themes. First, the gap between the Social Democrats' fairness rhetoric and its practice: the taxation of dividends from unlisted companies that the party opposes politically, and a newly elected mayor opening redundancy talks weeks after the election. Second, the Academy of Finland's funding decisions and the question of who may challenge public research money without the discussion being turned into one about academic freedom. Third, the American strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, the doctrine of the pre-emptive strike, and why air power does not change a regime. An opinionated conversation between two right-wing MPs which also concedes the limits of its own analysis.
NegotiatorEP341Sami MiettinenTere SammallahtiOnni Rostila
2025-06-09 · Economy · EN
Kvarn Capital's Martin Wichmann interviews Sami Miettinen, and the hard core of the conversation is the breaking of the Japanese yen carry trade and what follows from it for the US debt market. For thirty years the yen has been borrowed cheaply and invested into the dollar complex — now Japan's own yield curve is rising at the long end and the money is wanted home, draining the flow that finances Treasuries precisely as 37 trillion of federal debt comes up for refinancing. At the same time something unprecedented is happening: uncertainty used to strengthen the dollar and lower rates, and now self-inflicted uncertainty weakens the dollar and raises rates at once.
NegotiatorSami MiettinenKvarn CapitalMartin WichmannCarry trade
2025-04-02 · Society · Economy · EN
Recorded on April Fools' Day 2025, this Negotiation Club opens with an EVA survey in which 40 per cent of Finns see the public broadcaster as leaning left and 5 per cent as leaning right — an eightfold asymmetry. From there it moves to inheritance tax and what the debate leaves out: what comparable countries have done, where the money to pay the tax has to come from, and the fact that average adult wealth in Finland is EUR 150,000 against Sweden's EUR 300,000. The second half is Marine Le Pen's loss of eligibility and the structural problem it creates, why cordons sanitaires do not work, Finland's withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention, Greenland, and finally the question neither side asks: what did the money actually buy?
NegotiatorEP320Sami MiettinenTere SammallahtiOnni Rostila
2025-03-22 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen and MP Atte Kaleva — making his first appearance — on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 22 March 2025. The strongest section is foreign policy: two competing explanations for Russia's war are set side by side and left open, and the durability of treaties is assessed against historical examples rather than hopes. The middle section applies a liberal principle to cases where it is uncomfortable for the panel's own side. It closes on the dismantling of the gambling monopoly and a practical test for which games are worth playing.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloAtte Kaleva
2025-03-19 · Economy · Society · EN
The Negotiation Club takes on a word that two professions use to mean different things. A banker's capital is the right-hand side of the balance sheet — where the money came from. An economist's capital is the left-hand side: bridges, roads and housing. The distinction turns into policy: of Finland's roughly EUR 1,000 billion in national wealth, more than half sits in real estate that produces nothing and has been falling in value, while private financial wealth is EUR 675 billion, about EUR 150,000 per adult — EUR 150,000 to 250,000 less than in the other Nordic countries. The episode works through municipal balance sheets, imputed rent, the earnings-related pension system as a second form of taxation, what inheritance tax does to firms, the arbitrariness of the self-employed pension scheme, the return of avoir fiscal to the debate, and finally Germany's suspension of its debt brake and what it does to interest rates.
NegotiatorEP316Sami MiettinenTere SammallahtiJussi Lindgren
2025-03-01 · Economy · Society · EN
Ivan Puopolo hosts Sami Miettinen and, newly elected to parliament, Martin Paasi to work through the Murto working group's growth proposals — replacing inheritance tax with capital gains tax on disposal, and letting share exchanges roll over untaxed. The conversation turns into the sharpest account of why Finland cannot cut: a first-hand description of how a coalition government's programme survives, and Miettinen's own proposal for making the public sector produce more, better, with less.
Sami MiettinenMartin PaasiIvan PuopoloViisasteluklubiInheritance tax
2025-01-12 · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen as a guest on Roni Arvonen's Kuuntelija on Finland's most hated tax. The core argument is not about revenue: inheritance and gift tax raises around €1.3bn out of an inherited pot of some €7bn, but the damage is compounding cut off at the moment it has the most time left to run. Nobody inherits a sack of cash — they inherit a flat in a place with no market, held in an undivided estate, with the bill due before anything can be sold. Also covered: Sweden's 2005 abolition, an owner economy against a Finland owned by Solidium and the pension system, the euro and the payments imbalance, Poland, and whether Finland needs its own DOGE.
2024-09-27 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen and Tere Sammallahti on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 27 September 2024, shortly after a climate group defaced the facade of the Finnish Parliament. The episode goes against expectation: the panel defends interviewing the activist and criticises the quality of the interview rather than its existence. The host describes his own interview request to the foundation that funded the group, and the answer he did not get. It closes on polygamy, where the panel disagrees with itself, and on inheritance tax, where it proposes a specific model.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloTere Sammallahti
2024-08-21 · Economy · EN
MP Tere Sammallahti got funded pensions into the National Coalition Party's programme, and Catherine Reilly — who designed 401(k) products at State Street Global Advisors — explains how the American defined contribution system actually works: 401(k), IRA, automatic enrolment, target date funds and annuities. Set against it is Finland's defined benefit model, in which a 24.4 percent contribution accrues not one euro of capital to the individual and nothing to inherit — while the US federal estate tax threshold is 13 million dollars and Finland's is 20,000 euros. At the centre is Miettinen's concrete proposal: 2.4 percentage points of the contribution into a personal funded pension, 22.0 into the existing system. The author regards funded pensions as excellent and holds both models himself.
NegotiatorEP267Sami MiettinenCatherine ReillyFunded pension
2024-04-23 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen, MP Onni Rostila and — arriving late — Tere Sammallahti on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 23 April 2024, just after Petteri Orpo's government had agreed €1.5 billion in tax rises including a VAT increase to 25.5 per cent. This is the exception in the series: an MP from a governing party sits and explains the decision to people who disagree with it, and the disagreement runs the whole way through. Both sides make their best case, and both are recorded here.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloOnni Rostila
2024-03-11 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen and Tere Sammallahti on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 11 March 2024, the day political strikes in the transport sector began. An hour on a single subject, which is both the episode's strength and its weakness: the case against the right to political strike and against the universal applicability of collective agreements is made carefully, while the other side's best argument goes unaddressed. This write-up sorts the structural arguments from the unverified figures and the political predictions — and says what the episode leaves out.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloTere Sammallahti
2024-02-07 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen and the journalist Matti Virtanen on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 7 February 2024, ahead of the second round of the Finnish presidential election. The main subject is a column by Professor Heikki Hiilamo accusing the Etla research institute and his own former employer of agenda-driven research. The panel takes the claim apart — and then says the column was useful, because it forces the same question in the other direction. Virtanen has known the columnist for thirty years and says so. The most durable stretch is a distinction between questions of fact and questions of opinion, put in a way that cuts against the panel too.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloMatti Virtanen
2024-01-02 · Economy · Research · EN
Etla's chief executive Aki Kangasharju takes apart the central claim of his book Talouden ilmestyskirja: Finnish GDP looks better than reality. Strip out the household sector's imputed rent and a public sector whose value added nobody can measure, and Finland is about one per cent poorer per capita than in 2008 — with tens of thousands of euros of new debt per citizen on top. The episode sets out why raising taxes cannot close an eleven-billion deficit, why the top marginal rate on labour sits on the wrong side of the Laffer curve, and why nobody knows how efficient public provision is. It ends on a disagreement about the euro and the logical endpoint of modern monetary theory. Published 2 January 2024.
NeuvottelijaEP229Aki KangasharjuEtlaGDP
2023-11-20 · Economy · Society · EN
NOTE: this episode was made in commercial collaboration with Ruokaboksi, the guest is the company's founder and CEO, and the host is one of its influencer marketing partners. All three are disclosed. This article separates the structural observations from the sales pitch. The parts that hold up are the choke point in Finland's concentrated grocery market, the picking-efficiency figures that explain why grocery e-commerce is hard, the reason Oda failed, and Wolt's small-market playbook as an expansion model. The transcript is auto-captioning, which is disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP223VerkkokauppaPäivittäistavarakauppaLogistiikka
2023-11-14 · Society · Economy · EN
Speaker of the Finnish Parliament Jussi Halla-aho and Sami Miettinen discuss the Speaker's role, parliament as the core of democracy, and the Finnish party system's drift toward a bloc structure. The episode weighs the explanatory power of the left-right axis, the new cleavages replacing it, and the political mobilisation of trade unions against labour market reform. The conversation covers the Nord Stream sabotage, the future of Finnish-Russian economic relations, proposed settlements for the Middle East conflict, and the structural problems of immigration and integration. It closes on the communal value of institutions and traditions, and presidential value leadership.
2023-11-08 · Economy · Society · EN
Journalist and podcast host Ivan Puopolo joins Sami Miettinen in November 2023, just after Finland's annual publication of individual tax records. The episode is strongly opinionated and is marked as such; this article separates structural arguments from positions and either corrects or flags the contested claims. The most usable section is the breakdown of YEL, the Finnish self-employed pension: why a pay-as-you-go system carries demographic risk, and what the detail in the confirmed-income review procedure is that the episode calls a trap. The episode contains a commercial partnership, which is disclosed. The transcript is auto-captioning, also disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP220VerotusYELEläkejärjestelmä
2023-11-06 · Economy · Tools · EN
Henri Blomster, portfolio manager at Asilo Asset Management, and Sami Miettinen take apart why Tesla is a core position in a concentrated fund. The starting point is Bessembinder's finding that only about four per cent of stocks carry the index — which leaves two rational strategies, a cheap broad index or an active hunt for superstar companies. The episode derives Tesla's cost advantage from Wright's law, the Giga Press, the 48-volt architecture and the Texas lithium refinery, sets it against the legacy carmaker's modularity trap and its 150-plus software suppliers, and opens up the energy business that two of five large bank analyses left out entirely. Valuation is handled with EVA metrics: Future Growth Reliance stands at 80 per cent and the current price embeds five years of 25 per cent growth.
NegotiatorEP219Sami MiettinenHenri BlomsterTesla
2023-10-31 · Society · Economy · EN
Growth-company journalist and non-fiction author Elina Lappalainen joins Sami Miettinen in October 2023 to discuss her children's book Tornihuoneen salaseura — Rahan jäljillä. The episode has an unusual structure: some of the questions were written by the host's child, and they are the best ones in it. There are two surprises in the substance: Finnish teenagers are not weak at financial literacy but near the top of the PISA comparison, and the most important money lesson for a child is not investing but a buffer. It ends with a direct conversation about the firewall between journalism and commercial collaboration — on a channel that does both. The transcript is auto-captioning, which is disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP218TalouskasvatusLastenkirjallisuusJournalismi
2023-10-23 · Society · Economy · EN
Lawyer Binga Tupamäki joins Sami Miettinen in October 2023, during the leadership contest of the National Coalition Youth. The episode is strongly opinionated and is marked as such. The most durable part is the critique of identity classification, which grows out of the guest's own position as an international adoptee: the categories break down at the edges, and the people at those edges are the ones who have to explain themselves. The other half is the claim that intersectionality descends from Marxism and that critical theory abandons objectivity — a genuine but contested argument, presented here as one. The transcript is auto-captioning, which is disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP217IdentiteettipolitiikkaFeminismiKriittinen teoria
2023-10-17 · Economy · Society · EN
NOTE: this episode was made in commercial collaboration with Valokuitunen Oy, and the guest is its CEO. This article separates the structural observations from the sales pitch and marks which is which. The parts that hold up are why Nokia's legacy explains Finland's lag in fibre, the difference between the open and closed network models — that is, that a free connection is paid for later in the service fee — and why competition happens before construction and therefore produces disappointed customers. The transcript is auto-captioning, which is disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP216ValokuituTietoliikenneInfrastruktuuri
2023-10-11 · Economy · Society · EN
NOTE: this episode was made in commercial collaboration with Korkia, and both guests work for the company. This article separates the episode's structural observations from the fund marketing and marks which is which. Jussi Lilja and Toni Perätalo join Sami Miettinen in October 2023. The parts that hold up are the chicken-and-egg argument about power prices and investment, the point that a project's durable value lies in the grid connection rather than the land, agri-PV — solar panels raised above farmland — and the answer to the question of whether wind power's golden age is over. The transcript is auto-captioning, which is disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP215Uusiutuva energiaAurinkovoimaTuulivoima
2023-10-05 · Economy · Society · EN
Merja Mähkä and Esa Juntunen join Sami Miettinen in September 2023, each with a new book on investing. It is an unusually honest beginner's guide, because both guests also tell you their own mistakes: the dividend trap, a cyclical steelmaker as a first investment during the financial crisis, the pain of selling Kone, and the host's own Russia blunder. The load-bearing claims are time diversification, costs, and Bessenbinder's finding that only a few per cent of stocks produce the index return — from which follows that a thirty-stock diversification theory is not enough. The episode has two guests and no speaker labels, which is disclosed. The transcript is auto-captioning, which is disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP214SijoittaminenIndeksirahastotOsingot
2023-09-29 · Society · Economy · EN
Presidential candidate Pekka Haavisto joins Sami Miettinen in September 2023, four months before the election. The spine of the episode is four negotiating theses Haavisto formulated out of the Darfur peace talks: giving space and listening with the other side, directness even about genocide, consistent truthfulness with no separate story for each party, and the rule that a warning must be carried out. Around them sit the good cop / bad cop arrangement of the NATO process with Turkey and Hungary, the question of what diplomacy can still do inside a war, and a critique of Africa policy that lands on Europe. This is a candidate interview during a campaign, which is disclosed. The transcript is auto-captioning, which is disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP213NeuvotteluDiplomatiaNATO
2023-09-21 · Economy · Society · EN
Victor Snellman, CEO of the Finnish Shareholders' Association, joins Sami Miettinen in September 2023. The load-bearing claim is structural: inside an otherwise progressive tax system, dividend taxation is regressive for the small investor — a private individual pays an effective rate above 40 per cent on top of corporation tax, while an owner above the 10 per cent threshold receives dividends tax-free. The other half is the equity savings account and its limits. Also: Euroclear's shareholder counts, an alternative use of Solidium's portfolio through call options, and the shareholder-meeting fight over Fortum's Solidium loan. The transcript is auto-captioning, which is disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP212OsakesäästötiliOsinkoverotusVerotus
2023-09-13 · Economy · Society · EN
Timo Löyttyniemi, CEO of the State Pension Fund of Finland (VER), joins Sami Miettinen in September 2023. The episode is an unusual combination: the same person raised the funding ratio of Finnish state pensions from 8 per cent to roughly 25, and sat on the EU Single Resolution Board building bail-in to replace bail-out. That produces two time horizons on one subject — a fund already turned into run-off, and a banking system that came close to systemic crisis five times in a single year. The most interesting part is what Löyttyniemi questions inside his own industry: whether the solvency capital of the Finnish TyEL system has an economic rationale, and whether it is procyclical. The transcript is auto-captioning, which is disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP211EläkejärjestelmäValtion EläkerahastoPankkikriisi
2023-08-28 · Economy · Society · EN
A year after the Uniper negotiation, Miettinen returns to score it: what the worst case would have been, why the German state's stake was priced the way it was, and what Germany did with the gas price the moment it took control. From there to why he is unsentimental about Germany's industrial decline, why Finland managed to get poorer in nominal dollars, where the next banking crisis actually sits, and whether the BRICS bloc is anything to worry about.
Sami MiettinenJussi HeikeläArto Koskelo23 minuuttiaUniper
2023-08-22 · Economy · Society · EN
National Coalition MP Ville Valkonen joins Sami Miettinen in August 2023, two months into Petteri Orpo’s government. The episode works through the programme’s economic section in order: housing, property tax, the labour market, social security, taxation, and where the €6 billion adjustment is supposed to come from. The most interesting single figure is inheritance tax — some €800 million a year out of a tax take above €110 billion — and the question built around it of what changing the tax type would actually cost. It closes on Valkonen’s long argument about a second cold war. The guest is both a governing-party MP and a housing investor; both are disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP208TalouspolitiikkaAsuntopolitiikkaVerotus
2023-08-16 · Economy · EN
Kevin van Dessel of Sijoituskästi joins Sami Miettinen in August 2023 for the second time. This short episode works through two crowd favourites of the Finnish bargain bin, Qt and Revenio, both punished with heavy share price falls after the second quarter. This write-up explains Qt's licensing model and why Revenio is the mirror image of Qt in the same hardware-to-software transition, and covers the closing thesis on interest rates: an inverted yield curve offers the same multiple reversal without company-specific risk. The episode is not investment advice and neither is this article.
NeuvottelijaEP207SijoittaminenQtRevenio
2023-08-16 · Tools · Economy · EN
In August 2023 Kevin van Dessel of Sijoituskästi sat on Sami Miettinen's subscriber side and said Nordnet's Rahapodi would be overtaken in 2024. The episode is a rare document of two competing podcasters taking each other's business model apart out loud: algorithmic media versus subscription media, volume versus quality, and the structural observation that Rahapodi's makers have no upside. This write-up reports the conversation and then checks what actually happened — as of September 2026 the prediction has come true, and it came true through exactly the mechanism they identified.
NeuvottelijaNeuvottelija SisäpiiriPodcastitSijoituskästiRahapodi
2023-08-09 · Economy · Society · EN
Katariina Komulainen, business director at Euro Work, and Tia Kiiskinen, growth director at Yrittäjän Tili ja Laki, join Sami Miettinen in August 2023. The episode is about what happened on Finnish building sites in June 2023, when people working through invoicing services were removed from the sites — and why traditional sole traders went out with them. This write-up sets out the four forms of entrepreneurship, the motive behind the YEL pension reform and the co-operative model, and marks what in the episode is a structural argument and what is an assessment of the other side's intentions. The episode was made in commercial collaboration with Euro Work, and no trade union representative is present.
NeuvottelijaEP206YrittäjyysKevytyrittäjyysOsuuskunta
2023-08-05 · Economy · EN
Caruna's chief executive Jyrki Tammivuori joins Sami Miettinen in August 2023. Two former counterparties — Stora Enso's treasurer and the banker who covered him — work through first the evolution of financing documentation and then the power grid: the weather-proofing requirements, two-way electricity, the bottlenecks in the network and the WACC framework in the Energy Authority's regulatory model. This write-up also sets out what the episode does not ask: the guest is the CEO of a regulated monopoly commenting on his own regulatory model weeks before decisions about it. The interests are disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP205SähköverkotCarunaEnergia
2023-07-31 · Economy · EN
Ivan Puopolo explains how capital accumulated from poker was leveraged during the zero-rate years with over 800,000 euros of debt into as many as seven investment flats — and how he sold most of them just before rates rose. The intellectual core of the episode is an inverted compounding argument: leverage moves the peak return on equity to the start of an investing career. Sami Miettinen counters with Buffett-style low-risk leverage, and the closing sections cover US Treasuries and why cash earns nothing at a bank. This is not investment advice: it is one person's own, very highly leveraged strategy, which he himself says survived on luck, and the two speakers are business partners.
NeuvottelijaNeuvottelija SisäpiiriVelkavipuAsuntosijoittaminenTaloudellinen riippumattomuus
2023-07-24 · Society · Economy · EN
A July 2023 summer episode in which Sami Miettinen goes through the season's surveys alone: MTV's online panel on Riikka Purra's resignation, Jethro Rostedt's and Jessikka Aro's Twitter polls, the Helsingin Sanomat poll and the channel's own votes. This write-up treats the sampling question openly — none of the surveys named is a probability sample — and unpacks the episode's weightiest single claim, the eight billion euro error on the tax rate, so the reader can check it themselves. The episode is the host's own commentary, and that is disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP203GallupitMielipidemittausOtanta
2023-07-11 · Economy · EN
Petri Roininen, chief executive of Investors House and the channel's very first guest, joins Sami Miettinen in July 2023. The claim is a narrow one: the government is dismantling housing subsidies without cutting housing taxes, and on top of the rate shock it reinforces a downward path. This write-up separates out the asymmetry between subsidies and taxes, the trap in amortisation-free periods on housing company loans, the municipalities' vertical cartel in zoning, and Roininen's two-down, two-up thesis. The guest is an interested party twice over — as the CEO of a listed property company and as a Centre Party actor — and that is disclosed.
NeuvottelijaEP202AsuntomarkkinatAsuntopolitiikkaKorot
2023-07-03 · Economy · EN
In the channel's two hundredth episode Tero Nummenpää, chair of Translink Corporate Finance, and Ilkka Liljeroos, managing partner at DLA Piper, work through the mechanics of the last day of an acquisition. First the bridge from enterprise value to equity value, and the misunderstanding that arises when a buyer names a number without saying which he means. Net debt covers interest-bearing debt, shareholder loans and tax liabilities but not trade payables; the working capital adjustment prevents gaming and evens out seasonality by comparing closing against a twelve-month average. Two things the tweezers of a business transfer cannot leave behind: employment liabilities and competition law liability. The open question is whether SaaS prepayments are working capital or net debt. Then closing accounts versus locked box, the rise in earn outs in DLA Piper's report, the multiple effect of an accounting error — a hundred thousand on the balance sheet is a million at ten times — and why the seller's leverage sits in the letter of intent and nowhere after it. Published 3 July 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP200Tero NummenpääIlkka LiljeroosTranslink
2023-06-19 · Economy · EN
Jussi Ahokas and Sami Miettinen go sentence by sentence through the letter the Bank of Finland, led by Olli Rehn, sent to Petteri Orpo two days after the government programme was agreed. The episode's single piece of news is the Bank of Finland confirming in its own words that a central bank can operate with negative equity — once reserves run out, a loss may be left uncovered for the time being. Of the three entries Ahokas accepts the one on systemic risk, considers the no-bailout entry pointless because Maastricht already covers it, and reads the first both ways: a government may legitimately worry about its own fiscal risk, but a central bank can read that as pressure. Also the contradiction between the constitution and the Bank of Finland Act, the Greek SMP arrangement and an Italian scenario, and a forecast for a soft landing resting on loosened fiscal policy. Published 19 June 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP197Jussi AhokasOlli RehnBank of Finland
2023-06-09 · Economy · EN
Elias Erämaja, chief economist of Suomen Ekonomit, on Finland's marginal tax rates. The number that matters is not the near-60 per cent top rate but that it bites at roughly 1.8 times the average wage, where other countries reach the same level at 30 times. Erämaja explains why rigid labour supply does not defeat the argument: the damage shows not in the employment rate but in people declining demanding jobs. Includes the solidarity tax's exact timeline since 2013, the 58 to 180 per cent self-financing estimates from Sweden's abolition of its own, the 45,000 net immigrants needed to stabilise the dependency ratio, and how taxation tightened unnoticed as index adjustments to the tax schedules fell behind inflation. Made in commercial collaboration with Suomen Ekonomit ry. Published 9 June 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP195Elias ErämajaSuomen EkonomitTaxation
2023-06-08 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen, Tere Sammallahti and the writer and journalist Matti Virtanen on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 8 June 2023. The episode works through Matt Walsh's documentary What is a Woman and the definitional fight around it, the first instalment of Tucker Carlson's show after its move to Twitter — whose media criticism the panel accepts and whose author it dismisses in the same breath — and the public funding of Helsinki Pride, on which the panel genuinely disagrees with itself. It closes on its most ambitious idea: that the legitimacy of Finland's state monopolies and of universally binding collective agreements is pinned to majority support, and that the majority is going.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloTere Sammallahti
2023-05-26 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen, Tere Sammallahti and MP Onni Rostila on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 26 May 2023 — recorded in the middle of Petteri Orpo's coalition negotiations, on the day the Finns Party had set a deadline on immigration policy. Three items: Helsinki Pride's decision to end its partnership with the National Coalition Party, Sammallahti's own deliberation about filing a criminal complaint over being called a Nazi online and the proposal that follows from it — move defamation out of criminal law and into the civil courts — and Miettinen's reasoning for why he does not expect the talks to collapse. Two places where the panel openly disagrees with itself are left in.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloTere Sammallahti
2023-05-08 · Economy · Tools · EN
Saku Tuominen — entrepreneur, non-fiction author and restaurateur — works through his sixteenth book, written with Liiga communications director Tuomas Nyholm, whose central claim is that the core of a successful coach's success is not winning but trust: anyone can win momentarily, but winning year after year requires a climate of trust running through the whole organisation. The episode explains the delayed breakout, the neutral-zone trap and pressure forechecking, describes Jukka Jalonen's twelve-minute playbook — whose core can be covered in three minutes and which is still extremely hard to play against — and assesses the competitive advantage Tampere's Nokia Arena confers. The second half is the restaurant app World of Mouth, where no expert may recommend their own restaurant, and the third is HundrED and the observation that education is an exceptionally siloed field. Published 8 May 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP191Saku TuominenTuomas NyholmIce hockey
2023-05-05 · Economy · EN
The channel's first all-English episode: a field report from the Translink Directors' Meeting in Miami Beach, April 2023. Mike Dinan, founder of Dinan & Company, describes how a 35-year-old firm that was exclusively buy-side for its first two decades added a sell-side arm and affiliated with Translink, and gives the reason this matters now: US private equity holds $1.5 trillion of dry powder and interest peaks in the soft part of the cycle. Fredrik Ullberg of Translink Sweden covers Miss Group's 21 acquisitions in five years and the Sweden-Finland deal corridor. Miettinen works through the Nordic ID and Brady Corporation public takeover, where the chairman is the key person, Siilasmaa's precise communication in the Alcatel-Lucent deal, and Tamtron's directed share offering to finance Lahti Precision. Published 5 May 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP190Mike DinanFredrik UllbergTranslink
2023-04-27 · Tools · Economy · EN
Harri Puupponen, founder of Cloud1, and Pasi Jokinen of Vuo AI work through how companies actually put language models to work. Recorded in April 2023, weeks after GPT-4 shipped and AutoGPT broke out, with the interview questions written by GPT-4. It contains the single most usable trick for a negotiator — perspective-shifting — plus AutoGPT defined as a prefrontal-lobe counterpart to GPT, the anecdote about a bank that employs 13,000 hallucinating instances, a demonstration of why GPT-4 cannot escape over-represented training data, Bengt Holmström on informational equality in due diligence, and a forecast for when GPU capacity runs out. Published 27 April 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP189Harri PuupponenPasi JokinenCloud1
2023-04-16 · Economy · Tools · EN
Olli Sirkiä, founder of Trado Capital, works through how growth companies are chosen and financed. The sharpest content is his criticism of the Rule of 40: it is fine for internal steering but too crude for an investor, because it treats all costs as equal — a company burning 60 per cent of its budget on sales scores the same as one spending it on the product. Also the venture debt structure used when the only collateral is receivables and equity; why the reseller model does not work in software; and why Finland has excellent teams but too often a business built to Finland's size. Published 16 April 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP188Olli SirkiäTrado CapitalGrowth companies
2023-04-05 · Society · Economy · EN
Jari Hanska of Iltalehti, lead anchor of the Politiikan puskaradio podcast, unpacks Finland's April 2023 election two days after the result — on the same day Finland became a NATO member. The sharpest analytical point is that the three largest parties gained twenty seats between them and every one of those came from the middle-sized parties that had themselves been in government, which Hanska argues is too large to be explained by tactical voting. The episode also contains an unusually concrete exchange about minority government, in which Hanska identifies the constitutional obstacle and Miettinen proposes an experiment; the migration of political campaigning from Twitter to TikTok and YouTube; and a naming culture in which one flank is fascism and the other communism. Published 5 April 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP186Jari HanskaPolitiikan puskaradioFinnish election 2023
2023-03-31 · Society · Economy · EN
Sari Essayah, leader of the Christian Democrats, as the last guest before Finland's April 2023 election — on the morning Yle's final poll put her party past the Swedish People's Party. The episode's most durable observation is not the polling but the coalition arithmetic: when every other party has announced who it will not govern with, the one that has ruled nobody out becomes the party without which a government may not form. Also a sharp critique of the timing of Finnish EU influence — a position should be taken when a directive is still a glint in the Commission's eye — extending earnings-related unemployment benefit to everyone on a tapered basis, a defence of home care allowance resting on a comparison rarely made, and a language supplement for integration. Published 31 March 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP185Sari EssayahChristian DemocratsFinnish election 2023
2023-03-28 · Economy · Research · EN
Samuli Knüpfer, professor of ownership at Aalto University, sets out why Finland is a poor Nordic country — even after the effect of pension funding is stripped out. Finland and Norway sit in one league on net wealth and Sweden and Denmark in another, and the single largest gap comes from unlisted shares. A Finnish household holds about 40 per cent of its financial wealth in deposits against roughly 20 in Sweden and Denmark. The most striking finding is an attitude measure: Finns regard competition more suspiciously than other Nordics, and that is the largest single gap in economic beliefs. Also the equity savings account, the missing point of contact with the pension system, the consequences of abolishing the avoir fiscal, and the absence of a line on state ownership. Published 28 March 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP184Samuli KnüpferAalto UniversityOwnership
2023-03-22 · Economy · Society · EN
Two National Coalition candidates ten days before Finland's April 2023 election: Nordnet economist Martin Paasi and MP Elina Valtonen. The most usable part is not the campaign pitch but the unpicking of a concept: making something more efficient is not the same as cutting it, and Paasi illustrates the difference with a concrete health centre example. Also Paasi's proposal that Finland simply telephone the hundred most growth-hungry companies in the world and ask directly what an investment here would require; criticism of promising Hornets to Ukraine rather than building Finnish defence capacity; ministerial competence in negotiations such as the Uniper deal; and work-based immigration, labour market testing and Estonia's flat tax. Published 22 March 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP183Martin PaasiElina ValtonenNational Coalition Party
2023-03-16 · Economy · Tools · EN
Yes VC's Jyri Engeström narrates the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank day by day from the inside — the episode was recorded on 16 March 2023, a week after it happened. This was not an ordinary bank run: the balance sheet held not junk but government paper bought when rates were low, and the money left in seconds because more than 90 per cent of customers held deposits above the $250,000 insurance limit. Engeström also says he advised his own portfolio to move its money out, and calls that a mistake in hindsight. The sharpest observation in the episode is that the trigger was not Peter Thiel but Monday's payroll: in the United States it is safer to lay people off than to pay them late. It closes on the reversal in rates, the unsolved problem of deposit insurance, and the AI year that GPT-4 had just begun. Published 16 March 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP182Jyri EngeströmSilicon Valley BankBanking crisis
2023-03-09 · Society · Economy · EN
Two parliamentary candidates from Uusimaa, Tere Sammallahti (National Coalition, 78) and Onni Rostila (Finns Party, 341), in the format of Ivan Puopolo's satire show a month before Finland's 2023 election. Subjects include Estonia's election result and its 21 per cent flat tax, the size of the public sector, the adjustment list the finance ministry's budget chief took public, the equality ombudsman's opinion on a school assignment in Salo — which Rostila answers as a lawyer by pointing to the absence of any weighing of fundamental rights — and campaign ethics, where both had signs torn down and Sammallahti describes his team putting competing parties' signs back up. All positions belong to the guests. Published 9 March 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP180Tere SammallahtiOnni RostilaFinnish election 2023
2023-03-07 · Economy · EN
Gorilla Capital founding partner Petri Lehmuskoski explains camel investing: where most of venture capital prioritises growth at the cost of profitability, Gorilla looks for capital-efficient companies that are cash-flow neutral and do not need an unbroken series of funding rounds — Duunitori reached its exit on a single round. The conversation runs from the three-fits frame to the fund returns, the MVIR reporting model, and why only six percent of the world's VC funds manage even to return their own capital. Includes a disclosure: after the conversation, Sami Miettinen committed as a Limited Partner in the Gorilla Capital 3 fund.
NegotiatorEP179Sami MiettinenPetri LehmuskoskiGorilla Capital
2023-03-02 · Society · Economy · EN
Two National Coalition candidates a month before Finland's April 2023 parliamentary election: economist Heikki Pursiainen from Helsinki and lawyer-economist Kai Lintunen from Uusimaa. The heaviest part of the episode is a long exchange on constitutional review — why Finland has no constitutional court, why the Constitutional Law Committee speaks in the conditional, and why an individual finds it hard in practice to invoke fundamental rights before a court. Also state ownership from Fortum to Patria, the universal applicability of collective agreements as privatised legislation, and a sharp disagreement about which side of the spectrum fascism and national socialism belong to. Published 2 March 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP178Heikki PursiainenKai LintunenNational Coalition Party
2023-02-26 · Economy · Tools · EN
Open Ocean's Patrik Backman explains how MySQL became the internet's bookshelf and why MariaDB had to be founded once Oracle acquired Sun — and with it the world's most popular open database. The episode works through MariaDB's SPAC listing, whose pricing window closed before the company reached the market, and sets out the metrics a growth company is valued on: ARR multiple, Rule of 40, Net Revenue Retention and churn. Portfolio cases include Truecaller, Supermetrics, Leadoo, Nosto, AppGyver and MindsDB, with a side trip into the ChatGPT enthusiasm of early 2023. The host discloses that he is himself a small investor in Leadoo. Published 26 February 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP177Patrik BackmanOpen OceanMariaDB
2023-02-21 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen and Tere Sammallahti on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 21 February 2023, six weeks before the Finnish parliamentary election. Three stories, all of them about the same question: who decides which numbers a citizen gets to see. Helsingin Sanomat's election compass gave one question double weight, the paper conceded the error — and, the panel argues, the arithmetic still fails to reconcile after the fix. A public-broadcaster tool comparing schools was demanded taken down, and Yle kept it up. A claim that taxation has quietly fallen is taken apart on the choice of base year. The episode is tongue-in-cheek, sharp-edged and sometimes overshoots — those passages are marked too.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloTere Sammallahti
2023-02-20 · Economy · Society · EN
Petri Roininen, chair of the Finnish party Korjausliike, draws Finland's situation as a Bermuda Triangle whose corners are one of the world's highest total tax rates, a decade and a half of zero growth, and households among Western Europe's least wealthy. He proposes balancing public finances immediately rather than over two parliamentary terms, and as means, flattening tax progression, a privatisation programme and extending a single dividend tax rate to all owners. The discussion opens up the entrepreneur's five-tax wedge and how construction taxation creates the need for housing benefit. Published 19 February 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP176Petri RoininenKorjausliikeTotal Tax Rate
2023-02-17 · Society · Economy · EN
Lasse Pipinen, executive director of the Finnish liberal think tank Libera, and content director Tero Lundstedt answer the claim that the age of think tanks is over. At the centre is Libera's two-billion-euro list of spending cuts, deliberately built from easy, research-backed targets — and which nonetheless brought the interest groups out. The episode asks why value liberalism advances in Finland while economic reform stalls, and why the process consequences of political decisions are so rarely worked out. Also covered are the think tank's funding model and its independence from public money. Published 12 February 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP175LiberaLasse PipinenTero Lundstedt
2023-02-10 · Economy · Society · EN
The three authors of the Finnish book The Owner's Will come straight from its launch to explain what ownership means in practice, from private equity to cooperatives and from trade unions to family firms. The through-line is what happens when the owner's will is left unclear: the vacuum is filled by management's own idea. Posti, VR, Fortum and Sampo serve as cases, alongside activist investors as constructive owners. Also raised is the question of who you actually own alongside. Published 5 February 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP174Timo LeinoMarkku PohjolaHarri Saukkomaa
2023-02-03 · Economy · Research · EN
A Swede is on average some 200,000 dollars wealthier than a Finn, and Aktia's chief economist Lasse Corin explains how that gap is built. About half comes down to which sector pension assets are recorded in, but the remainder is a genuine difference in wealth that only opened up after the Nokia years. The episode covers the turn in the current account, the subsidiary economy, and whether export success ultimately reaches households or foreign owners. Corin also examines Finnish equity investors' tendency to time the market and the state of the banking sector after rates rose. Published 29 January 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP173Lasse CorinAktiaWealth
2023-01-31 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen and Joakim Vigelius, chair of the Finns Party youth organisation, on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 31 January 2023. The two best passages are disagreements. The first is about a left-wing youth organisation's Erdoğan cartoon competition: two speakers treat it as a free-speech question, Miettinen treats it as a question of national interest and reaches for a wartime precedent — and neither side moves. The second is about tax, where three right-of-centre speakers arrive at three different positions, from abolishing progression to conceding that there is no public mandate for dismantling the welfare state. It opens with Vigelius's first-hand account of being removed from a university lecture.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloJoakim Vigelius
2023-01-27 · Economy · Society · EN
National Coalition MPs Ville Valkonen and Heikki Vestman argue that the government term's greatest failure is not only the money handed out but everything that was left undone. They propose 8 to 10 billion in consolidation over two parliamentary terms and a billion in relief on the taxation of work, because marginal rates destroy the incentive to take on extra work. Vestman sets out the electricity crisis remedies in unusual detail, from a lower technical price cap to demand flexibility through smart meters and a reform of the market model. The discussion also covers slow permitting, restricting appeal rights, and overhauling the labour market. Published 22 January 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP172Ville ValkonenHeikki VestmanNational Coalition
2023-01-24 · Society · Economy · EN
Prime Minister Sanna Marin ruled out governing with the Finns Party just as the polls turned, and this episode unpacks what the guests believe lies behind that line. Juhani Huopainen and Onni Rostila argue that the Social Democrats have drifted far from their labour-party roots, and assess what a bloc contest means for the spring parliamentary election. The discussion runs from the recovery fund's negotiated outcome to the EU restoration regulation and to a total tax rate that has passed Sweden's. It also covers how business lobbies got a green-left government to pass a subsidy comparable in scale to a corporate tax cut. Published 15 January 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP171Juhani HuopainenOnni RostilaFinns Party
2023-01-09 · Economy · EN
Verneri Pulkkinen, head of content at the Finnish equity research house Inderes, explains why stocks fell in 2022 even though company earnings rose. The answer lies in tightening monetary conditions and rising rates, which hit growth stocks and the pandemic-era bubble hardest. The discussion runs from Howard Marks's third sea change to the Buffett indicator and to how large a share of their wealth people are willing to hold in equities. Pulkkinen also assesses Germany's surprising resilience in the energy crisis, the real risk of a wage spiral, and the collapse in technology valuations. Published 4 January 2023.
NeuvottelijaEP169Verneri PulkkinenInderesEquity Markets
2023-01-02 · Economy · Society · EN
Lassi Kivinen, chair of Finland's Liberal Party, presents a nine-billion-euro list of spending cuts and justifies it by sorting the budget into public and private goods. Defence, the police and the courts are untouched, but business subsidies, culture funding, the public broadcaster Yle and the gambling-monopoly grant system come under the magnifying glass. The discussion runs from structural corruption to the incentive flaw in the wellbeing services counties' funding model, and to why a transfer payment seems to be Finland's answer to every problem. Kivinen also argues that it is not the state's job to employ people or to sell below market price. Published 27 December 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP168Lassi KivinenLiberal PartyPublic Finances
2022-12-30 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
The last episode of the year, with four people: Sami Miettinen, Tere Sammallahti and MP Onni Rostila on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 30 December 2022. The best passage in the first half is a distinction the panel draws against its own headline: lying requires knowledge, a false statement does not — and for accountability purposes the difference changes nothing. The host also flags his own choice of words in his own video as a mistake. The second half is the year in figures: excess mortality, borrowing set against Denmark's, Finland's rank among taxing countries, and the Credit Suisse finding that Finland was the only Nordic country where average wealth fell in 2021.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloTere Sammallahti
2022-12-25 · Economy · Society · EN
Mauri Kotamäki, chief economist of Finnvera, reviews the macro picture at the turn of the year: central banks are slowing the pace of rate rises, inflation turns first in the United States and later in Europe. The discussion also assesses whether fiscal dominance was really the constraint many expected, and why accelerating inflation in Japan is big news. Kotamäki uses data to separate how much of the rise in employment is policy and how much is world growth, and why Finland's structural unemployment remains high. It closes on electricity subsidies, the self-employed pension reform, and an analogy between the Chinese and Soviet growth models. Published 25 December 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP167Mauri KotamäkiFinnveraInflation
2022-12-13 · Economy · Tools · EN
Jussi Niemelä, CEO of Meluton Oy, and Mikko Järvinen, founder of True North Search, explain how the Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition model works in Finland. The episode includes a simulated acquisition negotiation during which emotions are read from facial expressions by an AI model and the results discussed openly. Niemelä went through more than 300 companies before a deal came together, and describes plainly what the process demanded and what surprised him. Järvinen opens up the cohort model, the selection process, and why the successor entrepreneur is locked in before the target. Behind it all runs the larger question of business succession in Finland, where the average company changes owner only once a century. Published 13 December 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP165Jussi NiemeläMikko JärvinenTrue North Search
2022-12-06 · Economy · Society · EN
Teemu Liila and Kevin van Dessel ask for the step-by-step version rather than the platitudes, and get it: use Finland's open tax records to plot your colleagues' pay against their tenure, set the promotion conversation eighteen months early, come back with the goals your boss gave you, and then stay quiet. Around it, an unusually candid tour of investment banking — Credit Suisse First Boston hours, the Nordea deal Miettinen calls his biggest win and his biggest failure at once, project code names, fee structures, and why he stopped hiring his own mirror image.
Sami MiettinenTeemu LiilaKevin van DesselSijoituskästiSalary negotiation
2022-12-02 · Economy · EN
Kevin van Dessel and Teemu Liila of the Sijoituskästi podcast deliberately build a bull case at a moment when most listeners expect further falls. The discussion covers the turn in the rate cycle, the nature of inflation, and why the equity market prices the real economy roughly six months ahead. The guests unpack the triad of growth, value and quality and argue why a high policy rate is an opportunity rather than an obstacle for a growth investor. It also covers leverage, record cash weightings, the closing of the IPO window and the winner's curse. It ends on popular capitalism, Finns' thin equity wealth, and why good news does not always lift a share price. Published 2 December 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP164Kevin van DesselTeemu LiilaSijoituskästi
2022-11-24 · Society · Economy · EN
Economist Tuomas Malinen explains why he is preparing to leave Finland and what he believes has gone badly wrong. The conversation runs from the problems of the Constitutional Law Committee to the unexamined questions of the 1990s banking crisis and on to the structures of the euro area. Malinen sets out his own reading of central bank money, the ECB's purchase programmes and the autumn crisis in British pension funds, and why he regards local currencies as a form of preparedness. It closes on the public debate of the Covid years and why speaking about certain subjects leads to being labelled. The views are the guest's own and contested in many places. Published 24 November 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP163Tuomas MalinenConstitutionCentral Banks
2022-11-20 · Society · Economy · EN
Sture Fjäder, long-standing president of the Akava confederation, is moving into politics and says plainly why. The episode covers public debt, an employment rate lagging the other Nordics, and the question Fjäder says is never asked: is everything currently financed from tax revenue actually needed. He argues for lower income tax, Canadian-style work-based immigration and voucher-funded primary healthcare. It also contains criticism of the nurse staffing ratio and the social and health services reform, and a discussion of why defending a market economy is such a sensitive subject in Finland. Published 20 November 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP162Sture FjäderAkavaPublic Finance
2022-11-17 · Economy · Society · EN
Author and financial journalist Karo Hämäläinen works through the cases in his new book Rikos ja rahastus, from the asphalt cartel to Bernie Madoff. The discussion explains why asphalt paving was the perfect ground for a cartel and why a cartel always eventually comes out. Nick Leeson's option strategies, Charles Ponzi's postal coupon arbitrage and WinCapita's cult-like inner circle all tell the same story about how the promise of a risk-free return persuades people to hand over their money. It also covers Libor manipulation, Enron's accounting tricks and the question of whether the game improves at all on a public exchange. It closes on IPOs, the return of value investing, the Fortum and Uniper mistakes, and who actually defines fair value. Published 17 November 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP161Karo HämäläinenFinancial CrimeCartel
2022-11-12 · Society · Economy · EN
Martin-Mikael Lilius has written Trust, Knowledge and Society and shares his name with Fortum's former CEO, which has produced both a good seat at a Draghi lecture and hate mail. The episode unpacks the three building blocks of trust — ability, benevolence and integrity — and compares them with the trust account concept from Uusi neuvotteluvalta. The discussion widens from childhood experience to the siloing of science, American polarisation, and the intriguing question of why China and Saudi Arabia rank above Finland in trust surveys. It closes on the banking system as trust's extreme case, from Lehman Brothers to Basel regulation and its unwanted consequences. Published 12 November 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP160Martin-Mikael LiliusTrustPolarisation
2022-11-11 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen and the journalist Matti Virtanen on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 11 November 2022. The single best observation is about expertise: two Finnish specialists on the United States gave diametrically opposite forecasts on the same question, and the panel's explanation is that an expert's liking for a foreign politician colours their prediction of his success. On the day Finland publishes everyone's tax records, Norway's model is put forward as a concrete alternative. At the end Matti Virtanen explains the background to the Sámi Parliament Act dispute — who counts as an Inari Sámi, where the reindeer-herding families came from, and why the argument is also about livelihoods — and the panel falls out over whether small wealth differences mean poverty or a functioning welfare state.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloMatti H. Virtanen
2022-10-29 · Society · Economy · EN
Within three and a half months in early 1992 Finland detached itself from the YYA Treaty, applied for EU membership and bought the Hornet fighters, and none of it was in the government programme. Former prime minister Esko Aho explains why his book's totem animal is a phantom cat — the Lion of Ruokolahti — and how the same imagined beast is still hunted in politics from Trump to Putin. The conversation runs from the Tehran Conference to the floating of the markka, the rupture between Kullberg and the government, and Gaidar's prediction of post-imperial nostalgia, a passage Aho says he has read fifty times. It also covers the Sberbank board seat, the agricultural conditions of EU membership, and what 1992 has to teach 2022. Published 29 October 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP158Esko Aho1992YYA Treaty
2022-10-22 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen and Tere Sammallahti on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 22 October 2022. The episode opens with the panel taking a newspaper's "woke test" live on air and conceding two things to the other side while doing it — that the experience of being a visible minority is real, and that labour markets are not perfect. The middle section takes apart a single English sentence and how it became a headline. The last third is the strongest: the panel argues against compensating households for electricity prices, a policy that would be easy to support, and grounds the argument in the energy balance.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloTere Sammallahti
2022-10-20 · Tools · Economy · EN
Tuomas Rasila of Zefram had just returned from Ukraine, where drones fallen from the sky are taken apart underground, and otherwise builds AI that opens sales conversations for you. Ilmari Piela of Duunitori explains how Finland's largest recruitment portal uses Zefram to identify the most likely buyers and to write each recipient a case-specific argument from its own data. The discussion circles what separates mass personalisation from a real argument, and why generic cold outreach is strip-mining prospects in a small country. It also covers a sales calendar that fills itself, the CV-free application method Dialogi, and a name borrowed from Star Trek. Published 20 October 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP157Tuomas RasilaIlmari PielaZefram
2022-10-09 · Economy · EN
Rates rose from zero to two and a half per cent faster than anyone could hedge, and investment loans granted in July were roughly a third down on a year earlier. Suvi Schwab, who makes Asuntoasiaa and Raha-asiaa, explains from Singapore why she is not panicking, what unhedged housing company loans really mean, and why buying opportunities will soon appear. The discussion covers three basic strategies, building collateral, leverage and its downside, and why a housing company loan is not the bomb it is made out to be. It also compares the German and Swedish markets, the problems of rent control, and offers practical advice on serving on the board. Published 9 October 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP156Suvi SchwabProperty InvestingInterest Rates
2022-10-03 · Economy · Society · EN
The bubbles from Nord Stream in the Baltic are a reminder that energy is always also geopolitics. Mikko Kantero and Petri Haataja of Korkia explain why country risk is driving much of the world to build its own energy infrastructure and why industrial solar now works practically anywhere. Their surprising favourite market is Alberta, the Texas of Canada, where oil wealth flows into wind and solar on market terms without subsidies. The discussion covers dependence on China in component manufacturing, Fingrid's exceptionally good work, the battery breakthrough in the UK market, and what plant maintenance actually means in terms of jobs. It closes on why the best place for solar is not the Sahara. Commercial collaboration with Korkia. Published 3 October 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP155Mikko KanteroPetri HaatajaKorkia
2022-09-23 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen and Tere Sammallahti on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 23 September 2022, the week Russia declared partial mobilisation. The most durable passage is conceptual: the panel separates biological sex from gender identity and argues that collapsing the two is a change in language rather than in science. On Ukraine the panel openly disagrees about two things — whether Finland should open its border to Russian conscripts, and whether a negotiated settlement is acceptable at all. On the economics Miettinen puts Fortum's 5.6-billion Uniper loss into scale: it is worth about 15 per cent of all direct share holdings of Finnish private individuals combined.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloTere Sammallahti
2022-09-18 · Economy · Research · EN
Germany built its energy system on Russian natural gas and phased out nuclear power; Finland diversified and spent seventeen years building Olkiluoto. Minna Korkeaoja and Elina Seppä of Korkia compare two very different electricity systems and explain how Finland halved its natural gas use in a very short time. The discussion covers the IEA net zero scenario, storage from water to sand to batteries, the modest round-trip efficiency of hydrogen, and the fact that roughly 1.7 million electric saunas have helped make Finland's grid exceptionally strong. It closes on faster permitting, negawatts and whether the world's mineral reserves suffice. Commercial collaboration with Korkia. Published 18 September 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP153Minna KorkeaojaElina SeppäKorkia
2022-09-16 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen and MP Onni Rostila on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 16 September 2022. The strongest passage is about a principle of legislative design: should a law be written assuming the best or the worst of whoever holds power, and does Finland's proposed "targeting" law survive a proportionality test when the interest being protected is an official's peace of mind rather than the prevention of genocide. On the economics Miettinen takes apart the nationalisation of Uniper, the backstop that evaporated, and why Fortum's original bid was made in a hurry. Also the nurse-staffing law, the Swedish election and the arithmetic of the debt.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloOnni Rostila
2022-09-11 · Economy · Society · EN
Björn Wahlroos wrote in Helsingin Sanomat that inflation is a purely monetary phenomenon and that regional inflation is not worth discussing inside the euro area. Olli Rehn replied with nuances. Doctoral researchers Jussi Ahokas and Antti Ronkainen unpack what is missing from Wahlroos's model and why commercial banks' endogenous money creation and the exchange rate are left out of it. The episode runs from the supply shocks of the pandemic and the war to the ECB's 75 basis point hike, the PEPP programme's departure from the capital key, and the legal question of what strict rules mean if a central bank can always create a new programme. Recorded 9 September 2022, the day after the ECB hike and the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Published 11 September 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP152Jussi AhokasAntti RonkainenBjörn Wahlroos
2022-09-08 · Economy · Society · EN
Rahapodi obtained the Uniper negotiation memos by information request and brought in Sami Miettinen to read them as a negotiator rather than a commentator. His verdict: Finland sent the wrong seniority to the wrong subject, defended a sunk seven billion instead of the eight billion still recoverable, and never used the leverage it actually held — Germany's gas dependency and the option of filing Uniper into bankruptcy.
Sami MiettinenMiikka LuukkonenMartin PaasiRahapodiNegotiation
2022-09-04 · Economy · EN
Jussi Lilja and Otto Pöyry of Korkia explain why their fund invests in the project development stage rather than in completed power plants, where institutional money is already crowding in. The episode covers the roughly 95 per cent collapse in solar panel prices, the logic of industrial scale, the role of a local partner in every market, and why subsidies are now seen as political risk rather than advantage. It includes a concrete example from Spain, where one plant gave rise to a local maintenance company. It closes on whether energy infrastructure is becoming an asset class alongside equities, fixed income and real estate. Commercial collaboration with Korkia. Published 4 September 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP151Jussi LiljaOtto PöyryKorkia
2022-08-26 · Society · Economy · EN
Journalist Ivan Puopolo and Sami Miettinen examine Sanna Marin administration policies, media dynamics, and public discourse culture. The episode analyzes public finance trends, national debt accumulation, and the interdependence between politics and journalism. The discussion addresses freedom of speech, journalism standards, and political personalization in the social media era. Finally, the role of media as a democratic watchdog and conditions for critical debate are discussed.
2022-08-26 · Satire · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen and Tere Sammallahti on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 26 August 2022, in the middle of the Sanna Marin party-video row and Fortum's Uniper disaster. The panel splits the row into two separate questions: what a prime minister's private time is, and what the office itself demands. On the economics Miettinen takes apart the Fortum–Uniper structure — the eight-billion capital injection in January, the twelve-billion write-down, KfW's nine billion — and asks whether due diligence was ever properly done. It closes on a genuine free-speech case: the Helsingin Sanomat signals-intelligence trial and the state's incentive to over-classify.
Media-vierailuViikon viisasteluWeekly WiseguysIvan PuopoloTere Sammallahti
2022-08-22 · Economy · Society · EN
Jussi Heikelä and Arto Koskelo put the Credit Suisse wealth report on screen and ask whether Finland is rich or poor. Miettinen's answer runs through the €600bn of Finnish net wealth of which €400bn sits in homes, why only 1.9 per cent of adults are dollar millionaires against Sweden's 7, what Iceland did differently after its banking crisis, and — the part he was really brought on for — what makes a good negotiator and why Finland does not prepare.
Sami MiettinenJussi HeikeläArto Koskelo23 minuuttiaWealth
2022-08-15 · Economy · EN
Veera Sylvius and Erkka Niemi are raising Voland Partners' 80 million euro technology fund, which invests as a minority owner in profitable Finnish technology companies. Sylvius is the former CEO of Space Systems Finland, Niemi the former CTO of Siili, and the founding four are completed by Jyrki Laune and Samuli Siljamäki. The conversation covers the fund's first close, megatrends, deal flow and value creation, and why Finland has lacked a growth investor at exactly this stage. The tension is whether responsibility, competitiveness and superior returns can hold at once. It closes on falling SaaS valuations, MedTech and cloud-based ERP systems. Published 15 August 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP148Veera SylviusErkka NiemiVoland Partners
2022-08-08 · Society · Economy · EN
William von der Pahlen, Isak Rautio and Sami Miettinen read Peter Zeihan's The End of the World Is Just the Beginning against Ray Dalio's changing world order — depopulation and deglobalisation on one side, debt and hegemonic cycles on the other. Miettinen takes Zeihan's demographics seriously and his deglobalisation absolutism much less so, and the argument turns on whether markets and automation can outrun a shrinking workforce.
Sami MiettinenWilliam von der PahlenIsak RautioFutucastPeter Zeihan
2022-07-26 · Economy · EN
Viewers voted, and Sami Miettinen analyses the Uniper rescue package negotiated between Fortum, the Finnish government and the German state through a negotiator's eyes. Fortum's share fell twenty per cent in a couple of days, so the question is why a company majority-owned by the Finnish state lost so much value and whether another outcome was possible. The episode goes through whose side the clock was ticking on, what hidden cards Fortum had, and why KfW's nine billion in loans rank ahead of Fortum's eight billion in receivables. Published 26 July 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP146Sami MiettinenFortumUniper
2022-07-03 · Economy · EN
Crypto markets have fallen 60 to 90 per cent from their peaks, Bitcoin has slid from 70 thousand towards 20 thousand and Ethereum has lost around 80 per cent of its value. Lohkoketjupodi hosts Martin Wichmann and Rami Kurimo dissect the anatomy of the spring 2022 crash: why the algorithmic stablecoin Terra UST went literally to zero, why Celsius froze its customers' withdrawals, and how veterans like Three Arrows Capital burned through billions. The discussion also considers why decentralised protocols such as Aave withstood the stress test. Published 3 July 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP144Martin WichmannRami KurimoCrypto
2022-06-19 · Society · Economy · EN
Antero Vartia returns to Neuvottelija two years after the first conversation, and the subject is the same as it was then: principle. The episode covers why flexibility can itself be a principle and staying in the truth its bedrock, what Ray Dalio's three cycles say about a changing world order, and what the book did not live to see of the war in Ukraine and China's Covid policy. It also runs through the link between the inflation spiral and populism, Acemoglu and Robinson's narrow corridor, the two classic market failures, and Compensate's three-and-a-half-year money-collection-law process, during which the company was effectively barred from trading without the matter ever reaching a district court. It closes on meditation, ego, and why executives practise it quietly.
NegotiatorEP142Sami MiettinenAntero VartiaCompensate
2022-05-15 · Economy · EN
How much of senior management's time is worth spending on investor relations, and what changed in IR work when covid ended flying overnight? Nokia's former CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and Stora Enso's long-serving investor relations director Ulla Paajanen open up the annual cycle of investor communication, the role of Capital Markets Days, and the use of guidance in steering a company. Kallasvuo argues that a Finnish CEO spends many times more time on investor meetings than an American one. Paajanen recalls the day a competitor's cartel disclosure caught her at an airport in an analyst's company. Published 15 May 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP137Olli-Pekka KallasvuoUlla PaajanenInvestor Relations
2022-05-07 · Economy · EN
Two recently listed companies from northern Finland at the same table: Norrhydro's CEO and principal owner Yrjö Trög and LapWall's CEO and principal owner Jarmo Pekkarinen describe what six months on the stock exchange has been like. The episode unpacks both IPOs from anchor investors to oversubscription and retail investor numbers, and considers what the companies would do differently. It also covers acquisitions, lessons from the Swedish export venture, the Korean market, and why construction is 50 years behind other industries. Published 7 May 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP136Yrjö TrögJarmo PekkarinenNorrhydro
2022-05-06 · Economy · Research · EN
Sauli Vilén sets out to pull back the curtain on what actually happens behind an IPO, and Miettinen answers in unusual operational detail: how a lead manager is chosen, why the anchor negotiation is the single most important phase, who is allowed to see the order book, what a cut-back mechanism does, why retail allocation ends up at one per cent, and when a banker should blow the whistle rather than drag a company to market. Then M&A — share consideration versus cash, synergy numbers pulled from thin air — and finally fiscal dominance and the euro.
Sami MiettinenSauli ViléninderesPodiIPOAnchor investors
2022-04-25 · Economy · EN
Oskari Lehtonen of Redstone VC and Claes Mikko Nilsen of Nordic Ninja VC explain how venture capital models differ when the money behind them comes from a German family business or a Japanese industrial giant. Nilsen explains why Panasonic, Honda, Omron and Japan's state bank decided to channel a hundred million euros into the Nordics and the Baltics, and why the fund's complete independence was a condition of the whole undertaking. The discussion covers LP and GP structures, exit channels, and why European funds nearly always include public money while American ones never do. Published 25 April 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP134Oskari LehtonenClaes Mikko NilsenVenture Capital
2022-04-15 · Economy · EN
Recorded in April 2022, days after Elon Musk's $54.20 public offer for Twitter. Sami Miettinen assesses the bid through an investment banker's eyes and condemns its execution: the board was not approached beforehand, shareholders were not committed under NDA, the disclosure obligation on a nine per cent stake was missed, and the decimals of the price were a joke. Ivan Puopolo and Mikael Vuorinen work through platform free speech and how far a private company's right to set its own rules extends. The point of this article, however, is hindsight: the episode's conclusion about trolling was wrong, and Miettinen says so out loud in episode 403.
NegotiatorEP132Sami MiettinenIvan PuopoloMikael Vuorinen
2022-04-02 · Economy · EN
Economist Tuomas Malinen returns to the studio on April Fool's Day, but the subject is anything but a joke: Russia and Ukraine together produce a third of the world's exported wheat, sowing will not happen in Ukraine, and Malinen estimates that Finland's entire agricultural production could collapse. The cost spike in fertiliser and diesel hits farms, many already indebted. He calls for the agriculture minister to be replaced and for producer prices to rise. On energy the discussion covers peat and the taxonomy decision, and it closes on accelerating inflation and the ECB's rate rises. Published 2 April 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP129Tuomas MalinenFood CrisisSecurity of Supply
2022-03-26 · Economy · EN
Project Lakka combined three Turku life science companies — Labrox, Kaivogen and Abacus Diagnostica — into the new Uniogen, and Sami Miettinen goes through the transaction with the people who did it. The guests are lawyer Jarkko Ruohola, Labrox's former CEO Henrik Sora, and Translink's Liina-Johanna Leeve, who sets out three valuation methods. The core of the episode is why an exchange ratio between three companies is a problem of an entirely different order than between two, and why a share exchange behaves completely differently from a cash deal. Ruohola explains how Abacus's more than 400 small shareholders had to be brought along voluntarily. Published 26 March 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP127Jarkko RuoholaHenrik SoraLiina-Johanna Leeve
2022-03-12 · Society · Economy · EN
Major General (ret.) Pekka Toveri analyzes the first 2.5 weeks of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on the Neuvottelija channel: why armored columns drove into a clump and were shot up, why the famous 60-kilometer column got stuck, what the T-72, T-64 and the Armata 'wonder-weapon' reveal about the fleet, why the Russian air force cannot mount an air operation, how railway-based logistics failed, and why a false political situation picture collapsed the whole plan. Featuring Bayraktar drones, Javelin and NLAW top-attacks, Iskander missile stocks, the 'learned victory' of Chechnya and Syria, Putin's siloviki machine and corruption, nuclear escalation, China and Taiwan, and Finland's road to NATO. The assessments are Toveri's, made in the situation of March 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP125UkraineRussiaPekka Toveri
2022-02-27 · Economy · EN
Petri Niemi has run seven listings and chaired the boards of most of those companies. In this episode he opens up why Siili Solutions was the case that opened Finland's First North, how Bilot dared to list in March 2020 into the teeth of the Covid crash, and what an anchor investor's thumbs-up actually buys you. The conversation moves on to the Bilot–Vincit merger, still pending shareholder approval at the time of recording, and to why listing is worth it: owners in different cycles, a liquid share as acquisition currency, and easier banking. It closes with the most common trap in software consultancies — products built by consultants on the bench — the one rule of board work, and the company he is proudest of.
NegotiatorEP123Sami MiettinenPetri NiemiIPO
2022-02-25 · Society · Economy · EN
Sami Miettinen, Tere Sammallahti and host Ivan Puopolo recorded on 25 February 2022, the day after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. A contemporaneous record rather than a retrospective: what the balance of forces looked like, why Russia advanced without air supremacy, whether SWIFT exclusion or targeted bank sanctions bite harder, and the Finnish NATO question at the moment it stopped being theoretical. The last third covers the information war, the Russian-speaking minority in Finland, a market crash as a buying opportunity, and Jokerit in the KHL.
2022-02-13 · Economy · EN
Enfuce founder and co-CEO Monika Liikamaa and finance-sector all-rounder Kirsi Larkiala explain to Sami Miettinen what actually happens behind a card payment. Liikamaa sets out why debit and credit are entirely different products, how a payment travels from the terminal through the acquirer and the card scheme to the issuer, and why a closed ecosystem such as the S Group is the cheapest way to pay. Larkiala argues the Nordic P27 is mostly a soft landing for banks that failed to make strategic decisions in time, and both unpack why payment traffic has never made money in Finland. The episode also covers the risk a central bank digital currency poses to commercial banks, the security of supply of telecom connections, the public-cloud breakthrough achieved with the financial supervisor, and Enfuce's road from bootstrapping to a 45 million growth round and a listing target. Published 13 February 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP121Monika LiikamaaKirsi LarkialaEnfuce
2022-02-05 · Economy · EN
Okmetic CEO Kai Seikku runs a Finnish silicon wafer maker owned by the Shanghai-listed NSIG — and serves as deputy CEO of the owner as well. The episode opens up what surprised an investment banker: why the Chinese buyer did not replace management but treated it as an asset rather than a cost line, and why plans to move the plant to China were buried. Seikku also explains how the global component shortage began with the car industry slamming on the brakes in spring 2020, and why building new capacity takes years. The sharpest section is China's negotiating culture: a letter of intent is not a deal, an NDA spreads information more effectively than anything else, the real decision-maker does not sit in the middle of the table, and a ganbei contest can only be won with a Finnish counter-move. It closes with the Finnish technology industry's new two-track bargaining model, board work, private equity, and how to land a first board seat. Recorded 5 February 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP120Kai SeikkuOkmeticChina
2022-01-23 · Economy · EN
Inderes financial sector analyst Sauli Vilén walks Sami Miettinen through the entire Finnish listed financial field, company by company. Why a zero-rate world made non-life insurance an unexpectedly attractive business, and why most of Sampo's value is still If, whose 2004 acquisition was one of the best deals in Finnish financial history. Why the Nordics became the world's best insurance market, and whether this could turn into the decade of Nordic banks. The sharpest passage concerns Handelsbanken's withdrawal from Finland: Vilén calls a public announcement of a sale the worst possible opening in a negotiation, because it puts the seller in a fire sale position from the moment of the announcement. Also: Taaleri's structure and Garantia's fate, CapMan's turnaround and the Norvestia deal, Titanium's exceptional efficiency, Alexandria's stake-building in EAB, Evli's rise from underperformer, and eQ, which Vilén rates among the best-run listed companies of the decade. Recorded 23 January 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP119Sauli VilénInderesAsset Management
2022-01-21 · Economy · Research · EN
Leevi Leivo puts a listener's question about the price of pasta to Sami Miettinen and Inderes analyst Sauli Vilén, and the answer runs from supply bottlenecks to why the ECB cannot raise rates at all. The episode explains fiscal dominance, the asset price inflation nobody measures, why the risk-free rate has become a guaranteed loss, and who actually pays when inflation runs at five per cent.
Sami MiettinenSauli VilénLeevi LeivoPuheenaiheInflation
2022-01-13 · Economy · Society · EN
Nordnet's Rahapodi frames Finland as a hostage and asks whether the markka could actually be brought back. Sami Miettinen walks through the two legal doctrines that decide it, why the 2015 Greek near-exit closed the loophole, what the €67bn Target 2 surplus is worth in a divorce, and the parallel-currency design he would propose instead — before concluding that a euro nobody can raise rates in may be a gift rather than a trap.
Sami MiettinenMartin PaasiMiikka LuukkonenRahapodiEuro
2022-01-09 · Economy · EN
Stefan Törnqvist returns to the channel and holds to the most provocative claim of his previous appearance: everyone benefits from the euro except the Finnish national economy. The sharpest economic policy observation concerns timing: because pay movements in Finland run one way and there is no downward flexibility in a downturn, large increases could never really be granted in a boom either — and he sees the same signs now as in 2007–2008. On monetary policy he holds that the Fed is tightening and the ECB cannot, because a market rate cannot be imposed on Italian debt without a banking crisis that Basel regulation has built into the balance sheets. Published 9 January 2022.
NeuvottelijaEP116Stefan TörnqvistEuroMonetary Policy
2021-12-19 · Economy · EN
Two initiatives, one shared observation: financial matters are not learned in theory. Mikko Nurminen's Little Entrepreneurs brings a programme into primary schools where ten- and eleven-year-olds found a real company and end up selling their products to a real customer — and the decisive moment is when money changes hands. Timo Holmström's Investor School aims not to tell pupils about investing but to get a sixteen-year-old actually to open a securities account; the essential ingredient is community, because for young people social incentives do the work. The episode also covers a charity portfolio for low-income young people, why an entrepreneur needs investor education most, and the entrepreneur's social security. Published 19 December 2021.
NeuvottelijaEP113Mikko NurminenTimo HolmströmFinancial Literacy
2021-12-11 · Economy · EN
Vesa Vihriälä, professor of practice at the University of Helsinki, and doctoral researcher Antti Ronkainen go through what is left of the euro area's fiscal rules. The starting point is bleak: the 60 per cent debt limit has not kept member states in check for a long time, and the three per cent deficit rule failed on both sides — the preventive arm did not stop over-indebtedness, and the corrective arm led during the euro crisis to excessively tight fiscal policy and a self-inflicted recession in 2011–2012. The sharpest thread concerns the ECB, which through creative reinterpretation became a lender of last resort to states. Published 11 December 2021.
NeuvottelijaEP111Vesa VihriäläAntti RonkainenECB
2021-11-28 · Economy · EN
Juho Romakkaniemi, CEO of the Finland Chamber of Commerce, first explains what the chamber system actually is: companies organising themselves, born in the 1500s against pirates, in Finland since 1917 and with statutory duties. The episode's strongest single figure is the tax footprint: company activity generates a 69 billion euro flow into public finances, against a Finnish GDP of 275 billion and a state budget of 65 billion. Romakkaniemi's point is that the debate stares at corporation tax even though a company generates an enormous tax yield even when it makes no profit at all. He reports a recent survey on the shortage of skilled people, and the episode closes on the Laffer curve and two Finnish empirical examples of it. Published 28 November 2021.
NeuvottelijaEP109Juho RomakkaniemiChamber of CommerceTaxation
2021-11-19 · Economy · EN
Minna Helle, deputy CEO of Technology Industries of Finland, has seen the labour market from three sides: as chief negotiator for the nurses' union Tehy, as National Conciliator, and now on the employer side. The episode opens with what taught her most — the 2007 bargaining round, which she calls a collective delusion. The discussion covers the difference between an employment contract and a collective agreement, universal applicability and its design flaw, and the technology industry's autumn 2021 settlement and how it differed from the forest industry's line. The last part is about negotiation: a professional would have to choose reason, but nobody manages that in their own affairs — and people quarrel, issues do not. Published 19 November 2021.
NeuvottelijaEP108Minna HelleLabour MarketCollective Agreement
2021-11-14 · Economy · EN
Elias Rantapuska, head of the department of finance at Aalto University, defines meritocracy as an order in which you rise through innate talent, hard work, or a combination, and reminds us that it is historically young and, compared with a hierarchy based on birth, a good system in principle. The episode's sharpest argument concerns the asymmetry between financial and human capital: with a million-euro portfolio you get by on ten hours of advice, but turning talent into world class takes the ten thousand hours. That is why Piketty is, in his view, only partly right. The conversation widens into invisible meritocracies and into meta-work, which in an organisation is called management. Published 14 November 2021.
NeuvottelijaEP107Elias RantapuskaMeritocracyHuman Capital
2021-11-13 · Economy · EN
Gautam Basu and Mikko Järvinen present Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition concept and Search Funds operational model. The episode explores the four stages of acquisition entrepreneurship, target screening criteria, and buyer seller negotiation dynamics. Sami Miettinen lectures on deal valuation, EBITDA multiples, and the negotiation matrix. The discussion reveals how to identify ideal targets and structure win win transactions.
2021-11-13 · Economy · Tools · EN
Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition, or ETA, is a career path where you become an entrepreneur by buying an existing, profitable and boring company instead of founding a new one. This article assembles the whole model: the jockey–horse–trainer structure, the four stages of search, acquire, operate and exit, the three funding routes, target criteria of €2–20 million in revenue at roughly ten per cent EBITDA, the screening funnel from hundreds of targets to a single deal, and the sobering US base rates. It also covers deal valuation on EV/EBITDA multiples, the discounts that push the entry price down, the financing stack, and the full negotiation lesson: the win-win versus No Deal quadrant, the four levers of negotiation, signalling, and the Columbo tactic for gathering information.
ETAEntrepreneurship Through Acquisitionsearch fundacquisitionentrepreneurship
2021-10-31 · Economy · EN
Henri Liimatainen and Mikko Hiltunen, final-stage finance students at Aalto who make the Momentum podcast, reverse the roles: they had just interviewed Sami Miettinen for their own series, and here they reflect on the four careers they have covered — the rapper Spekti, professor Elias Rantapuska, Inderes founder Mikael Rautanen, and Miettinen. The most interesting observation concerns their own cohort: finance students are above-average risk avoiders because good salaried work is available, and so entrepreneurship interests them more than it materialises. The episode also covers when your own firm is a credibility risk, investing the student loan, the index base, and why the thesis and the first job set a career vector. Published 31 October 2021.
NeuvottelijaEP105Henri LiimatainenMikko HiltunenMomentum
2021-10-23 · Economy · EN
GnS Economics CEO Tuomas Malinen builds the episode on three levers whose combination he considers dangerous: growth in the money supply, production bottlenecks, and state control over individual behaviour. On inflation he sets out a mechanism the indicators failed to see: while the service sector was shut, its contribution to the consumer price index was zero or negative at the same time as goods ordered with stimulus cheques were congesting freight markets. He names two historical conditions for hyperinflation. The Fed's balance sheet doubled from four to eight trillion in two years, and in Malinen's view central banks are now trapped. The second half deals with freedoms and the covid pass, and Miettinen states his own position openly. Published 23 October 2021.
NeuvottelijaEP104Tuomas MalinenInflationHyperinflation
2021-10-20 · Economy · Tools · EN
Host and guest worked opposite ends of the same billion-dollar transaction. In 1998 Miettinen was a Credit Suisse First Boston associate on Project Autumn, the $1,050 million three-way carve-up of Ohmeda between Instrumentarium's Datex, Baxter and Becton Dickinson; Erkkilä was inside Datex dividing units and people before signing, and then ran the integration that took the company from 1,200 to 3,500 employees. Twenty-three years later she is co-founder and largest individual owner of Midaxo, the SaaS platform built precisely because the knowledge from an integration like that one stays trapped on individual laptops.
NegotiatorEP103Sami MiettinenKaija Katariina ErkkiläM&A
2021-10-12 · Economy · EN
Richard Nordström built a career at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and BCG until his mother fell ill and, at 34, he found himself organising an elderly parent's daily life alongside his job. Helppy grew out of that, with the mission that the family carer is not left alone. The hard core of the episode is a diagnosis of what is broken in Finnish home care: carers rotate so nobody knows who is visiting, the family member has to integrate five separate services and pay five separate invoices, and reporting is still done in a paper notebook. Nordström also opens up the business turn from the Dutch Buurtzorg neighbourhood model to a platform-like hybrid, and the funding round that brought in Icebreaker and two unicorn founders. Published 12 October 2021.
NeuvottelijaEP102Richard NordströmHelppyHome Care
2021-09-22 · Economy · Society · EN
The second season of the Neuvottelija channel opens with the same guest as the first, but in a new role: Petri Roininen was elected leader of Sininen tulevaisuus (Blue Reform) the previous day, and the episode is recorded the following morning. The first question is one of governance — can the head of two listed companies also lead a party — and Roininen's own observation is that the criticism came from the right rather than the left. His programme compresses into the claim that the National Coalition Party has, across thirty years in government, been the chief architect of the social democratic tax state; his alternative is a family-centred welfare state. On economic policy he brings three numbers: 322,000 unemployed, a total tax rate higher than in 98 percent of the world's countries, and a gap to the OECD average worth 14,000 euros a year to a family of four. The most original passages are the five-tax wedge — two thirds of a customer's euro can go in tax before it reaches the entrepreneur — and the observation that debate on public finances stays stuck on income and expenditure when it should be looking at the balance sheet. The episode also covers the self-censorship that keeps business leaders out of politics.
NegotiatorEP100Sami MiettinenPetri RoininenBlue Reform
2021-09-18 · Economy · Tools · EN
Mika Sutinen and Antti Haapakorva have written a book with an uncomfortable thesis: strategy is not spoiled because it is hard, but because we ourselves made it too complicated and less inspiring. In their interview material only one company in four considers its own strategy execution adequate, and the diagnosis has two parts: focus is missing, and many organisations lack even the idea that execution ought to have a system. The remedy is a four-stage model running from understanding through vision and choices to execution, and its load-bearing principle is that modern people commit only to what they helped make. The most interesting passage is a disagreement left unresolved: Miettinen wants a meatier role for the board, Sutinen opposes it and grounds that in a question — can you as management be critical of your own superior if he works for you? The connecting thread is Musti ja Mirri's transformation from a loss-making company with 20 million in revenue to a market value of over a billion, and at the end the place of acquisitions in growth strategy: Sweden by buying, Norway greenfield.
NegotiatorEP99Sami MiettinenMika SutinenAntti Haapakorva
2021-09-10 · Tools · Economy · EN
Tuomas Rasila, founder of Stealth Black, builds assistive intelligence on top of GPT-3 that prepares sales and negotiation openings — but never sends anything itself. The episode's load-bearing claim is not efficiency but honesty: humans in a negotiation are prone to overselling, whereas a machine is not, because its opening is built from demonstrable facts. Rasila's most original concept is sales pollution. A badly prepared approach is not merely wasted time but a shared loss: the caller feels rejected, the recipient feels harassed, and both end up in a worse mood than before the conversation — and because only the deal won gets recorded, never the number of people bothered, the cost stays invisible. He likens it to emissions: polluting ought to cost something. The concrete cases are commercial property brokerage and corporate car sales, and the discussion connects to Timo Honkela's meaning negotiation and Martti Ahtisaari's principled negotiation, from which Miettinen derives a definition: a value is a useless word unless it is tied to behaviour you could call an algorithm — at which point it becomes a principle.
NegotiatorEP98Sami MiettinenTuomas RasilaStealth Black
2021-09-03 · Economy · EN
Ernst Grönblom, a portfolio manager at United Bankers, builds portfolios of fewer than 20 stocks — and the episode's premise makes that look hopeless from the start: Hendrik Bessembinder's dataset of 26,000 companies shows that about four percent produced all of the return above the risk-free rate over 90 years, and under half a percent produced half of it. Grönblom's answer begins with what he does not do: closet indexing can only be avoided with a sufficiently concentrated portfolio. The factors — network effects, a founder-led enlightened dictator, a strong brand, America — are not separate criteria but components of Charlie Munger's Lollapalooza effect, and it is their combination that he argues the market misprices. The most analytical stretch unpacks the decade-long growth-versus-value anomaly: he offers rising investor sophistication, real-time information, the structuredness of valuation, and quantitative investing — and finally the point that growth stocks cannot be treated as a monolith, because the same superstar phenomenon explains this gap too. Grönblom makes the counter-argument himself: a concentrated portfolio's good track record is precisely the kind a statistician cannot distinguish from luck.
NegotiatorEP97Sami MiettinenErnst GrönblomStock picking
2021-08-27 · Economy · Society · EN
Toni Heiskanen and Janne Piiroinen wrote the first original Finnish-language book on Bitcoin and published it free online. The longest and most analytical part of the episode is a point-by-point dismantling of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Bitcoin critique: the zero-value claim rests on miners eventually stopping, yet addresses only the block reward and not transaction fees, while the slowness claim overlooks the Lightning Network entirely — never once mentioned in the six-page paper. In Heiskanen's view the critique matches what 2017-era critics argued before Lightning became common. The conversation covers Tether's stablecoin risk and the lesson of Mt. Gox, the energy use of proof of work and why a 30 percent fall in hash rate after China's mining ban did not bring the network down, and the market psychology of the halving cycle. The guests are openly pro-Bitcoin, but Heiskanen explicitly distances himself from maximalism as an identity and explains why he keeps an open mind about other protocols.
NegotiatorEP96Sami MiettinenToni HeiskanenJanne Piiroinen
2021-08-20 · Tools · Economy · EN
Nitor's Rami Sirkiä has been taking large companies into agile operating models since the Nokia Mobile Phones era, without ever having written a line of code. The episode's load-bearing observation is counter-intuitive: the hardest part of agility is not in the teams but in management, because management no longer gets to launch large programmes and is instead asked what matters today. Sirkiä describes SAFe as a nautical chart rather than a recipe, and stresses repeatedly that it takes no position on release cadence, feedback channels or who does the work — you could in principle run waterfall with SAFe. The conversation covers the limits of the pizza team, the Agile Release Train as a team of teams, the quarterly rhythm of PI planning, DevOps as a shared culture, and flow efficiency in place of utilisation. It closes with advice that runs against his own firm's sales pitch: hire the developers yourselves, because you are building your own future competitiveness.
NegotiatorEP95Sami MiettinenRami SirkiäNitor
2021-08-14 · Economy · EN
Pia Santavirta, CEO of the Finnish Venture Capital Association, sets out the structure of Finland's private capital market and its rapid professionalisation: 16 new venture capital funds in five years, a record year of nearly a billion euros in startup investment during the pandemic, and roughly half of the new companies on the Helsinki exchange coming from private equity ownership. The episode's most concrete passage is an anatomy of advocacy: the double taxation of funds-of-funds prevented foreign investors from putting money into Finnish funds, and the fix was initially limited to European players until a single phone call extended it worldwide. Santavirta also explains why private-equity-backed listings have outperformed the market, what ESG requirements mean for access to financing, and why she published the industry's diversity figures even though they were poor. Miettinen concedes twice in the episode that he had been wrong: about private equity listings, and about impact investing.
NegotiatorEP94Sami MiettinenPia SantavirtaPrivate equity
2021-07-30 · Economy · Society · EN
Alex af Heurlin, a journalist at Helsingin Sanomat's HS Vision, describes what it is like to write about investing in a year when SPACs, the IPO boom, modern monetary theory and the EU's pandemic stimulus were all in the headlines at once. The episode is a conversation between two market watchers in which the journalist criticises Finland's first SPAC bluntly — 'why would you want to buy a pig in a poke' — and in which two readings of MMT are set against each other: for af Heurlin it is a creditable description of what is already happening, for Miettinen an accurate description of the system but branded from the left. Miettinen adds that MMT does not work in the euro area at all, because its mechanisms require your own currency and your own taxation. The discussion turns to Finns' weak financial wealth, a tax rate near the OECD top, and the zero-sum culture described by Juha Hurme. It closes on Roger Wessman's critique of equity saving, Bessembinder's research on the few winning stocks, and the power of the tech giants. Also included: a frank exchange on why journalists should appear as individuals.
NegotiatorEP92Sami MiettinenAlex af HeurlinHS Vision
2021-07-23 · Economy · Society · EN
Aalto University researcher Thomas Taussi argues that Milton Friedman's classic 1970 essay has been widely misread. Friedman did not dispute the importance of stakeholders and did not condemn all corporate social responsibility — he criticised one particular doctrine, in which a company's resources are spent on activities with no purpose of supporting the business. The episode's load-bearing observation is conceptual: responsibility sets itself no limits and does not explain itself, with the consequence that almost anything can be pursued under its cover. Taussi locates the source of his own scepticism precisely — the question is not whether the goals are good, but whether limits can be set at all on things that depart from the core business. The examples include Neste Oil's biofuel turn, Stora Enso's China venture, the Kemijärvi pulp mill, the Finnair deportation controversy and Finnwatch's position, the Google and Apple dismissals, and Basecamp's depoliticisation. Taussi finally explains woke excesses through Thorstein Veblen and costly-signalling theory. Miettinen offers a counter-reading that Taussi accepts as an addition but does not share.
NegotiatorEP91Sami MiettinenThomas TaussiCorporate responsibility
2021-07-15 · Economy · Tools · EN
Upper-secondary students Niklas Snäll, Waltteri Helisalo and Luka Mansikka from the international business programme at Lauttasaari secondary school won an entrepreneurship competition with their health app Nudvi. The idea came out of a school course, and the trio realised it was too good to leave as coursework. The episode's core is a product insight that recurs in several forms: existing health apps demand too much manual entry from the user, so only the most enthusiastic keep using them. Nudvi's premise is to collect data from elsewhere — the phone and connected devices — rather than requiring a separate smart ring. Miettinen brings his own Oura data, the pricing of intermittent fasting apps and the history of gym programmes, and the conversation closes on the freemium model, the role of community in a premium service, and why a mobile app displaces browser services. The channel's first three-guest episode.
NegotiatorEP90Sami MiettinenNiklas SnällWaltteri Helisalo
2021-07-09 · Economy · Society · EN
The Negotiator channel's first multi-guest episode: journalist Sami Metelinen, author of Libera's euro report, and economic analyst Toni Vuorinen ask what the EU's €750 billion recovery package is really about. Vuorinen advances the hypothesis that the package is an empirical experiment: the ECB buys the joint debt and converts it into a zero-coupon perpetual, and if nothing follows, the same is done to member states' debts. The end point of his scenario is a return to national currencies via Sami Miettinen's ECU-2 basket model. Metelinen considers it possible but unlikely: he sees a federal objective running back to the 1970s, and the over-indebted countries have no interest in returning to their own currencies. Both reject the claim that the package is an Italian rescue — ECB purchases keep Italy funded regardless. Also covered: the EU's power to tax, the 2012 Greek haircut as an example of bluffing, German ordoliberalism bending, and the Swiss model as a template for a workable federation.
NegotiatorEP89Sami MiettinenSami MetelinenToni Vuorinen
2021-07-02 · Economy · EN
Nasdaq Helsinki CEO Henrik Husman opens up Finland's third listing wave in spring 2021. More than a hundred companies have left the Helsinki exchange since 2000, but around 130 have joined — the net change is positive, though without the arrivals the list would be short. The episode covers what a First North listing demands of a company, what a Certified Adviser adds, and what the SPAC structure then being trialled in Finland actually is: Husman stresses it is not a back door to the exchange, because the combined entity must meet the same listing criteria. Also discussed: the reversal in reputation of private-equity-backed listings, whose returns have beaten the market; anchor investors and Puuilo's 30,000 subscribers; retail allocation cuts; high-frequency trading and volume internalised by banks. Husman also names a Finnish deterrent — dividend taxation that keeps well-capitalised family companies off the exchange.
NegotiatorEP88Sami MiettinenHenrik HusmanStock exchange
2021-06-24 · Economy · EN
Compensation specialist and investment banker Yrjö Kopra has built Finnish option and share incentive schemes since the 1980s, and he calls the tax reform on employee share issues in unlisted companies, effective January 2021, the most significant tax incentive of his career. Shares can now be sold to staff at net asset value with no tax consequences — a 50 to 90 percent discount to fair value — and the reform covers roughly 99 percent of Finnish companies. Kopra's central claim is that this is not about pay but about an ownership ethos: a holding worth €10,000 changes what an employee talks about. The episode covers the strike-price problem with options and the shift to free share awards, the two sides of dilution, Marimekko's employee share issue, the politically motivated option ban in state-interest companies, and how long-term incentives drove the strategic turns at Neste and the media companies.
NegotiatorEP87Sami MiettinenYrjö KopraCompensation
2021-06-20 · Economy · EN
Fredman Group's owner Peter Fredman has made an 'outrageous promise' in the Kasvuryhmä growth network to take his group from €30m to €100m in revenue in a little over three years. The episode examines why Finland lacks a German-style Mittelstand and opens up three communities — the Family Business Association, Kasvuryhmä and the entrepreneurs' delegation of the Confederation of Finnish Industries — which Miettinen describes bluntly as closed circles. Fredman concedes the criticism and says he has challenged all three to open up. The substantive core is the division of ownership roles: he has served simultaneously as CEO, board chair and owner, and argues that blurring those roles is one of the most common reasons growth strategies stall. Also covered: the switch from the Eskimo brand to the Fredman brand ahead of the public controversy, Board-as-a-Service thinking, the claim that an unlisted company is the best owner's interface for building wealth, and the IoT-sensor service business meant to deliver half the targeted growth.
NegotiatorEP86Sami MiettinenPeter FredmanFamily business
2021-06-16 · Society · Economy · EN
A quick reflection on Finland's June 2021 municipal elections, in which Ivan Puopolo and Sami Miettinen ask whether Finland has an economic right at all. The National Coalition Party took Helsinki, Turku and Tampere, but in Puopolo's view no party campaigns on shrinking the public sector — even the Coalition's right flank talks only about balancing it, and Petteri Orpo's 'growing the common cake' means in practice a larger tax take. On Iltalehti's values map Finland's most right-wing party sits on the centre line, with both main US parties clearly to its right. Miettinen offers a tax-rebel counterpoint: Finland's richest percentile is poor by international standards, the total tax rate is 42–43 percent against the OECD's 34, and by Laffer-curve logic a tax cut could raise revenue. The episode ends on the observation that nobody in Finland proposes lowering the tax rate.
NegotiatorEP85Sami MiettinenIvan PuopoloMunicipal elections
2021-06-10 · Tools · Economy · EN
Jan Ollila, partner at Dittmar & Indrenius, opens up the lawyer's real world, where a contract is not a shared understanding but a question of what the other side can ultimately be compelled to do. The sharpest observation concerns education: a law degree contains no negotiation training at all, even though negotiation is the core of the profession — and among top international lawyers it is 'shocking how little they understand of the human mind'. Two cases are offered in evidence, both of them dead deals.
2021-06-04 · Economy · Society · EN
Stefan Törnqvist opposes neither the euro nor a federation — he opposes Finland drifting into them like driftwood, without a strategy. The core of the argument is a municipal-merger analogy: before a merger a municipality puts its own house in order on borrowed money, because the infrastructure stays put either way. Finland does the opposite. He closes by sketching three end points for the world record in stimulus: a crash, hyperinflation or political conflict.
2021-05-29 · Economy · Tools · EN
DLA Piper's Jonathan Andersin walks through the paperwork of a funding round: the term sheet, the investment agreement and — most important — the shareholders' agreement you live with until exit. One fact frames everything: a VC invests other people's money, and the protective terms follow from that. In an EIF study of some 2,000 exits, only a fifth returned the capital. Miettinen supplies a live example from the bottom bin: his own EUR 4,320 loss.
2021-05-21 · Economy · EN
Kimmo Eloranta raises capital for unlisted funds from professional investors and explains how the money actually moves: a commitment to the fund, a capital call only at the moment of investment, add-on acquisitions, and the exit proceeds returning to the investor. The core argument is why the unlisted market has outgrown the exchange — majority ownership, crisis playbooks and operational teams. Miettinen challenges him on the information advantage and on ordinary savers being locked out.
2021-05-16 · Economy · Society · EN
Aalto University's special adviser on sustainable development corrects a widespread misunderstanding: the EU taxonomy is not merely a climate instrument but rests on six criteria. She describes how it swelled from an investor's tool into a political instrument, and warns against national over-implementation. Miettinen presses her on the treatment of hydro and nuclear power. In the background, a shared student-politics victory and the birth of Aalto University as a merger of three egos.
2021-05-12 · Economy · Tools · EN
Juho Lipsanen has never had a Finnish-speaking boss. In this episode he applies a Swedish and Swiss toolkit to three companies that have created, or could create, more than a billion euros of value from almost nothing: Coronaria, Ilmatar Windpower and Aico. Along the way: Barnevik's charm offensive, Harvard's definition of strategy, peat in three different sciences, and the argument that Finnish companies are sold far too early.
2021-05-08 · Economy · Society · EN
Tuomas Malinen returns to the channel just before the decisive vote on the EU recovery instrument and calls on Parliament to vote it down. The core argument sits in Articles 310 and 125: once they are set aside, no treaty article can be relied on again — security guarantees included. Two consolations are taken apart, the claim of an investment programme and the claim that the ECB will monetise it away, alongside the question of who bears responsibility if 'one-off' does not hold.
2021-05-06 · Society · Economy · EN
Marjo Miettinen, chair of Ensto Group and of Technology Industries of Finland, opens up a concept she found in her father's diaries: the owner's tripartite, in which the owner takes the risk, the employee brings the competence, and society's task is to create the operating environment. The episode also covers her doctoral thesis on shop stewards, where grounded theory produced 59 competence areas in six categories — showing the role to be far more demanding than the employer-side stereotype allows. It continues into Technology Industries' dual-membership solution, the merits and drawbacks of universally applicable collective agreements, industrial peace seen through an international owner's eyes, and trust as a property of institutions. Recorded in May 2021, months before anyone knew how many companies would choose national bargaining.
NegotiatorEP76Sami MiettinenMarjo MiettinenTrust
2021-04-28 · Economy · Society · EN
Ville Valkonen, who heads advocacy at the Finnish Landlord Association, explains why the rental market is local down to the city block and why the largest centres have pulled away from mid-sized cities. The core of the episode is the tension between debt and regulation: leverage is all but compulsory, yet a buyer should be able to see how many layers of debt hide inside a flat's price. Also: the financing-charge tax tightening, the 450 per cent debt cap proposal, the limits of Airbnb, and three pressures on construction.
2021-04-25 · Economy · EN
Lamor CEO Mika Pirneskoski describes how a Porvoo maker of oil spill response equipment became a global environmental services company that supplied two thirds of the equipment used in the Deepwater Horizon operation. The episode also covers the negotiating position of a small family firm across the table from oil states' ministries, the waste plastic ecosystem, Kuwait's three-billion clean-up, and, along the way, Brazilian business and the asset price inflation created by stimulus.
2021-04-11 · Economy · EN
Juhani Huopainen dismantles, one by one, the usual arguments for the euro's benefits to Finland — low interest rates, exchange-rate stability and vanished conversion costs — and shows they are explained by other factors. Behind it lies his standing public wager on proving the euro's net benefits. The conversation moves on to the recovery fund, Target 2 balances, the IMF's Greek assessments, and why the federation debate is systematically avoided in Finland.
2021-03-27 · Society · Economy · EN
Sami Kuusela unpacks the term he coined — business socialism: many entrepreneurs love business but do not find their values on the right. The core claim is that safety nets are precisely what make Finns free to take risk — met by Sami Miettinen's counter-figures on the total tax rate, the subsidiary economy and the shortage of capital. Also: Kuusela's own journey from 'hoodie guy' to humbled clarifier, the municipal campaign, and a bolder Helsinki.
2021-03-21 · Research · Economy · EN
Unikie CTO Erkka Niemi sets out where autonomous driving actually stands: from the DARPA challenges to Waymo, why lidar is the field's number-one technology and why Tesla's camera-only line puzzles the industry, and the five levels of autonomy. Includes the liability question in a fatal accident, Unikie's approach of moving sensors from the car into the car park's walls, and the surprisingly large business case in automating a car factory's internal logistics.
2021-03-14 · Society · Economy · EN
Heikki Pursiainen revisits the arguments of his book Paska Suomi five years on: which he still stands behind and where he has softened. At the centre is the state-centredness of Finnish civil society and culture, the question of where the line for public support runs, and what digitalisation does to the justifications for public broadcasting and library compensation.
2021-02-23 · Economy · EN
A recording of the closing presentation at the Finnish Bar Association's Bond Day: the four segments of Finland's bond market, the role of the bondholders' representative, and the written procedure that amends terms in 15 banking days. The cases are Kojamo, Containerships, Stockmann and Elematic, where creditors cut their own claim from 35 million to 15 million to save the company's value without bankruptcy. It closes on direct lending and the tokenisation of commercial real estate debt.
2021-02-16 · Economy · Research · EN
The opening episode of a crypto series. Martin Wichmann, one of Aave's founders, explains what decentralised finance means and why Ethereum's smart contracts set it apart from the Bitcoin protocol. Covers proof of work against proof of stake, the collateral behind stablecoins and Tether's audit problem, the ICO boom and the SEC's Howey test, and Lagarde's digital euro and its risk to the deposit base of banks.
2021-02-11 · Economy · EN
The roles are reversed: Ville Tolvanen interviews the channel's founder about ownership. The episode works through the structure of Finnish wealth — around 700 billion euros of private wealth, mostly in property, with two thirds of the stock market's value in foreign hands — and why entrepreneurs sell too early: too little domestic capital, too few follow-on financiers, and a tax system that penalises listing.
2021-02-05 · Economy · Society · EN
Tuomas Malinen, CEO of GnS Economics, argues that the EU recovery fund is not a one-off but the end point of a transfer union, and that currency unions historically have only two directions: they break up, or they become political unions. The episode covers the two functions of an exchange rate, Esko Aho's 1998 warning, and why Finland's longest recession came during a period without a currency of its own.
2021-02-01 · Economy · Society · EN
Chief economist Mauri Kotamäki unpacks the concept of elasticity and its link to the Laffer curve, explains why micro and macro elasticities lead to different policy conclusions, and takes apart the structural unfairness of Finnish earnings-related unemployment insurance: every employee pays the contribution, but only fund members receive the earnings-related part.
2021-01-27 · Economy · EN
Inderes chief analyst Sauli Vilén explains why Finnish equity research shrank from 150 analysts to barely 50, and how Inderes built a model in its place where the companies under coverage pay for the research and investors get it free. The episode examines independence through the incentive risks of both models, and closes on Sampo as an example of how capital allocation decides an investment case.
2021-01-22 · Tools · Economy · EN
Ville Tolvanen argues that a board should be a value-adding service the owner orders, not a supervisory organ inherited from the manufacturing era. The episode covers why owners and CEOs regard board meetings as wasted time, how the roles should be grouped like a Formula One team, and why supply and demand for board seats in Finland are badly out of balance.
2021-01-17 · Tools · Economy · EN
Henri Sora, co-author of a Finnish book on running strategy with OKRs, explains the mechanism that travelled from Andy Grove's Intel through John Doerr to Google: a short text objective, numeric key results beneath it, a maximum of five per level, weekly confidence tracking, and — critically — no money attached. The episode covers why tying a bonus to a key result turns goal-setting into the budget game, why OKRs are not KPIs, how a quarter boundary should be run, and where the model gets awkward: sales, and individual performance review.
NegotiatorEP58Sami MiettinenHenri SoraOKR
2021-01-17 · Tools · Economy · EN
OKR - objectives and key results - is a short-horizon change management method that travelled from Andy Grove's Intel with John Doerr into Google and from there into the world. This article assembles the model whole: the division of labour between a textual objective and numeric key results, at most five objectives per level, weekly confidence tracking, the retrospective at the turn of the quarter, and the two conditions whose breach destroys the model - no money attached to a key result, and no punishment for falling short. It also covers the difference from KPIs, where OKR sits between strategy and everyday work, radical transparency and its limits, and the two areas where the model is known to get hard: sales and individual appraisal. The source is Negotiator episode 58 with Henri Sora, co-author of a Finnish book on the model.
OKRobjectives and key resultsgoal settingchange managementKPI
2021-01-07 · Society · Economy · EN
Compensate CEO Elina Kajosaari explains why the carbon sequestration market is the Wild West and what verifying quality compensation actually takes: of roughly a hundred projects drawn from the best of the two best-known standards, only about ten per cent passed Compensate's own criteria. The episode covers the design flaw in capitalism that leaves climate harm out of prices, the correct order of reduction and compensation, over-compensation through quality multipliers, and the Finnish legal ambiguity that froze the whole sector — is sequestering carbon a service or a money collection?
NegotiatorEP56Sami MiettinenElina KajosaariCompensate
2020-12-23 · Society · Economy · EN
The channel's audience voted for the year's closing episode and chose Tuomas Malinen on the Great Reset. He argues the V-shaped recovery is artificial — built on record global debt and debt moratoria that suspend normal bankruptcy law — and reads the World Economic Forum's programme as a path towards greater state control sold on attractive language. The episode covers central bank digital currency, Acemoglu and Robinson's narrow corridor, and Malinen's own recipe: take the economic hit, keep the freedoms.
NegotiatorEP54Sami MiettinenTuomas MalinenGreat Reset
2020-12-17 · Economy · Society · EN
Elina Valtonen (still Lepomäki at the time of recording), deputy chair of the National Coalition Party, works through the themes of her book Vapauden voitto and answers the question the channel's viewers sent in: has she become a defender of the euro and a federal Europe? The answer is no — the monetary union has, on her account, stood on clay feet almost from the start. The episode opens up the basic account she designed in 2013, universalism as a principle for allocating public goods, the 95/5 split in earnings-related unemployment funding, the spending automaton built into the health and social services reform, and why federalism means the opposite in Germany to what it means in Finland. It closes on whether the ECB's digital euro could deliver a basic account — and on Miettinen's ECU-2 model.
NegotiatorEP53Sami MiettinenElina ValtonenElina Lepomäki
2020-12-12 · Economy · Society · EN
Tiina Landau, co-author of a book on earning excess returns through responsibility, unpacks the mechanics of responsible investing from a practitioner's standpoint. The episode opens by correcting Milton Friedman — he never said profit should be made at any cost — and moves on to Maersk's Indian shipbreaking beaches, where Norway's KLP did not sell but stayed to engage. It covers the three letters of ESG and how their order came about, the toolkit of influence from exclusion to activist funds, Stora Enso's Chinese pulp mill as a genuinely contested case, green bonds and the EU taxonomy — and Landau's daily question: is responsibility risk management or impact?
NegotiatorEP52Sami MiettinenTiina LandauResponsible investing
2020-12-03 · Society · Economy · EN
Christian Democrat leader and former MEP Sari Essayah answers the claim Sami Miettinen heard on a visit to the European Parliament: there is no opposition in the EU. Her answer is partly yes and more interesting than a yes — there is no government-versus-opposition structure, and what takes its place is a triangle in which the Commission and Parliament form a pair and the Council is the body that watches the money. The episode covers the Commission's monopoly on initiative, the division of labour between rapporteur and shadow rapporteur, the drift from directives to regulations, the failure of the lead-candidate system, and the passage of the recovery fund, in which treaty articles were, in her words, interpreted very creatively. She closes with a concrete reform: give the Council a right of initiative.
NegotiatorEP50Sami MiettinenSari EssayahEU
2020-11-29 · Economy · Tools · EN
Matias Mäenpää, co-author of the EXIT book series, explains why the core message is that an exit is a consequence rather than a cause — and how Finnish media covered company sales as lottery wins until a second angle was introduced. The episode covers the finding across 31 cases that partial private equity acquisitions satisfied founders less often than industrial buyers did, the psychological contract as the real determinant of a deal's success, unfair advantage as an investment philosophy, and why none of the 31 retired. Plus Mäenpää's move to Luxembourg and why remote negotiation smokes out the incompetent.
NegotiatorEP49Sami MiettinenMatias MäenpääEXIT
2020-11-25 · Economy · Society · EN
Kim Väisänen and Sami Miettinen work through how a person actually moves between wealth classes in Finland — and why most imagined shortcuts are not shortcuts. The episode dismantles the myth that income classes are permanent, notes that Finland's poorest postcode is almost always Otaniemi, and works out what the 1:10 ratio between earned and capital income means for the tax debate. Startup investing turns out to be a poor route to wealth, leaving one: building and selling a company. Väisänen sets out the five things that have to be right for a good exit, and why preparation takes two years rather than two quarters.
NegotiatorEP48Sami MiettinenKim VäisänenExit
2020-11-24 · Economy · Society · EN
The episode where Sami Miettinen's ECU-2 proposal meets a serious opponent. Puheenaihe put him opposite MP and economist Juhana Vartiainen, who does not buy it. The proposal is to reverse the euro's own construction: reintroduce national currencies as parallel money and define the euro juridically as their weighted sum. Vartiainen's objection is direct — if the willingness to tax German surpluses does not exist, no currency architecture creates it, and Finland's adjustment problem is domestic. Also covered: Target2, federation without transfers, fiscal dominance and Greece in 2015.
2020-11-18 · Economy · Tools · EN
Sparkmind.vc managing director Marko Kyyrönen describes what it takes to raise a €60 million specialist fund in Finland and invest it in education technology. The episode covers Kahoot's path from a $350 million valuation to $2.5 billion, Fuzu's model in East African labour markets, Aino Saarinen's research on how long the effects of early childhood education actually last, the principle that education comes before tech, and the shift in credentialing from university brands to demonstrated evidence. Kyyrönen closes on what separates an interesting pitch from the other 300 — and why a market of a few hundred million is not enough.
NegotiatorEP47Sami MiettinenMarko KyyrönenSparkmind
2020-11-15 · Economy · Research · EN
Juhana Vartiainen traces the development of macroeconomics from Adam Smith to the present: the division of labour, Ricardo's comparative advantage and Dani Rodrik's argument that the losers explain Trumpism, Marx as valid analysis of a transient historical phase, Marshall's marginalism, Keynes as the founder of macroeconomics and Hayek as the counterweight. The closing section covers Friedman's critique of inflation expectations, central bank independence that succeeded rather too well, and why Vartiainen does not consider Modern Monetary Theory new — along with where its real risk lies.
NegotiatorEP46Sami MiettinenJuhana VartiainenHistory of economics
2020-11-10 · Economy · Research · EN
Lauri Holappa, who wrote his doctoral thesis on the mechanics of Modern Monetary Theory and served as economic policy adviser to Li Andersson through the coronavirus spring, works through MMT's foundations with Sami Miettinen. Both treat it as a description of the system rather than a policy recommendation. The episode runs from chartalism — taxation as the basis of a currency's value — through the demolition of the money multiplier, the mechanics of endogenous money, Holappa's bond market power fallacy, and why the real constraint is not credit markets but inflation. It closes on the actual causes of hyperinflation, Miettinen's ECU-2 proposal, and what a functioning euro would require.
NegotiatorEP45Sami MiettinenLauri HolappaMMT
2020-11-06 · Economy · Tools · EN
Round2 Capital founder Christian Czernich explains revenue-based funding: capital advanced against a two-to-six per cent share of revenue, fully non-dilutive, with no conversion right and no argument over valuation. He walks through the metrics he underwrites on — ARR growth, the ratio of lifetime value to customer acquisition cost, net churn against upselling, and a fourth that is routinely ignored: engagement. The episode also covers what bootstrapping meant for Vainu, why B2B SaaS scales far slower than people assume, and why a company transforming from licences to subscriptions looks worse in the numbers precisely while it is getting better.
NegotiatorEP44Sami MiettinenChristian CzernichRound2 Capital
2020-10-29 · Economy · Society · EN
GNS Economics' Tuomas Malinen and Sami Miettinen work through the economic consequences of the coronavirus second wave and arrive at the episode's central worry: every solution being offered to the crisis is a centralised one. The economy already collapsed in the second quarter, and that collapse has been prevented from realising through bankruptcy moratoria — a carpet pulled over the chasm. The core of the discussion is central bank digital currency and the Chinese model, in which private payment systems are forced to settle in central bank money, opening a path where the commercial banking system becomes unnecessary. Malinen closes on the question the episode keeps returning to: will we let fear take away freedoms bought with tens of millions of lives?
NegotiatorEP43Sami MiettinenTuomas MalinenGNS Economics
2020-10-21 · Economy · Tools · EN
IPR VC managing director Timo Argillander explains how a venture capital business is built on intangible rights — in practice film and television content. The premise is that manufacturing faces Asian price competition while intangible content cannot be copied the same way, so value can be created in Finland and sold worldwide. The episode covers Disney's strategy of buying rights while competitors bought distribution, portfolio logic for when you cannot trust your own taste, an off-balance-sheet debt instrument that avoids diluting the partner, and the pricing problem a small language area faces in the market streaming opened up.
NegotiatorEP41Sami MiettinenTimo ArgillanderIPR VC
2020-10-17 · Society · Economy · EN
Huuki Show host and political history student Manolis Huuki walks through the birth of the American federation: taxation without representation, the Articles of Confederation, the quarrel between federalists and anti-federalists, the three-fifths compromise and the federal debt that took off after the Civil War. The second half applies all of it to the European Union. The sharpest observation is numerical: US federal and state government together run at around 30 per cent of GDP, while Finland alone is at 42 — so copying a Hamiltonian moment would mean moving taxes to Brussels and cutting the rate, not building a new layer on top.
NegotiatorEP40Sami MiettinenManolis HuukiFederalism
2020-10-01 · Economy · Society · EN
GNS Economics CEO Tuomas Malinen explains why the firm's latest Q-review contained no positive scenario at all for the first time: the options are collapse, reset and great inflation. A European banking crisis has become the baseline. Malinen unpicks why record-low junk bond yields cannot coexist with record-high large corporate bankruptcies unless a central bank has broken the pricing mechanism, and why debt-financed stimulus in an over-indebted economy creates the conditions for a debt crisis. The second half covers the public clash between the Finnish government and business leaders, what corporate social responsibility actually means, and the quality of the debate over the EU recovery fund.
NegotiatorEP38Sami MiettinenTuomas MalinenGNS Economics
2020-09-18 · Economy · Tools · EN
Videoly CEO Nora Huovila explains how the company pulls product videos for an entire e-commerce catalogue out of YouTube and attaches them automatically to product pages — tens of thousands of products from a single script implementation. The episode covers the psychology that makes video move purchase decisions, the curation process, the different maturity of the brand side and the retailer side, internationalising one vertical at a time with an office in Toronto next to Shopify, and why Huovila treats company culture as the competitive edge in the fight for top talent. It closes with advice for founders: Finns shoulder the entrepreneur's responsibility but forget to use the entrepreneur's freedom.
NegotiatorEP37Sami MiettinenNora HuovilaVideoly
2020-09-09 · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen's former Royal Bank of Scotland colleague Sanjeev Kumar, based in Singapore, traces his path from running RBS's global corporate advisory business through MUFG to a new chapter — and explains why he joined the global advisory board of pinBox Solutions. pinBox builds digital micro-pension systems for low-income workers, especially women and the non-salaried: live in Rwanda and Kenya, just launched in India. The conversation compares Finland's collective pension system with Singapore's personal-account model, works through the allocation problem in defined-contribution schemes, and lands on why longevity, financial inclusion and impact investing make finance more interesting after the global financial crisis than it was before it.
NegotiatorEP36Sami MiettinenSanjeev KumarpinBox Solutions
2020-09-04 · Economy · Tools · EN
Ali Omar — doctor, co-founder of Med Group and angel investor with a portfolio of 29 startups — sets out when a career change is worth making and when it is an enormous risk. The episode covers the definition of SaaS scalability as the mathematical predictability of growth, the metrics from gross margin to CAC and churn, the three rules of internationalisation, and the statistical nature of angel investing: a portfolio needs 20 to 40 companies and a decade of patience.
2020-08-24 · Society · Economy · EN
Vesa Kanniainen, emeritus professor of economics, examines Finland's permanent security deficit and why he considers EU membership one of the most significant post-war security decisions the country has made — even though he is best known as a euro critic. The episode covers a game-theoretic reading of the YYA treaty, the NATO option and the price of exercising it as shared responsibility for the Baltics, the costs of the common currency and the parallel-currency idea, and Kanniainen's work at the boundary of morality and economics from Adam Smith to Vernon Smith.
2020-08-20 · Economy · Society · EN
Tere Sammallahti of the think tank Libera asks why Finnish tax debate always aims at the peak of the Laffer curve and never at collecting as little tax as possible. The conversation covers the problem of cherry-picked comparison periods in economic argument, the scale of transfers and Gini figures, a three-dimensional political coordinate system, universally binding collective agreements and the position of the non-unionised worker, and taxing externalities as a way to fund lower taxes on work.
2020-08-12 · Economy · Society · EN
An English-language episode in which Tuomas Malinen sets out the mechanics of the recovery fund for an international audience. A EUR 750 billion package split into EUR 390 billion of grants and EUR 360 billion of loans, allocated on population, GDP per capita and unemployment from 2015-2019 - variables with nothing to do with the pandemic. Malinen names two treaty articles he considers broken, sorts the euro countries into beneficiaries and losers by GDP per capita, and walks through GnS Economics' synthetic markka simulation, which suggests Finnish exports would have been some 40 per cent higher with an own currency. He closes with one concrete demand: a referendum on the recovery fund in every member state.
NegotiatorEP31Sami MiettinenTuomas MalinenRecovery fund
2020-08-06 · Economy · Society · EN
Tuomas Malinen of GnS Economics walks through the structure of the EU recovery fund and argues it is a permanent transfer mechanism rather than a one-off crisis measure: the allocation criteria do not correlate with Covid, the EU borrows directly into member-state budgets for the first time, and the balanced-budget requirement of Article 310 is bypassed. The conversation covers the German constitutional court's ultra vires ruling, the scale of Italy's debt, the arithmetic of Finland's negotiated outcome, and the case for a referendum.
2020-08-03 · Economy · Society · EN
Mika Maliranta, research professor at the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority, explains why firms exist at all (the Coase theorem), where the line runs between vertical and horizontal integration, and how natural monopolies are regulated. The second half takes up Acemoğlu and Robinson's institutional theory, The Narrow Corridor and Hayek: why good institutions are not adopted even when they are well known, why some institution always fills the gap — the mafia included — and why the Nordic model and earnings-related unemployment insurance actually encourage risk-taking.
2020-07-29 · Tools · Economy · EN
Rami Kurimo of the Puheenaihe podcast unpacks why corporate video content fails so often: companies port landing-page logic onto platforms that reward regularity, native format and a recognisable human being. The conversation covers the role of guests, radio-style jingles as an anti-pattern, host-read ads versus pre-rolls, platform-native content from TikTok to LinkedIn, thumbnails and titles, running episode numbers, and why hiding comments is a beginner's mistake.
2020-07-29 · Tools · Economy · EN
Rami Kurimo, founder of the Finnish channel Puheenaihe, sets out the playbook for growing a channel on a zero-euro marketing budget - the one Negotiator applied on its way to becoming one of Finland's largest economics podcasts. The article assembles the model whole: why you go where the audience already is instead of driving traffic to your own website, why a company is structurally weak on social media and what Ronald Coase's theory of the firm says about it, how guests create network effects, why radio format should not be carried into podcasting, what organic reach means on different platforms, and the roles of publishing cadence, audio quality, thumbnails and sequential numbering. The source is Negotiator episode 28, in which Kurimo is Sami Miettinen's guest - an episode Miettinen himself describes as mentoring.
media visibilitypodcastingYouTubecontent strategyorganic reach
2020-07-05 · Economy · Tools · EN
Jyri Engeström — who sold Jaiku to Google and now runs Yes VC — explains how venture capital actually works in Silicon Valley: why fund maths forces investors to hunt for a handful of enormous winners, why the best founders are in fact risk-averse, and why demand should be tested before a product exists. He also covers what the Finnish ecosystem still lacks: financing infrastructure, a normalised relationship with failure, and the special insight that comes from working the structural holes in a network.
2020-06-28 · Economy · Tools · EN
Tero Nummenpää, chairman of Translink International, and Sami Miettinen open up how a founder-owned company worth between ten and fifty million euros actually gets sold. The episode contrasts the heavy two-stage auction with a lighter model that nails the main terms already at the letter-of-intent stage, and explains why the depth of the sales material determines how high a buyer will bid. The discussion covers the difference between industrial and financial buyers, the role of the shareholders' agreement, the kickoff workshop question about hidden problems, and a fee model weighted to success. It closes on the pandemic's effect on cross-border processes, virtual due diligence rooms and complex consideration structures.
2020-06-19 · Economy · Society · EN
Tuomas Malinen of GnS Economics and Sami Miettinen revisit the three scenarios they set out in their book on the euro's future six years earlier: zombification through the ECB's balance sheet, a move to federation, and fragmentation of the euro area. Malinen reads the pandemic as a classic asymmetric shock being explained away as a symmetric one, and argues the EU has moved onto a path that breaches its own treaties in both the recovery fund and the ECB's pandemic programme. The episode covers the Karlsruhe court's deadline for the Bundesbank, Finland's hidden contingent liabilities, and why a floating currency works as a countercyclical safety valve. It closes with Malinen's pointed promise about leaving the euro and a scenario in which the recovery package fails in national parliaments.
2020-06-18 · Economy · Society · EN
Tuomas Malinen of GnS Economics and Sami Miettinen work slide by slide through the most common misconceptions about an independent currency and an EU federation. The episode shows that Finnish interest rates were not exceptionally high during the markka era once the currency floated, and that the rate spike came from defending a fixed exchange rate rather than from having one's own money. The discussion presents the GnS simulation of how the markka would have moved during the euro years and its countercyclical effect, and compares US federal tax levels with the EU equivalent. It closes on Puerto Rico's debt restructuring, the broken no-bailout principle, and where a federation's ten-point tax increase would come from.
2020-05-19 · Economy · Tools · EN
A nine-minute channel update from May 2020 with a compact euro analysis inside it. Miettinen recaps the discussion about a euro break-up he had just had on the Puheenaihe channel, the scale of Italy's financing need, and the German Constitutional Court's Karlsruhe ruling on the ECB's purchase programmes. He also sets out what he recommended to the Finnish parliament's Commerce Committee in April 2020: get the national wholesale payment system finished, and prepare for connecting a central-bank financing channel to domestic consumption if other euro countries do the same. The rest is channel news — microphones, upcoming guests and Discord.
NeuvottelijaEP20Sami MiettinenEuroItaly
2020-05-06 · Economy · Research · EN
Tuomas Malinen of GnS Economics and Sami Miettinen continue their analysis of the pandemic economy and clarify why its economic impact meets the criteria of a black swan. The episode identifies the two conditions required for hyperinflation, the role of central bank financing of governments, and how the interbank market can force rates up despite central bank policy. The discussion covers ECB conduct, the German constitutional court ruling on PSPP, the zombification of the banking sector, and security of supply and food as national questions. It closes on the lag before the real economy is hit, the changing role of the Fed, and creative destruction visible in M&A.
2020-04-29 · Tools · Economy · EN
Jussi Liimatainen, author of the book Digitrippi, and Sami Miettinen break down the division of labour between marketing and sales across the funnel, and the difference between outbound and inbound thinking. The episode covers online lead marketing, the role of search visibility, and the mechanics of content and lead capture. The discussion compares B2B and B2C selling through customer counts, deal sizes, and decision processes, and reviews HubSpot's hub structure against Dynamics and Salesforce. It closes on the digital leap triggered by the pandemic and how remote work reshaped meeting practices.
2020-04-26 · Economy · Tools · EN
Sami Miettinen walks the SaaS Club through the metrics professional investors use to evaluate software businesses: annual recurring revenue, churn, customer acquisition cost, and lifetime value. The episode unpacks the Rule of 40, revenue and EBITDA multiples, and why the income statement must be split between new customer acquisition and recurring business. The discussion also covers SaaS funding options from venture debt to private equity, and when a company should start shaping itself for a sale. Finally, it examines the sales model and cost load involved in moving from a home market to international expansion.
2020-04-08 · Tools · Economy · EN
Sales expert Mika D. Rubanovitsch explains how B2B selling shifts to the remote era: what the dialogue plan is and why the game is decided long before the negotiation table, why you should 'hook' the customer with references before the first 15-minute connect call, how sales meetings are staggered into a 15- and 45-minute rhythm, why a virtual negotiation never opens with a company presentation, what insight-led selling and the four-quadrant model mean, and why expanding the participant group decides the close. Featuring the book Don't Be a Boss, self-direction, and remote leadership.
NeuvottelijaEPSami MiettinenMika D. RubanovitschB2B Sales
2020-04-03 · Tools · Economy · EN
Two authors of the book Digitalisaatio, lawyers Jaakko Lindgren (Dottir) and Antti Toponen (Sulapak), reflect on the digital leap forced by the March 2020 coronavirus crisis: why remote-work tools had been ready for over ten years but management culture had not, how quickly wet signatures and physical shareholder meetings collapsed, how value chains reverse their sign for globalization and the sharing economy, where big-data surveillance and location tracking lead, and why creative destruction and global cooperation decide the direction after the crisis.
NeuvottelijaEPSami MiettinenJaakko LindgrenAntti Toponen
2020-03-28 · Economy · Tools · EN
Journalist Henri Alakylä and Sami Miettinen examine Eurozone payment systems, ECB balance sheet expansion, and Target 2 structural imbalances. The episode analyzes liquidity shocks, stimulus scale, and the imperative for national backup payment systems. The discussion also covers financial crisis lessons, hyperinflation risks, and sovereign debt restructuring constraints.
2020-03-24 · Economy · Research · EN
Mikko Särelä and Sami Miettinen discuss urban planning, high-density housing advantages, and how the coronavirus pandemic impacts mobility and city structures. The episode analyzes remote work adoption, urban density trends, and mobile location data in city planning. The discussion also covers Eurozone economic challenges and public sector adaptability.
2020-03-13 · Economy · Research · EN
Macroeconomist Tuomas Malinen (GNS Economics) analyzes the coronavirus in March 2020 as a 'black swan': why the pandemic itself would only be a trigger, when the world economy has been driven into a state of fragility. In Malinen's view, three weak points — China's mountain of debt, Europe's banking sector, and the US capital-market bubble — threaten to unravel at once. Featuring Taleb's antifragility, the September 2019 repo market, central-bank balance sheets, helicopter money, Finland's fight for survival, and a defense of the market mechanism.
NeuvottelijaEPSami MiettinenTuomas MalinenCorona
2020-03-06 · Economy · Tools · EN
Gautam Basu introduces Sami Miettinen to Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition, the model where you become an entrepreneur by buying an established company rather than founding a new one. The episode covers the three routes into the model, the True North Search accelerator concept, and the demographics behind it: 30 per cent of Finnish entrepreneurs are 55 or over and up to 40 000 companies are looking for a new owner. Basu opens up the search criteria, the funnel from 300-500 targets down to one acquisition, and why the market at 2-20 million euros of enterprise value is inefficient and opaque - and therefore priced at three to five times EBITDA. Also included are the US figures on how many searches fail, the psychometric assessment of candidates, and the question of who a seller actually wants to hand their life's work to.
NegotiatorEP7Sami MiettinenGautam BasuETA
2020-02-25 · Economy · Tools · EN
Sami Miettinen is the guest on Antti Pietilä's Finding Success podcast, working through the four-part framework from Uusi neuvotteluvalta — power, analysis, sociability and principle — and applying it to inbound sales and to company sales. Along the way: how situational power is misread in recruitment, a company sale as service design with Lyyti's SaaS metrics, negotiating team roles from the quiet decision-maker to the scribe, the dialogue plan before the table, package offers instead of sequential bargaining, and the moment the buyer's other departments wake up with agendas of their own.
Sami MiettinenAntti PietiläLoyalisticNegotiationUusi neuvotteluvalta
2020-02-21 · Society · Economy · EN
Doctoral researcher Antti Ronkainen unpacks the mechanics of identity politics as the megatrend of political influence: why Boris Johnson won with a single identity while Corbyn's Labour leaked in every direction, how Fukuyama's thymos and the white worker explain Trump's rise, what Krastev and Piketty reveal about imitation and the left's gentrification, and why identity politics is a 'cage of democracy.' Featuring the Overton window, the 'Frankfurt School' myth, Bloomberg's micro-targeting, and the crisis of Finland's and Kokoomus's center-right.
NeuvottelijaEPSami MiettinenAntti RonkainenIdentity Politics
2020-02-14 · Economy · Research · EN
Rahapodi's Martin Paasi unpacks the core of portfolio theory: why 'nobody knows anything', what alpha, beta, and CAPM mean, how Warren Buffett and Bridgewater generate excess returns by leveraging boring quality companies, and why the low-cost index investor statistically ends up in the top quartile. Finally, salary as a return vector and the mathematics of long-term saving.
NeuvottelijaEPSami MiettinenMartin PaasiRahapodi
2020-02-09 · Economy · Research · EN
How does a millionaire negotiate? Sami Miettinen guested on the Puheenaihe podcast (host Rami Kurimo) to discuss ownership and negotiation with investor and board professional Tero Luoma. The four levers of negotiation — power, analytical skill, sociability, and principle — sit differently for the wealthy, and power rises above the rest. Featuring anchoring and the role of emotion in M&A.
NeuvottelijaEPSami MiettinenTero LuomaRami Kurimo
2020-02-04 · Economy · Tools · EN
Finance-sector change leader Kirsi Larkiala unpacks the mechanics of banking and fintech negotiation: why transaction banking ties a client to its 'house bank' and earns many times more, why Sweden beat Finland in fintech, why the end customer is the best lever against a bank, and why the size of a funding round buys credibility (Enfuce vs. Tink). Featuring Davos, Jamie Dimon, open banking, and the power of networking.
NeuvottelijaEPSami MiettinenKirsi LarkialaFintech
2020-02-03 · Economy · Society · EN
Rami Kurimo puts a negotiation author and an ownership author in the same room and asks whether you can negotiate your way to a million. What comes out is a two-part conversation: the four levers of negotiation and the team roles nobody bothers to agree before walking into the room, and then the distinction Luoma draws between an owner and an investor — the owner is the one who has to negotiate. Underneath both sits the same Finnish problem: too little private capital and too few owners.
Sami MiettinenTero LuomaRami KurimoPuheenaiheNegotiation
2020-01-23 · Economy · Tools · EN
Investors House CEO Petri Roininen unpacks the mechanics of real-estate and M&A negotiation: why a deal happens when buyer and seller agree on price but disagree on value, how time and residual value are central negotiating dimensions, why the Finnish real-estate market internationalized in 2002 and trades at a NAV discount, and how listing, insider rules, and negotiation-team roles work.
NeuvottelijaEPSami MiettinenPetri RoininenInvestors House
2020-01-18 · Tools · Economy · EN
A concrete negotiation tool in action: Sami Miettinen sells his own apartment and demonstrates anchoring. Anchor first, anchor credibly, anchor using a reference price, and don't round — backed by public price data, buyer-specific synergies, and a credible walk-away (flagging).
NeuvottelijaEPSami MiettinenAnchoringNegotiation
2020-01-11 · Economy · Tools · EN
M&A case study on the cross-border acquisition of Finnish agtech pioneer Pro Farm Technologies — whose space-derived biostimulant turns pulp-industry side streams into billions of kilos of additional food — by Nasdaq-listed Marrone Bio Innovations, advised by Translink Corporate Finance.
NeuvottelijaSPM&AProFarmMarrone Bio Innovations
2019-12-27 · Economy · Tools · EN
Expert analysis of Finnish event-management SaaS company Lyyti's international expansion and its private equity transaction: why a growing software company sought expertise alongside capital, how its advisor structured a shapeless starting point into a process, and why Vaaka Partners — with an expert board — became the chosen investor.
NeuvottelijaSPSaaSLyytiVaaka Partners
2019-10-31 · Economy · Society · EN
Sami Miettinen and Sam Laakso on Puheenaihe in October 2019, at the tail of what was then the longest expansion in American history and one of the weakest by average growth. The argument that carries the episode is about pegs: a gold standard rebalances itself, but the mechanism breaks when a local currency is tied one-to-one to an international settlement currency while labour markets stay rigid — which is precisely the euro's defect. Also covered: the policy rate as a deliberate choice, Russia's digital gold-backed currency, Libra as an SDR-like basket, the scale of crypto, and housing.