Podcast · Viikon viisasteluklubi Viisastelu 26.8.2022 · 2022-08-26 · 51:38 · In Finnish
Marin as victim, Fortum on fire — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys
Published as “Viisastelu 26.8. | Sanna Marin uhriutuu | Fortumin kaaos | Hesari syytettynä oikeudessa”
Hosted by: Ivan Puopolo
▶ Watch on Viikon viisasteluklubi
Sami Miettinen joined Viikon viisastelu — Ivan Puopolo’s weekly political panel, known in English here as Weekly Wiseguys — on 26 August 2022, with Tere Sammallahti as the third seat. The recording sits at the intersection of two stories that dominated that Finnish autumn: the Sanna Marin party-video row, and Fortum’s German subsidiary Uniper turning into a multi-billion-euro hole.
The panel’s contribution on the first story is a distinction rather than a verdict. Whether a prime minister may go out is treated as a separate question from what the office demands of whoever holds it, and the episode is almost entirely about the second. The rise from backbencher to global celebrity inside two years, they argue, is fast enough to blur anyone’s judgement — which is the case for wanting ministerial experience and a work history behind the job rather than a case against any individual.
The economics is where Sami does the work. Fortum’s Nordic business was improving throughout; the damage sat in Uniper, a separately capitalised German company. Eight billion euros went in during January 2022, KfW was lining up as much as nine billion more, and the twelve-billion write-down did not by itself put Fortum’s solvency in question — though the interim report had already hinted at needing liquidity support or state guarantees on derivative positions. He then turns the same question on Fortum’s own management: was due diligence ever properly done, if fixed-price delivery commitments were entered into unhedged? The identical mechanic, he notes, is what bankrupted small electricity retailers who had sold two-year fixed contracts at six cents a kilowatt-hour.
The last stretch is a free-speech case in which the panel ends up on the unexpected side. On the Helsingin Sanomat signals-intelligence trial, Sammallahti argues that if the material really is a security secret, restricting publication is justified — and that the real problem is the incentive to over-classify, because nobody outside can ever check whether a stamp was warranted. Sami does not fully agree, and the disagreement is left standing.
Chapters
- 00:00 — Opening: championship tickets and when a gift becomes a favour
- 01:54 — Marin’s Lahti speech and the rhetoric of victimhood
- 05:16 — What the office of prime minister demands of a person
- 09:49 — Private life, trust and security
- 12:45 — The August that cost more than the previous winter
- 14:16 — The “ask the responsible minister” doctrine
- 16:11 — A rocket rise without leadership experience
- 18:19 — Who published and who hesitated: Iltalehti, Seiska, HS, Yle
- 22:12 — Marin’s policy opening: forcing part-time contracts permanent
- 25:47 — Fortum and Uniper: eight billion in, twelve billion written down
- 28:19 — What the security detail costs
- 30:07 — European power prices and France’s thirtyfold claim
- 31:06 — Nord Stream, Lipponen and Western naivety
- 32:16 — Afrikan tähti, representation and “a world painted to taste”
- 34:45 — The gender debate, Orwell and de-platforming
- 39:17 — The claim about how tax revenue splits by sex
- 41:21 — Helsingin Sanomat in court: signals intelligence and over-classification
- 46:59 — An energy warning: recession, a home stock and outages
- 48:16 — The “the state’s VAT take stays the same” tweet
- 49:44 — The nuclear decisions of the 1990s and Olkiluoto 3
- 50:35 — Norway limits exports — the risk of a domino effect
The recording lives on Ivan Puopolo’s own channel and he owns it. This page is a record of the appearance and a pointer to the original, not a copy of it. The chapter marks above are derived from the recording itself; the episode carries no published chapter list of its own.
A fuller write-up is on Neuvottelija AI, in English and in Finnish.
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