---
title: "The Finnish Economy in Trouble Again | Stefan Törnqvist | Negotiator 116"
titleOriginal: "Suomen talous taas ongelmissa | Stefan Törnqvist | Neuvottelija 116"
episodeNumber: "116"
guest: "Stefan Törnqvist"
datePublished: 2022-01-09
duration: "28:58"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UlU9yaWgKM"
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["finnish_economy_policy","investing_markets"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata and the neuvottelija.fi episode record. The publisher published no chapter marks for this episode, so none are listed here. No transcript is published either — the channel has no English caption track for this episode and the Finnish one is YouTube's automatic track. The claims about the euro, the European Central Bank's room for manoeuvre and Italian sovereign debt are the guest's own and are contested; no economist holding the opposing view is present. Recorded 9 January 2022, before the inflation and rate moves of that year, and the forecasts in it should be read against what followed."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/146-suomen-talous-taas-ongelmissa-stefan-tornqvist-neuvottelija"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep116-suomen-talous-taas-ongelmissa-stefan-tornqvist/
---
# The Finnish Economy in Trouble Again | Stefan Törnqvist | Negotiator 116

English subtitles are not available on this page. This is an episode summary, not a curated transcript.

## Summary

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 observation is about 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 and 2008. On monetary policy he holds that the Fed is tightening and the European Central Bank cannot, because a market rate cannot be imposed on Italian debt without a banking crisis that Basel regulation has built into the balance sheets.

## Ratchets work in both directions

The argument is neater than it first sounds. If pay cannot fall in a downturn, then a large increase granted in a boom is permanent, and the adjustment has to come out of employment instead. That makes restraint during good years a condition of survival in bad ones rather than a preference.

## Why 2007

Törnqvist is not saying the economy resembles 2007 in general. He is pointing at one mechanism — generous settlements at the top of a cycle — and noting that it is present again. Narrow claims of that kind are the checkable ones.

## Italy, not inflation

His reading of the ECB's position is that the binding constraint is sovereign debt held by banks under rules that treat it as safe. Whether or not one accepts the conclusion, it locates the constraint somewhere specific, which most commentary on central bank hesitancy does not.


## Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: [Suomen talous taas ongelmissa | Stefan Törnqvist | Neuvottelija 116](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UlU9yaWgKM).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at [www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/146-suomen-talous-taas-ongelmissa-stefan-tornqvist-neuvottelija).

## In depth

The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode:
[English](https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep116-suomen-talous-taas-ongelmissa-stefan-tornqvist/) · [suomeksi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/economy/ep116-suomen-talous-taas-ongelmissa-stefan-tornqvist/).

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — The Finnish Economy in Trouble Again | Stefan Törnqvist | Negotiator 116, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep116-suomen-talous-taas-ongelmissa-stefan-tornqvist/, 2022-01-09. For quotes include episode 116 and timestamp.