Free Republic

SÖLVESBORG, Sweden — Around 4,000 far-right supporters gathered on the grounds of a ruined castle last weekend to plot the downfall of the socialist ideas that have come to define their progressive country. Their views — anti-immigration, anti-establishment and often anti-Muslim — are not new amid the populist tsunami that's crashed into much of the West. But this is Sweden, where socialists have won every election for the past 101 years, making the Nordic nation something of a lodestar for leftists around the world. Some polls predict that the supporters' favored party, the Sweden Democrats, with roots in neo-Nazism and...

John covered an interesting story out of Sweden the other night which really struck me as a bit odd. It’s a tale of arson and vandalism, “hooligans” and riots. These are all things which I don’t generally associate with the country of Sweden for some reason, but it turns out that such acts of unrest are actually rather common there, particularly right before the beginning of the new school year. Yet these car fires (which numbered in the hundreds) hit multiple cities simultaneously, so it looked far too coordinated to write off as mere coincidence.A bit more digging reveals...

Jim EdwardsOctober 28, 2015 Sweden is shaping up to be the first country to plunge its citizens into a fascinating — and terrifying — economic experiment: negative interest rates in a cashless society. The Swedish central bank held its benchmark interest rate at -0.35% today, the level it has been at since July. Although retail banks have yet to pass on that negative to rate to Swedish consumers, the longer it's held there the more financial pressure there is for banks to pass the costs onto their customers. That's a problem because Sweden is the closest country on the planet...