Bilderberg CEO

Exactly. Swedes and Danes look miserable. They make up these lame studies 1) to make loser countries feel like they're winning at something and 2) to make Americans want more government.

I'll try to explain it like you're a child, as requested. When you have money in a savings account at a bank, the bank pays you a little money for keeping your money with them. This money that they pay you is called interest. Just as you keep money at a bank, your bank also keeps money at a special bank called the central bank (Riksbank). The repo rate is the the interest rate that the central bank pays your bank to keep money deposited there. When the repo rate is positive, the central bank is paying the private banks to keep money in their "savings accounts" at the central bank. If the repo rate is negative, however, the private banks have to pay the central bank to keep their money at the central bank. So imagine if you had billions of dollars, and the bank made you pay 0.25% of your billions for the privilege of keeping your money deposited there. You would lose millions of dollars, so what would you do? You would probably find other things to invest your money in and keep as little money as possible in your savings account. The theory is that banks will do the same, and that this will stimulate the economy because the banks will lend more money, instead of keeping it at the central bank. In reality, however, this leads to bad investments, more economic bubbles and wasted resources.

Sometimes it doesn't hit you until you go to the funeral. I was very close to my grandmother, and didn't really react until I saw her in the casket. But everyone is different.

It also creates a society of jerks who aren't courteous to each other. I creates an atmosphere of "I don't have to be nice to my neighbors because I'll never need them for help."

Cool

Not really a joke, but I thought it was funny. I was listening to a podacst in the archives, where Stefan was a guest on another show. The show started with the host, and his audio was really bad, with lots of static and distortion. Then suddenly Stepfan speaks, and it's like a completely different audio channel, with crystal clear sound and Stefan's smooth voice. You could almost hear angels sounding trumpets as his high-quality sound broke the static. Well, I thought it was funny at the time anyway. Thanks for using quality equipment, Stefan.