Norway

A group of activists from over 30 different countries are planning mass protests over Norway’s legal “kidnapping” of children Demonstrations against the Norwegian Child Welfare Service are taking place on Saturday in what the activists call the agency’s practice of “kidnapping” children from their families. According to The Local: After a wave of demonstrations over the past several months, the Norwegian Child Welfare Service (Barnevernet) will be the subject of a coordinated ‘day of action’ that could draw as many as 300,000 people, organizers told The Local.

We’ve long said the Norges Bank would ease in March in the face of falling crude prices and the continuation of the negative rates regime at the ECB, the Riksbank, and the NationalBank.

Indeed by the time of today’s announcement, the market was pricing in a ~75% chance that Oystein Olsen would cut rates by 25 bps. And he didn’t disappoint, slashing the depo rate to 0.50%. Incidentally, we’d hate to be the 1 economist out of 20 surveyed by Bloomberg that managed to miss this one.

Last month, we introduced you to “The Soldiers of Odin.”

The “soldiers” are Nordic patriots dedicated to keeping the streets of Finland, Sweden, and Norway safe from the threat posed by marauding gangs of Mid-East migrants hell bent on accosting women.

Well that, or they’re the Nordic equivalent of a biker gang set to capitalize on a groundswell of nationalistic fervor drummed up by the far-right in the wake of Europe’s worsening migrant crisis.

When last we checked in on Norway, we outlined what we called the country’s “currency conundrum.”

Submitted by Alexander Grover in Oslo, Norway

A Norwegian Gold Allocation Would Counter Sovereign Incompetence Risk