DEcho

Decoupling During a Downturn Difficult To Predict

Beeing a Norwegian investing mainly through US listed products, I was amused to see Norway mentioned in this context. Actually I can't say how Norway will fare in the case of a US recession, but here's a few quick facts; Norway has a strict fiscal policy, putting almost all of the revenues from oil into a "Pension fund", currently amounting to about USD $450.000.000.000, which is about $100.000 per capita. Quite honestly, Norwegians don't feel these $$$ (or NOKs rather) belong to them personally, as most political parties are commited to "save for later" - we have the same social problems etc as other European contries, and Norway actually spends less money on goverment funded research than our neighbours.

I won't pretend to know how Norway would fare in the case of a US recession, but the last couple of years we've seen incredible gains - for a developed market . It's not all connected to oil; see f.ex.:
finance.yahoo.com/char...;range=20050425,200711...
Much of the growth the last couple of years have come from cheap imported labour from eastern Europe..