I’M on strike. I got the idea from the truck drivers, bus drivers, stevedores, baggage handlers, flight attendants and probably a few other professions I have since forgotten about. It’s too hard to keep track. Anyway, striking is a very Finnish thing to do. Since previously I haven’t had the opportunity to go on strike, now seems a good time to start.

MY demands are simple. I told the managers of the Helsinki Times I deserved a cost-of-living raise three times higher than the actual cost-of-living increase. That seems to be what the other strikers are asking, so this is also my demand. In response, management demanded that I stopped drinking heavily prior to negotiations. Touché.

FINNISH consumers are an optimistic bunch. According to the most recent consumer survey, they are more positive about Finland’s economy now than at any time since 1997. They realise that unemployment might be headed up for a time yet, but they are simply exuberant about their personal economic situation as well as Finland’s. So is the recession a thing of the past? Hardly.

HERE is the sober truth: Finland will probably not fully recover from the recession until 2017. No, that is not a typo. This is important enough to say again: We will probably not recover our pre-recession real GDP per capita for another seven years. If the consumers had known this, I wonder if they would have given the same answers for the survey.

IS there such a thing as a risk-free asset? According to conventional wisdom short-term government bonds are generally considered “risk-free” to investors. The problem with this principle is that they are hardly riskless.

THE general idea is that nations rarely default. This is because governments have the power of coercion, meaning they can send police to your door to collect taxes if necessary. Since they have this power they rarely default on their debt. And since countries rarely default, so the reasoning goes, there is very little risk in investing in them.

NOKIA is getting sued again. This time it is a class-action lawsuit filed by investors in America, alleging that the company hid production problems and failed to disclose discounting that eroded margins. Nokia denies the charges and will defend itself in court.

THIS isn’t the first time Finland’s largest company has been accused of lying to its owners. In the past Nokia has defended itself successfully against similar allegations. In fact, it is rare for such accusations to be proved in court. Sometimes, though, it becomes obvious that a company was lying. How can this happen?

United Europe is having its first homegrown crisis. Investors have become distrustful of public officials, the common currency has fallen, yields on some countries’ bonds have soared, and stock markets have dropped. Now is a good time to take a look at the current state and future of the European economy.

THE crisis began with Greece’s public finances. We know the story: politicians let government debt get out of control and investors don’t believe they have the willpower to get things in hand. Distrust then spread to other countries on the periphery of Europe.

As it is now earnings season, investors will be scouring through piles of releases to see how Finnish companies are doing. Since reading financial statements is a fine art, here’s a helpful glossary to make sense of what firms are really saying.

Better than expected – We thought we were doomed.

Challenging market situation – We have no idea what’s going on or what to do about it.

Credit downgrade – The ratings agencies figured out how much trouble we are in.

EARNINGS season is beginning. This will be an especially important one, because we will see how Finnish companies are coping with our ongoing recession and if they see light at the end of the tunnel. Here is a completely subjective list of some of the best stories to watch in the weeks ahead.

10) FINNAIR. Poor Finnair. Everyone seems to be deserting them at the moment, from workers to politicians to customers. Even the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority slammed a Finnair “eco-smart” advertising claim. Will blue skies finally return in 2010?

BIOHIT used to be one of Finland’s most boring companies. It’s in the medical equipment business, an industry not known for wild economic cycles. At the end of the year it only had some 3,500 shareholders and typically less than a dozen trades of its stock happened on any given day. The share price was stuck at about 1.50 for years.

ALL that changed with a bang on 11 January, when the company announced it had signed a contract to manufacture Acetium, an over-the-counter capsule that aims to protect the digestive tract from a common carcinogenic substance.

2009 was a good year for the stock market. The OMX Helsinki 25 index hit bottom early in March and ended the year up 34 per cent. Although this may seem like a good thing for investors, paradoxically a rising market can cause problems for people actively adding money to their investments.

THE dilemma is finding bargains. The sole purpose of investing is paying less than the intrinsic value of a company. When optimism pushes up equity prices it becomes harder and harder to find deals. Value investing in a bull market is like trying to walk up the down escalator: you can do it, but it takes a while and you look rather silly.

POLITICIANS over the past ten years have had a mixed record in supporting the Finnish economy. With the year 2010 now beginning and the national economy at a crossroads, it is a good time to check our recent history and where we should go in the future. Now’s our opportunity for a decade-long performance review of Parliament.

TO start, we had a lousy last ten years in terms of job creation. At the end of 2009 we had about 100,000 more jobs than at the end of 1999. That doesn’t sound too bad, until one realises that Finland’s population increased more than 200,000 over that same period. The unemployment rate we have become accustomed to is positively shameful. I would term this a failure.