EVENTUALLY, some economics teacher will use this as a case study. A delicious array of factors has made butter, of all things, one of the most mouth-wateringly prized commodities throughout the Nordic region this Christmas. The story includes supply and demand issues, sneaky international criminals, unfair trade practices and bungled restrictions on the free market all playing a role. Ayn Rand would love it.

I tried to count the number of European bailout plans which have failed, but ended up getting bored and depressed and lost count. All those other failures don’t really matter, I suppose. What matters now is why our current bailout plan will fail, too.

WHAT we needed out of the most current plan was an immediate fix to funding problems, a medium-term boost to the economy, and a long-term restructuring of the way the Eurozone works. The plan inadequately addressed the first and third problem, and completely ignored the second.

LAST week some 3.3 million people in Finland received tax refunds. Doubtlessly they were happy to receive a nice lump sum of cash just before Christmas. They shouldn’t have been, though. They should have been very angry.

THE people who got tax refunds should be angry because getting a tax refund means they have made a significant, and costly, error in their cash flow management. They made an interest-free loan to the government and didn’t even get a thank-you note in reply. How rude.

THE investment community was sarcastically enchanted with the European Commission’s terminology for joint Eurobonds, where debt is collectively issued by European countries. Their euphemism, “Stability Bonds,” is simply beautiful. Who could possibly be against stability?

THIS led me to think: Helsinki Times is a major source of news for visitors to Finland, so we should be careful with our terminology. We want to make a good impression. To help us achieve this, I think the paper should adopt the following style guide:

THE first week of June 2009 I wrote about the “bond vigilantes,” or investors that push up interest rates on government loans. At the time I thought they were coming because of inflation fears, but I was wrong. Inflation remained low and investors continued to lend money to European governments at low rates. But now the bond vigilantes really are here, and Europe is in trouble.

FOR years being part of the Eurozone was a ticket to low interest rates. If a country was in the club, it got to borrow money cheaply. Now the opposite has occurred: if you are in the Eurozone investors will demand a premium.

LAST week, when Europe was once again teetering upon a financial doomsday, I was eagerly watching the price of a particular company. I wanted to buy if it fell to a specific level, but inexplicably stock prices rose. It was strange that stock prices went up in the face of catastrophe, but traders don’t always behave rationally. Machines don’t always behave “rationally” either, and they were helping to set stock prices.

WHEN I heard that our Minister of Justice Anna-Maja Henriksson proposed abolishing one of our human rights, I was sure that there had been some mistake. Unfortunately, it turns out that this abominable proposal is actually being considered.

FOR fifteen centuries (with notable exceptions), since the time of the Roman Emperor Justinian, Europe has been governed by a very humane concept: a person is innocent until proven guilty. This means, in practice, if a person is charged with a crime the burden of proof is on the prosecution. In a strangely underreported move, Henriksson has proposed abolishing this 1,500 year-old human right in Finland for some accusations.

NO, it’s not time to become an owner of Nokia. The reason I think one should shy away from Nokia is not down to market share, or Windows, or the size of their cutbacks. The reason I don’t want to own Nokia’s shares is much more fundamental.

NOKIA has had some good news recently. While analysts expected a loss of €229 million in the third quarter, the Espoo-based giant only lost €68 million. Low-priced handsets sold well. Influential bloggers and some market observers seem to be impressed with what they know about the new Windows-based Lumia models. While all this is definitely good, it doesn’t address the most basic problem.

I have been watching the “Occupy Wall Street” movements with interest. The phenomenon has even reached Finland. Vaguely, I would define OWS as a left-wing movement, fighting against economic inequality by direct democracy. But what do the participants want, exactly, and what can they do for Finland?

THE idea of using direct democracy, instead of representative democracy, is something that I really admire. It is like open-source governance. As residents of the EU, we know better than anyone how elected politicians sometimes ignore the will of the people. So far so good, but there are problems.

THIS year the Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded to Thomas J. Sargent of New York University and Christopher A. Sims of Princeton. The reason you should care is that what they have accomplished affects your everyday life.

ECONOMICS is a strange beast. Originally termed “the dismal science” by Thomas Carlyle back in the 19th century, it seeks to analyse the production and distribution of wealth in theory and in practice. The last part of that definition is most relevant: “in theory and in practice.” Sargent and Sims won the prize for trying to take economics out of the realm of theory into practice.