Stupid use of funds for the most part, it's not re-invested in the country, just the American stock market. It's not like they had to buy solid gold rolls royces, but there's no reinvestment internally other than oil and fish. Norway is a hedge fund with the F-35.
Disclosure: I'm a Swede who previously worked in various primarily Norwegian-owned software companies for two decades. I'm mostly happy about how it went. I also got some insights about Norway along the way via the 100+ trips to Oslo during that last decade when I had an engineering management role. That travel schedule was exhausting.<p>My pet peeve about Norway and oil: How very few people ever call them out on being the Saudi Arabia of the north (well, minus the murders/various other kinds of oppressions).<p>They do so much (excellent!) PR that shows them being the ethical/environmental leaders.. that totally ignores the fact that they are the people making money on pumping old fossil remains out from their seabeds. If they really meant it, they could, like.. stop doing that? I mean, pick a lane.
> without trashing the environment<p>without trashing the NORWEGIAN environment, but let's not whitewash over all of the CO2 they have unleashed on the world.<p>More generally, I think it will be interesting to see what happens next with Norway - while they have avoided the principle resource curse - what happens when all of these oil jobs disappear (10% of direct employment and probably up to 25% in an indirect sense)?
Farouk certainly played a role, but I long to see an exposé on the backchannels between elites during this period. It seems the great powers of the Global North wouldn't dare attempt to destabilize and usurp one of their own sovereigns.<p>People are too quick to blame "state-owned monopolies" when the development and success of any producer is dependent on the gatekeepers of the global oil marketplace.
It really is amazing that there is a list as long as your arm of economies dominated by natural resource extraction for whom it has been a curse.<p>And then there's Norway. The sole exception.
The problem now is that the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund is deeply tied to the US economy.<p>I don't understand why we Europeans are so invested into the US economy when every American on twitter/reddit is saying the US dollar and economy is about to collapse. They might be wrong and are probably wrong but it is still incredibly stupid to invest in a country when its own citizens think it will collapse in a year or two.