Danish Central Bank in Knifefight with Nordea

By Thomas Borgsmidt Nationalbanken, the Danish Central Bank, made an unusual move at the end of January 2015 to stop selling sovereign bonds and arranging with the government, that public spending is financed for the rest of the year out of the public account in the Central Bank. To appreciate the move some background information is handy: Nordea is the only Globally Systemically Important Bank in Scandinavia. It has branches of importance in Norway, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Nordea is part owned by the Swedish state as a remnant of the 1990s Swedish banking crisis that has never…