So I received a Kindle for Christmas, and the first book I have read on it is Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  For those of you who have not entered a bookstore, big-box store or airport in the past six months or year, know that the book has been on the paperback best-seller lists for six months, and in hard cover before that.  The second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire, in the Millennium trilogy, as it is known, is on the hard cover best-seller list, and U.S. readers are anxiously awaiting the U.S. release of the third book.As if this success wasn't enough to evoke interest, note that the Swedish author presented all three manuscripts to a publisher and then died shortly thereafter; he died intestate and now the battle begins among his father, brother and girlfriend of 30 years.

But what is interesting to me is the anti-speculation sentiment.  Little wonder, as Larsson was a supporter of the Communist party and was also a journalist committed to uncovering conspiracies, though generally the political kind.  The first book begins with our hero, Mikael Blomkvist, a Swedish financial reporter and magazine owner, up against his target, a financial wizard who wins the first round.  During one conversation that Blomkvist has concerning Wennerstrom's dealings, a stark contrast between stock and property speculation and companies that "actually produce something.  The backbone of Swedish industry and all that."

After that, the bulk of the book is an engaging mystery story filled with intrigue, loose ends, clues, and surprising twists and turns.  A very satisfying $7 spent on my Kindle.  Yes, the main subjects are capitalists, but there are good ones and bad ones, and even our hero is a capitalist with a magazine to run and a board to meet with.  Then we get to the very end.  Blomqvist is being interviewed by a television financial reporter about a sudden decline in the Stockholm Stock Exchange.  Here are Blomkvist's remarks:

The idea that Sweden's economy is headed for a crash is nonsense. . . .You have to distinguish between two things--the Swedish economy and the Swedish stock market. The Swedish economy is the sum of all the goods and services that are produced in this country every day. There are telephones from Ericsson, cars from Volvo, chickens from Scan, and shipments from Kiruna to Skovde. That's the Swedish economy, and it's just as strong or weat today as it was a week ago. . . .The Stock Exchange is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people form one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn't have a thing to do with reality or with the Swedish economy. . . .It only means that a bunch of heavy speculators are now moving their shareholdings from Swedish companies to German ones. So it's the financial gnomes that some tough reporter should identify and expose as traitors. They're the ones who are systematically and perhaps deliberately damaging the Swedish economy in order to satisfy the profit interests of their clients."

Rumors are that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo will be adapted into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. (All three books have been made into movies in Sweden.) I'm not sure if this speech will make it into the movie, but if it does we'll have another clip to show!

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