The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The host of She on TV4 looked perplexed. His reply did not follow the pattern she had expected, and she was forced to improvise. Blomkvist got the follow-up question he was hoping for. “We’re experiencing the largest single drop in the history of the Swedish stock exchange-and you think that’s 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 Skövde. That’s the Swedish economy, and it’s just as strong or weak today as it was a week ago.”

He paused for effect and took a sip of water.

“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 from 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.”

“So you’re saying that it doesn’t matter if the Stock Exchange drops like a rock?”

“No, it doesn’t matter at all,” Blomkvist said in a voice so weary and resigned that he sounded like some sort of oracle. His words would be quoted many times over the following year. Then he went on.

“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.”

Then She on TV4 made the mistake of asking exactly the question that Blomkvist had hoped for.

“And so you think that the media don’t have any responsibility?”

“Oh yes, the media do have an enormous responsibility. For at least twenty years many financial reporters have refrained from scrutinising Hans-Erik Wennerström. On the contrary, they have actually helped to build up his prestige by publishing brainless, idolatrous portraits. If they had been doing their work properly, we would not find ourselves in this situation today.”

Blomkvist’s appearance marked a turning point. In hindsight, Berger was convinced that it was only when Blomkvist went on TV and calmly defended his claims that the Swedish media, in spite of the fact that Millennium had been all over the headlines for a week, recognised that the story really did hold up. His attitude set the course for the story.

After the interview the Wennerström affair imperceptibly slipped from the financial section over to the desks of the crime reporters. In the past, ordinary crime reporters had seldom or never written about financial crime, except if it had to do with the Russian mob or Yugoslav cigarette smugglers. Crime reporters were not expected to investigate intricate dealings on the Stock Exchange. One evening paper even took Blomkvist at his word and filled two spreads with portraits of several of the brokerage houses’ most important players, who were in the process of buying up German securities. The paper’s headline read SELLING OUT THEIR COUNTRY. All the brokers were invited to comment on the allegations. Every one of them declined. But the trading of shares decreased significantly that day, and some brokers who wanted to look like progressive patriots started going against the stream. Blomkvist burst out laughing.

The pressure got to be so great that sombre men in dark suits put on a concerned expression and broke with the most important rule of the exclusive club that made up the innermost circles of Swedish finance-they commented on a colleague. All of a sudden retired industrial leaders and bank presidents were appearing on TV and answering questions in an attempt at damage control. Everyone realised the seriousness of the situation, and it was a matter of distancing themselves as quickly as possible from the Wennerström Group and shedding any shares they might hold. Wennerström (they concluded almost with one voice) was not, after all, a real industrialist, and he had never been truly accepted into “the club.” Some pointed out that he was just a simple working-class boy from Norrland whose success may have gone to his head. Some described his actions as a personal tragedy. Others discovered that they had had their doubts about Wennerström for years-he was too boastful and he put on airs.