I heard of the knife attack that seriously wounded Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh in Stockholm’s NK department store this afternoon as I was writing for this blog that the most newsworthy event here today was an op-ed piece [Swedish] by Economics Nobel Prize winner Joe Stiglitz in Dagens Nyheter. That certainly isn’t true anymore.

As the manhunt continues for a bloodstained assailant in a military outfit, Lindh is being operated on, but she is apparently not in critical condition. It doesn’t seem fitting to drone on about EMU minutiae just now, so read the Stiglitz piece at your convenience and I will perhaps post something on it tomorrow.

Update – 19:24 CEST: Parallels with the murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was gunned down in central Stockholm in 1986, are obvious. That tragedy came to signify a loss of innocence for Swedish society, on par with Kennedy in the US, and later Pim Fortuyn for the Dutch, and the lesson from all these events is that there is always bound to be one nutcase for whom the lure of notoriety through harm proves irresistible.

While no doubt Prime Minister Persson has protection, I doubt Lindh did, and I suspect she preferred not to have any. Eventually, you just have to settle for acceptable risks. Certainly she has had much exposure of late, campaigning heavily for Swedish entry to EMU, but I have this feeling the substantive reason for the attack may not have to do with the upcoming referendum. Much like the assumption was that Fortuyn was murdered for his right-wing views during an election campaign — when in fact the murderer was an animal rights activist — I wonder if the attack on Lindh, though precipitated by her recent visibility, is not the result of a grudge unrelated to economics. I only think this because the EMU campaign, while spirited, has hardly been acrimonious.

Update – 19:57 CEST: Swedish TV is having its own case of CNN-itis, where there hasn’t been any news for hours yet coverage remains non-stop.