All of us were quite surprised when Elinor Ostrom became Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences. Her key oeuvre Governing the Commons appeared in 1990, twenty years from now. Although the first research paper on today's Global Commons Index has been published in 2007 by Elinors university, the University of Indiana, of course we are quite content that the commons are getting to the front now! But it seems that the Swedish Riksbank wanted to show after the financial crisis that they are willing to allow some Glasnost in the hermetic home zone of economic research. Gerhard Schwarz, chief-economist of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung today commented the decision to be political. He pointed out that both scientists being awarded by the committee were no market sceptic

 On August 20th the European Commission released the report "GDP and beyond"
(COM 433 2009). In this report the commission defends the current GDP ("It's
still the best single measure of how the market economy is performing") and
suspends any changes to the year 2012. We publish this report, that was given
to the European Parliament and which is completely unknown to the public here .
Some weeks later, on September 14th, the 292 pages report of the Stiglitz-Fitoussi
group to the European Commission was released. As far as the EU Commission knew
the report before, their aim is to avoid any activity that may cause doubts in
the current GDP due to the fear of impacts influencing the rating of governmental debts.

All members of the group producing this report therefore were from
governments and universities. No single NGO was involved. As a result, all
alternatives are blocked now while "proofing" the proposals made by the
Fitoussi group.
We featured this situation in our current report Wealth beyond GDP .
Be free to compare all the three papers to make your own picture!