Reuters ahead with Norwegian budget

Reuters’ strong political contacts in Norway delivered details of the country’s budget ahead of its official presentation on Tuesday, Oct. 5, allowing us to beat Bloomberg by 45 minutes with the news, with Dow Jones nowhere to be seen. The headstart allowed us to zero in on the key news — that the government will wind down stimulus spending and dip less into its oil slush fund as growth speeds up. A wealth of information followed — forecasts of a fall in 2011 oil and gas production, a new supervisory agency for the country’s oil fund and the non-implications of the budget for monetary policy. It was our second budget coup in the space of a few days after Athens exclusively reported Greece’s new deficit target in its 2011 budgets, three days’ ahead of time.