According to Bloomberg, General Motors (GRM) is close to announcing a deal to sell its Saab division to Spyker Cars. A person familiar with the matter said that an announcement could come as early as late afternoon in Sweden. In Amsterdam, trading was suspended on the automaker amid the rumors.

Spyker has offered GM roughly $75 million in cash and $325 million preferred shares in Spyker, which would come from the transaction. Reportedly GM would receive $100 million of Saab's existing liquidity.

Europe is hot, if you don't look too far over your shoulder. The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index played well through the stock market recovery of 2009, ticking up 28% (60% from its March 2009 low). This was the index's best annual performance in a decade.

Basic resources and banks gained 100% and 46%, respectively, this year, after having turned in dismal performances the year before. China helped, as well, with its elevated economic growth forecast good for another 0.5% gain during the shortened week of Christmas.

This morning, General Motors (GMGMQ) -- or is it Government Motors? -- announced that it will sell its Saab unit to a consortium led by Koenigsegg Automotive AB. The purchaser is a luxury carmaker, which produces roughly 12 custom-made models each year.

In a memo of understanding, GM stated that the sale will include a $600 million funding commitment from the European Investment Bank -- which is guaranteed by the Swedish government. The sale is believed to be completed by the end of the third quarter.

The Swedish government said it "is not prepared to own car factories," The New York Times reported Monday -- a stance widely seen as the government's refusal to bail out the iconic Saab Automobile company, which is owned by General Motors.

If the Swedish government's decision does not change, that would mean that mostly-socialist Sweden will not provide loans to a major, domestic automaker, while the mostly-capitalist United States will. General Motor's (NYSE: GM) shares closed Monday up 17 cents to $3.35.

Investors may legitimately ask: how can this be? The answer isn't simple.

Just in case the US Congress will not bailout Ford (NYSE:F) and GM (NYSE: GM), the car companies are turning to the Swedish government to help their Volvo and Saab units. The government there does not want to see a lot of lost jobs, so it might just put up some money to help out the US firms.

According to the FT, "Stephen Odell, Volvo's chief executive, and Saab's managing director Jan-Ake Jonsson have separately spoken to Maud Olofsson, Sweden's industry minister, and other officials about securing funds." The American firms have decided to sell the businesses, so Sweden may need to keep them on life support until that happens.

The move shows how desperate the US car companies are. While they may not be able to get the US government to provide them aid, they can appeal to Sweden on the basis that Saab and Volvo are huge employers in the country. Real trouble for the division could raise unemployment in the Scandinavian country causing it to pour unemployment and other social services capital into its economy,

Americans begging in Sweden. Nice picture.

Douglas A. McIntyre is en editor at 247wallst.com.

Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf, an economist, poses the question, "Will CO2 emissions limits lead to a zero-sum global economy?" – an economy characterized by stagnant (or declining) incomes, and armed conflict among nations?

Wolf argues that increased energy consumption per capita, primarily oil from fossil fuel, has been a key causal factor in creating the plus-sum economic world we live in, which he calls the positive-sum economy. Or in other words, rising energy consumption has helped produce rising productivity / real incomes / wealth, and the expanding global economy that we know today.

In addition, Wolf further argues that rising energy consumption transformed politics -- assisting both the birth of democratic politics at home and more-consensual foreign relations among states -- by increasing the size of the economic pie. Elites in a country, Wolf argues, became more willing to tolerate the enfranchisement of the masses because it was in the elites' economic interest to do so: i.e. that energy consumption created a more-productive (and more-valuable) citizenry with higher incomes.

Internationally, a nation's gains from the increased trade that characterizes the high-energy consumption era far exceed its gains from making war with another nation: the plus-sum global economy that trade produces supports today's norm of trade as opposed to the limited-sum world's norm of conflict and war.

If I had to guess who had the fastest residential internet connection in the world, I would probably guess it belonged to Bill Gates, or perhaps some elite hedge fund trader? But I'd be wrong. Apparently, 75-year-old Swede Sigbritt Lothberg has a 40 gigabytes-per-second fiber-optic connection, and can download full-length movies in as little as 2 seconds.

Most amazingly, Ms. Lothberg is brand new to the world of computers. Apparently the people who installed it for her wanted to prove some obscure point about the opportunities in computing for everyone. Personally, I would have just installed it in my own house, but hey.

And apparently it's all for nil. According to the International Herald Tribune, she is using the connection to read the newspaper online.

Hey, it looks the print media just lost yet another consumer.

Though Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) is denying media reports that its Volvo unit is for sale, I doubt that the company will hold onto the Swedish automaker for much longer.

BMW AG (FRA: BMW) signaled earlier this year that it would consider buying a stake in Volvo though its interest has apparently cooled lately, according to the Wall Street Journal. The reasons for the German automaker's change of heart aren't clear. Odds are good that the companies couldn't come to terms.

If BMW won't pay Ford's price for Volvo, other public and private buyers will in the not-too-distant future.

Ford Chief Executive Alan Mullaly would be glad to sell Volvo or other assets such as Ford Motor Credit though he's probably playing his cards close to the vest to try and not appear too much like a distressed seller like DaimlerChrysler AG (NYSE: DCX) did with the Chrysler sale.

Shares of Ford have climbed almost 12 percent this year on expectations that Mullaly will bring the automaker kicking and screaming into the 21st century. If people let the former Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) executive do his job, he'll do just that but it may take longer than people would like.

Each year Steven Halpern, editor of TheStockAdvisors.com, surveys the leading financial newsletter advisors asking for their favorite stocks for the coming year. This article is part of his 24th annual Top Picks Report.

iShares Sweden ETF (NYSE: EWD) is the top speculative idea for 2007 from Nick Vardy, editor of The Global Bull Market Alert.

He explains, "Political revolutions can mean big stock market gains. The Reagan revolution unleashed an era of strong economic growth; ditto for the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, where economic reforms were followed quickly by big bull markets and big profits for investors who got in on the game early.

"Such a political revolution just happened in Sweden, where the Social Democrats were voted out of office. After holding power for 65 of the past 74 years, Swedish voters opted for an economic model that looks a lot more like Maggie Thatcher than Scarlett Johansson.

"The agenda of the winning center-right alliance is to lower taxes, deregulate the economy, and sell state shareholdings in listed companies, which will clear the way for cross-border mergers or acquisitions of listed companies. Investment bankers already have descended on Stockholm.

Will heading to Sweden help revive eBay's sagging stock today? I doubt it. Ebay announced this morning that it is buying Swedish auction firm Tradera for $48 million. That's chump change for eBay, which generated $451 million in free cash last quarter alone. And eBay doesn't expect the deal to affect its earnings guidance issued last week.

But news of the deal is enough to at least create some fresh headlines this morning, which should be a positive for eBay. The stock is down to $35.09 a share from last week's high of $40.44 reached on April 19, just before it reported first quarter earnings. That's a brutal 13% drop for a company that met analysts' estimates and exceeded its own guidance.

If eBay gets a lift today, which I expect, I think it will have more to do with bargain hunters coming in than its Tradera deal.