Foreign Policy Blogs

Swedish Model for solving U.S. Financial Crisis?

In the past week, the New York Times and the Financial Times have run stories suggesting that the United States ought to look toward the Swedish bank bail out plan of the early 1990s.  Both articles suggest that the crisis in Sweden is comparable to the crisis roiling American financial markets, but fail to make their case convincingly.  In the United States the complex network of subprime mortgages and securitized packages of bad loans is much more far-reaching than the fall-out from the Swedish crisis.

While it is interesting to recall the successful steps that Sweden took to deal with its crisis, it's not clear that the serve as a viable model for the United States.


"Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way’,
The New York Times,' September 23, 2008

"Swedish model points the way', The Financial Times, September 22, 2008