How Sweden Solved Its Financial Meltdown

Posted by Susanna at 11:20 AM, Jan 9, 2009 (Comments)

Category: Events

Jens Henriksson to the right

JENS HENRIKSSON, executive director of the Nordic-Baltic region for the International Monetary Fund, was the featured speaker at the Swedish American Cultural Union luncheon Jan. 9 in Washington. Mr. Henriksson, who is the former State Secretary for the Swedish Ministry of Finance during the Göran Persson/Social Democrats administration, shared his insights and analysis of today's world economic crisis and talked about what it would take to solve the problems.
Mr. Henriksson was a key leader in Sweden's effort to build a turnaround after its financial meltdown in the early 1990s, and he drew on his experience during that time for much of the prescription he outlined for today's crisis. He called for openness and transparency in all dealings between the government and the private sector, complete cooperation between the government and the banks, and tough medicine for the salvaging of good assets, the management or liquidation of bad assets, and giving bank shareholders nothing for their investment when the government is forced to bail out those banks.
Mr. Henriksson pointed out that even though Sweden invested about six percent of its Gross Domestic Product or 64 billion kronor in addressing its financial crisis of the 1990s, the Swedish government got all its money back and then some.

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