Last week’s dramatic events hold two transatlantic lessons in opposite directions, one from Europe to the US and one the other way. The first comes from Sweden, which suffered its own financial crisis during the early 1990s. The Swedish lesson is that bank bail-outs should be handled conservatively and should come in the form of direct capital injections.

As in the US, the Swedish financial crisis was also preceded by a property bubble, which was pricked by a rise in real interest rates. Severe stress in the financial system and the economy were to follow. In each of the three years 1991, 1992 and 1993 Swedish gross domestic product fell in real terms, at an accumulated rate of about 5 per cent.