Below is some analysis from Capital Economics on the "lessons learned" from the Nordic experience. A few items from the analysis worth mentioning:
- The governments stepped in to guarantee bank liabilities.
- There is a common misperception that Nordic banks were nationalized. In fact bank nationalization was quite limited.
- Iceland dodged the problem (just to get hit with a much more disastrous outcome this time around.)
- The banking system was significantly smaller relative to countries' GDPs vs. today.
- Nordic recession was regional, with the rest of the world in decent shape. That allowed for a reasonably quick recovery.
- The paper points out that the Nordic approach is by no means a panacea to the current banking problems.