Economic growth struggled, averaging only 2 per cent in the 1990s compared to 4 per cent in the 1980s. In Sweden real estate prices boomed in the second half of the 1980s, nearly doubling over that time. The boom ran out of steam in 1991, and the correction was severe enough to require the rescue of a good deal of the Swedish banking system.
Over the first 3 years of the 1990s, Sweden’s economy shrank by nearly 10 per cent. And in the US the NASDAQ increased fivefold over 3 years in the late 1990s, before losing all of that ground by early last year.