But who could have foreseen in 1990 that we were on the brink of a golden decade that would see a boom in the IT and communications industry? And who would have imagined in 2002 that Norwegian manufacturing would experience a new wave of growth? Fortunately, there are also many examples of innovation, particularly when times have been bad. Nokia managed to make the transition from rubber boots to new technology when the Finnish economy collapsed at the beginning of the 1990s. In Norway, the Norwegian telecom system was deregulated and Telenor developed into a large international company. During the downturn at the end of the 1980s, Tandberg started developing video conferencing systems. In the industrial centres Mo i Rana, Raufoss and Kongsberg, rich technological communities emerged after the collapse of government enterprises in the 1980s. The merchants behind the grocery chains Rimi and Rema started business on a small scale during the downturn at the end of the 1970s. The furniture producer Stokke – makers of the world-famous Tripp Trapp chair for children – started operations in western Norway in the midst of the economic crisis in the 1930s. Economic policy The measures now being implemented are intended to provide a bridge until market economies generate new growth under their own steam. The authorities in many countries are now testing the boundaries of active economic policy. And some have overstepped them.
Svein Gjedrem: Economic perspectives Address by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the meeting of the Supervisory Council of Norges Bank, Oslo, 12 February 2009. *  *  *  Introduction The poet Øyvind Rimbereid from Stavanger – his works already awarded a place in the Norwegian literary canon 1 – has been nominated for this year’s Nordic Council Literature Prize for the collection of poems entitled Herbarium. The poem “Tulip” starts with the tulip bulb market bubble in the 1600s. A futures market for tulip bulbs had emerged in Holland when growers discovered that infecting the tulip with a virus could produce stripes and beautiful colours. In a short time, bulbs were trading at 25 times the normal value before the market collapsed. A hundred years later, a tulip bulb cost less than one per cent of the price before the collapse. 2 In the words of Rimbereid: “ The year 1635 and on pollen-yellow paper flutter tulip bulbs grown in places unknown to most. Or grown only in the signature on the bill of exchange of a seller who himself has bought a signature from a seller with money that itself exists only as a signature.” 3 Downturn in the global economy In September 2008, the turbulence in financial markets erupted into a full-blown global crisis. Just before, it had appeared that the US government rescue of the mortgage corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would calm the markets.