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The Bumble Bee and the Chrysanthemum: Comparing Sweden and Japan's Responses to Financial Crisis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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Reinhart and Rogoff's influential book, This Time is Different (2009), argues that financial crises over the past eight centuries have had similar causes and consequences across diverse societies. The authors make an important empirical contribution to our knowledge of financial crises by showing that excessive borrowing, debt-fuelled asset values, and exuberance about ever-increasing prices are central elements in all of them. They also remind us that we tend to forget past crises, and hence dismantle regulatory and other safeguards implemented in their wake, leaving ourselves ripe for the next bubble. But they do not discuss the diverse ways in which governments have intervened in financial markets to deal with financial crises. Since these crises seem inevitable, and financial sectors are becoming increasingly large shares of national economies (Capelle-Blanchard and Tadjeddine 2010), it is important for social scientists to examine the politics of how they are managed.
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