Sweden’s economy, once called the ‘rock star of the recovery’ has slipped into deflation. The March 2014 inflation figure is minus 0.6%.  A puzzling situation, given Sweden’s growth target at 2.7% and the country’s apparent immunity to the recent global economic crisis.      

The moral of the Swedish story seems to be that central banks shouldn’t rush to raise interest rates at the first signs of recovery. Faced with a housing bubble, Sweden’s central bank hiked rates from minus 0.25% to 2% in a short period of time.  So is there a lesson for the ECB?

Saxo bank’s Head of Macro Strategy, Mads Koefoed, says that Sweden was right to raise rates when it did and thinks that the ECB case is very different to the Swedish example, despite pressure to raise rates to combat the threat of deflation in the Eurozone.