In this paper we take the current global financial crisis as a point of departure for a comparative and longitudinal study of such crises in Sweden during the last 100 years. A focus of our attention is how the state (or entities close to the state) chooses to manage the financial crises and thus how they distribute the direct and indirect costs connected to these crises, i.e. how the state in attempting to resolve crises effectively also helps pick the winners and losers of these recurring phenomena. However, this is only a pilot study of a new research project and here we will focus on how Scandinavian countries have dealt with financial crises, and particular how the state have acted in connections with financial crises.