Painful as it may be, acting swiftly to tackle the U.S. financial crisis with a public bailout is the right move — and perhaps the chief lesson from Japan's bad debt debacle of the 1990s, economists and politicians here say.
Japan waited too long — seven years — before resorting to a bailout of banks, burdened with mountains of bad loans, they say. The result: what Japanese call the "lost decade" of economic stagnation.
"Things are moving at a tremendous speed in the U.S. compared with Japan," said Koetsu Aizawa, professor of economics at Saitama University. "It seems the U.S. learned from Japan's situation."
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.