Driving The Sword Home

Before you get all happy on me, that financial stimulus just passed by Congress won’t mean a damn, in that our perfect monetary firestorm is still far from contained. Mr. Obama did the right thing, pumping money into the economy to sustain my crappy job, but it is by no means a cure. You see, this has already happened.
One of the top tourist destinations of the world, Japan has been down this road before. It all began in 1990 with the implosion of the Japanese Asset Price Bubble that was not too much different from America’s housing bubble. Japan implemented tariffs that encouraged businesses to invest domestically, until the stock market and real estate market gradually fell in what is known as their “lost decade”.
Anyway, after years of false starts they finally figured it out in 2003. It wasn’t until then that the leadership had the balls to do what needed to be done. They had already tried many things before, bank bailouts. You get the deal. They did it driving the sword home, and fully nationalizing failing banks while letting lesser banks collapse. On top of that, they forced surviving banks to brutal audits to bring all the bad debts into the open.
For now, the administration appears unwilling to do what needs to be done.