A Japanese Lesson .

A Japanese Lesson. As the history of the Great Depression is one long regret of political follies and blunders that aggravated the suffering, so is the story of the Japanese recession from the 1990s to the present. The Japanese government tried to spend its way out of the recession, but instead merely prolonged it and created a mountain of debt. It probably improved the Japanese infrastructure but simultaneously propped up a badly misguided economy; sustained insolvent banks and insurance companies, always preventing the needed readjustment and thereby prolonging and aggravating the recession; and, last but not least, consumed the people’s savings of a decade.