The 1990s - Japan's lost decade economically, and politically?

This is my reply to Jing Zhao's comments on my earlier comments on "The rise of China: the impetus behind Japanese regionalism", http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2009/07/26/the-rise-of-china-the-impetus-behind-japanese-regionalism/, 31/07/2009

Jing, I take your point that the 1990s is also a lost decade of the Japanese politics, although I don’t understand politics much.

From economic point of view, the Japan’s lost decade should have a deep cause not noly in its policy makers and their abilities, but in my view also and perhaps more importantly in the US-centric economics and its failure in providing theories to deal with that sort of economic problems that Japan had at that time.

Now the world, or the west major economies are having a similar sort of economic problems as Japan had in the 1990s. Hopefully the economic profession will do something useful and relevant for this sort of problems. For at least, this time it involves the US.

So far, policy makers have avoided the total collapse of the international banking system and the worst of the global financial crisis appears to be behind us. That was a huge success and the world can breath a collective sigh of relief. Hope more of this nature is coming.