Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Do we need to take drastic action to save the American banking system?  Or can we just let weak banks “muddle through,” using their operating profits to slowly but steadily improve their solvency over time?  The latter was the Japanese approach, and Matt Yglesias points out today that there are some revisionist arguments going around that, actually, Japan didn’t do all that badly.  So maybe muddling isn’t so bad after all.

Along the same lines, John Hempton once pointed out to me that Thailand followed the same approach after their currency crisis in 1997, and it worked fine.

Then again, Sweden and Norway needed massive intervention to save their banking system in the early 90s.  Muddling wouldn’t have worked for them.

So it all depends.  That’s not a very exciting conclusion, is it?  But that’s life in the world of high finance.  It’s just like Hollywood: nobody knows anything.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate