There is always a tendency in finance to compare what is happening now to what went before. But after a certain point such comparisons are too often spurious.
Many have been comparing today’s credit crunch with the Japanese banking crisis of the 1990s. Proof emerges today that we are dealing with something very different. Japan’s economy contracted in the fourth quarter at the fastest rate in 35 years. Japan, we might need to be reminded, is still the world’s second largest economy.
