Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 18, 2009

In the early 1990s, as Japan suffered a severe economic collapse, Washington dispatched a team of high-ranking economic analysts to Tokyo. Their advice was to permit the market to work the bad assets out of its system. Many of that country?s investment and commercial banks would fail, but the alternative ? using taxpayer funds to prop them up ? would only prolong the crisis.

Ignoring that advice the Japanese government bailed out the dead and dying financial institutions, thereby creating an entire class of so-called ?Zombie banks? ? that is, banks that are artificially kept alive through government intervention. As a result, Japan has suffered a depression that has lasted nearly two decades.

As our own financial crisis deepens, Washington is choosing to ignore the advice it once gave Japan in favor of creating our own collection of nationalized ?zombie banks.? This may well lead to our own generation-long depression.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.