This is not really germane to the instant discussion. But, since you have brought up the subject of Japan, and especially since you bring up that many American elites find the idea that "Japan [has] anything to teach us ... laughable": it occurred to me earlier this year what a complete hoax it is for anyone to point to the problems of Japan in the 1980s and 1990s and claim that they have nothing to teach us. What I mean is that there was NO solution that could be effected by a national monetary authority that could possibly have worked in an international economic regime of neo-liberal free capital flows. Just look at what used to be known as the carry trade. The Bank of Japan tried essentially negative interest rates, which supposedly "did not work" to halt and reverse the financial crisis. But the real reason negative interest rates did not work was because the Japanese were unable and /or unwilling to buck the U.S. and other world financial elites in order to impose capital controls. In the absence of capital controls, the carry trade developed, undermining the attempts of the Bank of Japan to solve the crisis.