"Learn from Japan," they said as the U.S., British and EU economies headed for their current downturns. Well, they may have learned something. But until very recently that something clearly was not enough.
One thing they do seem to have learned early on was the extreme folly of Japan's venture into supply-side economics at the height of its post-"bubble" downturn. So now no one is foolishly calling for governments to cut spending.
No Western financial medium seems keen to repeat those editorials from Japan's main economic newspaper, Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei), dismissing Keynesian economics as some kind of old-hat anachronism. As someone put it, we are all Keynesians now. Everyone, even Tokyo, now realizes the need for governments to pump money into a flagging economy.