As the European Central Bank prepares to inject up to a trillion euros into Europe's faltering economy, Mario Draghi would be wise to study Japan's experience with massive quantitative easing.
In recent interviews, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda has come close to admitting that his own monetary "bazooka" hasn't succeeded in jolting the economy out of its deflationary funk. Simply providing liquidity isn't enough; banks and corporations need incentive to tap that money.
That means central bankers such as Kuroda and Draghi need to get more innovative with their policies. For the BOJ, the ripest targets of opportunity could well lie outside Tokyo and the corporate headquarters of Japan's once world-beating companies.