The global financial crisis is not the result of the failure of markets but of a series of government policy mistakes — prescriptions for which have been circulating for a long time but were largely ignored, a U.S. expert told a recent seminar in Tokyo.

Charles Calomiris, professor of financial institutions at Columbia University Graduate School of Business, said the crisis is only the worst episode of what he described as "the most destructive 30 years of finance in world history."

"Over the last 30 years, we've had 140 national financial crises around the world that have produced total losses in the financial system in those countries in excess of 1 percent of their GDP. In about 20 of those cases, the (losses reached) more than 10 percent of GDP," he said. "Nothing like that has ever happened before."